May 17, 2003
Sharing your site with RSS.
Jason Cook offers up a
quick guide to using RSS to publish your site.
Have you ever noticed those inviting orange buttons on some Web pages, or spotted the odd link pitching an "RSS feed"? If you've ever clicked one out of curiosity, and then scratched your head at the unformatted gobbledygook in your web browser, you've seen an RSS file.
What is it really for, anyway? Two things: RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an easy way for sites to share headlines and stories so that other sites can integrate them into their pages. Additionally, some savvy surfers use special RSS aggregators Ð kind of like mini-browsers Ð to speedily flip through the latest news and links from dozens of sites.
In other words, Web builders use RSS to dish out and bring in fresh news and content on their websites, just like the big portals. And Web surfers can use RSS applications to collect custom-tailored selections of their favorite websites to be read at their leisure.
I don't have RSS working on this blog yet. And frankly, don't have much interest in it. I suppose I will soon, just so any prospective clients can see I know how to do it, but for some reason it doesn't excite me. Mostly it just seems to me to be the same stories linked over and over, or the same group of people linking to themselves. But maybe I'm missing something. It IS interesting technology, that's for sure. But I suspect most of these people just like the technology for technology's sake, not because it is particularly useful.
