scriptygoddess16 Mar, 2003
What is XML? And What is RSS? Why Do I Want It Anyways?
Posted by: Christine In: How to's
Some of you may read my personal blog where I have spent days now talking about XML, RSS, and why you want to upgrade your template. I realized as comments came in that an explanation was in order.
XML – There is another "language" (per se, for lack of better term) out there called XML. We are all familiar with HTML – it allows your content to display in a web browser. XML, "extensible markup language," is another way of sharing your information. It uses tags that can be defined and from there other applications can use the data. It is handy for sharing information from a site with a news reader, or a feed on a webpage.
RSS – RSS is a flavor of writing out XML. It stands for "Really Simple Syndication". I do not know enough of the history here, and I am not the person to explain this. I do know that often people use the terms interchangeably, and the XML template here at ScriptyGoddess is written in RSS 2.0. (If you have more info on this, feel free to share.) There is information on RSS here that is worth reading if you want to dig deeper.
Syndication – Have you ever seen news from one site on another? For example, your company may have an Intranet, and it may offer up MSN news on it. This is syndication. If you have an XML page, you can offer up your content to be syndicated on other sites.
So now we know what XML is, and what RSS. The next step is News Readers. There are a number of them out there – NetNewsWire for the Mac; Syndirella, Newzcrawler, FeedReader, and others for the PC.
I changed jobs recently, and I don't have a lot of time now to surf the sites I used to surf daily. It's hard to keep up with everything. However, I realized while I was at SXSW Interactive this past week that if I downloaded a news reader that might help me keep on top of everything. Anil Dash pointed out in a panel that with a News Reader, he could stay on top of 10,000 blogs if he wanted to. I personally caught up on close to 100 in 15 minutes earlier today – I skipped the ones that didn't update and read the ones that did, commenting on several as I went along.
However, while a lot of people that use MT have an index.xml template for their site, they are using the original default one that came with earlier installations. These feeds only contain excerpts of posts, as Jay Allen pointed out to me back in January. What ends up happening for most sites is you just see a few words like this in the news reader (From Michele's feed):
"My life has not been "normal" since September 10, 2001. I imagine it's the same for most of you. I…"
However, with an upgraded index.xml template using the instructions offered by Lisa at her site or from Dive Into Mark, the feed would look like this:
"My life has not been "normal" since September 10, 2001. I imagine it's the same for most of you. I want my life back. I want to go back to the place where my children didn't ask me a million questions every night that I just can't answer."
With full posts in your index.xml file, people that use a news reader can read your posts quickly & easily. In the end, you will probably be more read and people may just come back more often to leave comments because you've simplified it for them.
XML is not like PHP. You don't need anything special on your server because you don't run it. It is much more like HTML. You are creating a file that a news reader can then parse and feed to the end user. It's a good thing.
If you use Blogger you can also set up an RSS Feed using RSSify. There are instructions at their site.
As I learned at SXSW, no one knows for sure where blogs are going. I can all but guarantee that the need for a feed that offers up full posts for users is definitely something you should add now. It's quick and easy – just a template upgrade. Another way to share your words – and your visitors will thank you.
EDITED: If you are using a news reader, be kind to the people whose feeds you are pulling down. This became clear to me after reading Dori's post on the issue. Most readers allow you to edit the number of times you pull a feed from a site. I have mine set for every 3-4 hours for most of the sites I visit, others I have set for 1 hour. Be kind and don't pull their feeds too often!
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Time to switch to a Mac?? (ACK!) LOL!
