What is XML? And What is RSS? Why Do I Want It Anyways?
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!
March 16th, 2003 at 10:01 pm
Thanks you for writing this up, you RSS evangelista! :0) I realized in the last few weeks how much time I had been spending (read: wasting) clicking through my entire blogroll twice a day. Now I find that I don’t want to be without my news aggregator running in the background.
*sigh* I’m addicted. *sigh*
Another thought… it might be helpful to link to the websites for the various news aggregators in the post.
March 16th, 2003 at 10:08 pm
Thanks Adam! I didn’t have them all when I wrote the post, but I’ve gone back and added them now!
March 16th, 2003 at 10:30 pm
*smooch!* Thanks Christine for writing this up!!!
March 16th, 2003 at 11:44 pm
I’ve been meaning to write an explanation like this for a while to use over at Name That Blog, but since you’ve done it, I’ll just add a link over to here! Thanks!
March 16th, 2003 at 11:55 pm
I finally wrote the “What is XML? And What is RSS? Why Do I Want It Anyways?” post over at
March 17th, 2003 at 12:00 am
Thank you so much for explaining this. I think I am the last one on the block to use a newsreader. I didn’t know it was as easy as a template to make sure my XML was ok! I’m off to fix my template
March 17th, 2003 at 12:51 am
Thanks for this. I’ve been meaning to add an RSS feed but wasn’t sure what it all meant.
This site was also quite helpful for me: RSS Workshop
I’m also not certain where sites like Popdex and Daypop come in.
March 17th, 2003 at 1:20 am
You said this on Dori’s post…
I love full feeds. But you knew this already. I am going to take Phil’s suggestion here and add my comments in even I think - although on some posts that can be long. Maybe just a comment link and the comment count.
Davezilla does the comment count thing and I finally stopped reading his site. I’d get updated entries from him every time someone added a comment (well, I only checked his site 3x a day, but I’d get nearly every post every time). It drove me nuts.
Phil’s solution is a little better. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for a particular entry and get the comments that way.
My 2 cents.
March 17th, 2003 at 1:28 am
Thanks for the info Lisa! I e-mailed Phil and asked him about his solution - that seems like it would make more sense considering the updates. I had already planned on adding in a “subscribe to this post via RSS” feed soon, so now this is just another reason to do it!
March 17th, 2003 at 1:33 am
Gods, I wish this explanation of XML and RSS was available back when I had to go running to Andy for an explanation myself. If I recall, he had to d…
March 17th, 2003 at 1:48 am
I didn’t even know that NewsCrawler and the such were for that purpose! And I would never have thought that RSS had something to do with it, granted I’ve always wondered. I’m curious about getting that program and checking my favorite blogs with it. I am curious though - my weblog consists of a daily image, about 550 x 400, and text. Should I syndicate my site still ?
March 17th, 2003 at 6:38 am
After reading all about News Feeds and News Readers on various sites over the last few days, I decided to
March 17th, 2003 at 7:16 am
Jag har funderat på alla dessa RSS feeds, xml och allt annat som movable type som standard ‘bygger’ ihop på min sida, vad är det? och varför? Hittade en bra ‘artikel’ på scriptygoddess.
March 17th, 2003 at 10:03 am
A great article, Christine! I just have one nitpick: RSS doesn’t stand for Really Simple Syndication. It can, but that’s not the official word. Voidstar has a FAQ entry on this; the information is also mentioned at Userland and elsewhere. I realize there are a number of sites - including some very respectable ones (ScriptyGoddess included!) that claim RSS is Really Simple Syndication, but officially that’s not the real name.
March 17th, 2003 at 6:41 pm
Anyone know of OpenSource, Linux compatable versions of the NewsCrawler style software? I put Syndirella on my Windows box & love it.. I’d love to have a version for my (main) Linux box…
March 17th, 2003 at 7:08 pm
Dave, a quick search on Google brought back this link - http://www.newsreaders.com/unix/clients.html - and it looks like there are several options for you out there.
March 17th, 2003 at 9:51 pm
And finally a tip:
NewsCrawler is alpha & buggy (huge memory hog), but it has a bunch of good news feeds. You can “subscribe” to the feeds in NewsCrawler & copy & paste the feed links to Syndirella
And yes, I guess I should have googled first…
March 17th, 2003 at 10:04 pm
Still new to RSS? Take a look at this article on the subject from Scripty Goddess, then go get yourself an aggregator.
March 18th, 2003 at 1:10 am
Where around the web is there an explanation of rss that anyone can understand?… Regrettably, every attempt at an explanation that proposes to be completely clear for any neophyte fails to maintain simplicity!
March 18th, 2003 at 5:51 am
Hmm..
actually, the Unix news readers are for NNTP newsgroups. Oh well.. still looking…
March 18th, 2003 at 12:25 pm
Just wanted to recommend a news reader for all of you PC folks out there. I was using FeedReader, but was pointed to NewsGator by a compadre. It’s phenominal. It integrates into MS Outlook, allowing you to create a personal folder for all of your newsfeeds.
A subfolder then gets created for every site you subscribe to, with each post showing up as a message. Also, next to each subfolder, it will always show the number of messages (posts) in each folder.
Essentially, how you read and view posts is the same as how you read and view email. Oh, and you can search through your newsfeeds as well, all using Outlooks normal functionality.
There’s a 14-day trial, after which it costs $29 or so. VERY much worth the price. Nothing I’ve seen comes close.
http://www.newsgator.com/
March 18th, 2003 at 5:03 pm
I’ve just been doing some research, and it seems that RSS does not stand for “Really Simple Syndication”. According to the W3C, it’s “RDF Site Syndication”
RDF stands for “Resource Description Framework”
http://www.w3.org/RDF/
March 18th, 2003 at 6:16 pm
I downloaded NetNewsWire when I was on my mac today at work and I gotta say - it kicks the pants off of any of the ones I’ve downloaded so far for the PC. So far I’m not satisfied with ANYTHING that I’ve used on the PC.
Time to switch to a Mac?? (ACK!) LOL!
March 18th, 2003 at 8:51 pm
Everywhere I’ve ever seen it, it’s been Rich Site Summary. In fact, it wasn’t until now that I’ve seen otherwise.
March 18th, 2003 at 9:04 pm
It’s one of those “it all depends on who you ask” sort of things. The other great debate? Who really created it.
As long as I can read stuff in a news reader, I’m happy and that’s what matters most to me!
March 20th, 2003 at 3:56 pm
I’ve been wanting to do something with RSS feed for quite sometime. But after attending the “Beyond the Blog” Panel
March 27th, 2003 at 1:48 am
Can we republish this in Lockergnome?
March 27th, 2003 at 5:37 am
If you haven’t seen me in a couple of days, it’s because I’ve been playing with stuff like NetNewsWire (now…
March 27th, 2003 at 4:07 pm
I’ve created an RSS 2. template for Movable Type that includes comments in the feed (based on Mark Pilgrim’s template). Instructions are here:
http://crossroads.net/a/archives/2003_03.php#000878
March 27th, 2003 at 4:34 pm
The problem that Phil Ringnulda pointed out to me with including comments is that every time your post updates with a new comment, the person receiving your site in their news reader will be notified as if there is a new post - increasing your bandwidth and making me backtrack (as a reader) to figure out what is different.
It’s a nice feature to have in a way, but if I offer it on my site I will do it as an “extra” feed option, keeping the one without comments available too.
March 28th, 2003 at 1:12 pm
i know, i know…i promise.. people keep asking me to fix my rss feed. i don’t really know what the
March 28th, 2003 at 7:40 pm
I’ve begged everyone to do it before, but here’s a second request. Please … pretty please … update your RSS…
March 29th, 2003 at 6:50 am
FYI - I changed this line in Dive into Mark’s template:
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<$MTEntryBody$>]]></content:encoded>
to this:
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<$MTEntryBody$><MTEntryIfExtended><br>This post has an extended entry.</MTEntryIfExtended>]]></content:encoded>
So that it would automatically let people know when I had more text in the extended entry (without it actually SHOWING the extended entry)
April 2nd, 2003 at 10:14 am
I just wanted to say thanks for all this great information!
April 8th, 2003 at 6:17 pm
Okies, after months and months of wondering what this syndication thing really is and thinking “It’s just too geeky, I’m
April 9th, 2003 at 10:45 pm
This is a great post. One thing I’ve found, however, is that setting feeds to, say, every four hours for the sites I really want to stay in touch with, and once or twice a day for everything else, allows me to both keep up with the feeds and get other work done. I use NewzCrawler, an inexpensive commercial news reader. This software has a feature that sends a small scroller window to the lower right corner of the screen everytime that an update is run. All of the new stories are listed here, and I found it’s too tempting to read them instead of doing useful work
Likewise, I try to be sensitive to the fact that every time I update from someone’s site I’m consuming some of their bandwidth.
What I would really like to know, though, is: where is the Scriptygoddess RSS feed?
April 11th, 2003 at 7:22 am
Update: I found a scraped feed for Scriptygoddess at the BlogMatrix site. I ordinarily don’t like scraped feeds because of unauthorized use of content issues (which would arise if one were to use it on his own website), but for personal use as a news aggregator feed, in the absence of a RSS feed on this site, it seems both a good compromise and a godsend — or maybe a goddess-send ;).
April 11th, 2003 at 9:43 am
Scriptygoddess has a full post feed here.
April 11th, 2003 at 11:37 am
[This software has a feature that sends a small scroller window to the lower right corner of the screen everytime that an update is run. All of the new stories are listed here, and I found it's too tempting to read them instead of doing useful work
]
I also use NewzCrawler - but I turn that feature off when I’m at work - otherwise, I’m constantly clicking on headlines! If you turn off the news balloons, then they will go away.
Good point about not checking feeds too often - we posted about that in another post, but didn’t add it to this one. Seems we need to add the orange XML button to the sidebar too.
April 16th, 2003 at 12:27 am
RSS, RDF, XML, news aggregators, blogs, ack!! It can all get a bit overwhelming and difficult to keep tabs on.
April 18th, 2003 at 12:05 pm
I’ve become a big fan of RSS. I jumped on the bandwagon, I admit it. I read most of my favorite sites through my news program of choice, SharpReader. It’s free, small (uses the .Net framework, making it windows-only) and…
April 25th, 2003 at 9:27 pm
You know, since it’s my special day, I’d like to tell you about my blog reading habits. I read over…
May 15th, 2003 at 2:17 am
OK, here’s the deal with RSS, that little link that says “Syndicate this site” and then you click it and
May 15th, 2003 at 4:17 pm
Apparently, just as I’ve crusaded for people to ping weblogs.com to let folks who blogroll or blo.gs-roll them when updates hit their site, some people have been crusading for RSS/XML feeds of sites with extended entries to allow for rapid…
May 29th, 2003 at 2:48 pm
Get the latest release! MovableType has released version 2.64, with many good things: This is a maintenance release, fixing various…
June 25th, 2003 at 2:50 am
Blogdaddy has written a really interesting post about the ongoing debate over using RSS feeds to read personal blogs. Is…
June 28th, 2003 at 1:05 pm
A few of you wanted to know why news readers and RSS were such a big deal. Instead of rewriting…
August 17th, 2003 at 12:24 pm
Regarding “be kind” and downloading the feeds, Adam Kalsey has posted a great primer on optimizing your rss feed to keep newsreaders from downloading it every 15 minutes or so.
The jist of the post is to eliminate “variable” information that changes even when the post has not changed. For example, comments, comment counts, trackbacks, trackback counts, site date/time info, and the like all cause an entry to look “new” when it is not.
This may not make a difference on a small site but could be huge on a site like Scripty or one of the “A” list sites (or maybe even the Fanblogs.com project someday - hey, I can dream, can’t I?!)
September 14th, 2003 at 7:02 pm
Someone asked me which scripts I used to make all the cool things magically appear here on BB. I found nearly everything at Scriptygoddess –…
September 25th, 2003 at 11:18 am
I\’m not the best to explain, so if you didn\’t understand the last post, check out this post at scriptygoddess if you\’re interesting. It\’s a bit more technical I think, but perhaps explains it better
January 5th, 2004 at 9:52 pm
How do I change the RSS 2.0 index.xml file that is default with Movable Type so that the full entries, not the excerpts, are displayed through a news reader?
January 5th, 2004 at 10:04 pm
Elise - see this post here:
http://www.scriptygoddess.com/archives/004263.php
January 9th, 2004 at 1:49 am
Something to review… Scripty Goddess blog entry Movable Type support forum thread generate_rss_feeds_by_category p….
January 10th, 2004 at 1:44 am
The list of DC metro area gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, etc. blogs and journals has been updated; in the…
January 29th, 2004 at 7:41 pm
She’s written a cogent, thoughful digest walking you through a method of protecting yourself from comment spam and comment flooding.
February 5th, 2004 at 8:21 pm
There’s a bit of linkage and discussion about Dive into Mark’s description of nine, not seven, versions of RSS. I…
December 10th, 2004 at 12:53 am