Ask the geek: RSS

A friend of mine, setting up a new blog, asked me a question over email. I rather liked my answer, so I thought I’d share it with you too, gentle reader.

… what is XML/RSS feed? What does ‘syndicate this site’ mean?

Two sides of the same coin. An XML/RSS feed allows people syndicate your site. It’s a file with just the content of your site in it. None of the HTML, just raw content. Mine looks like this. Hit that and view source (cuz the browser tries to be all smart about it). Looks kinda like HTML, but it’s just little bits of information, presented in a way computers can understand.

So. That’s all well and good, but what now?

By supplying that .rdf link to a desktop application, it goes out and collects this file (and usually lots of other .rdf files from lots of other websites) and gives the user a quick rundown of what’s happening on all the sites. NetNewsWire is pretty good for this, but there are others too.

Now the really cool part is that you can take that URL to your website and have that website’s current headlines appear inside your own website. If you want to run the newest headlines from Reuters, for example, you simply include the Reuters URL into your blogging program. How this is done varies from blogger-program to blogger-program, but the basic idea is the same thing. Try it with mine if you like.

Hope this clears things up a bit.