Creating, Publishing, and Managing RSS Feeds

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Creating, Publishing, and Managing RSS Feeds

• Russell ONeill Steve Fleckenstein
• April 12, 2007

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Program

• RSS Overview
• What is RSS?
• How do people consume feeds?
• Creating RSS Feeds
• Basic
• Podcast
• Feed Management
• Publishing
• Statistics

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Program

• RSS Overview
• What is RSS?
• How do people consume feeds?
• Creating RSS Feeds
• Basic
• Podcast
• Feed Management
• Publishing
• Statistics

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What is RSS?

• Really Simple Syndication
• Method for easily distributing content updates to
  subscribers.
• Relies on items being specified in a standard XML
  (plain text) format.

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Email analogy

RSS subscribe to new articles from lots of
different sources, delivered to a spam-free inbox.

Marshall Kirkpatrick-- TechCrunch
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Blogs as Drivers

• RSS has existed since 1999 (Netscape portal).
• blogs drove adoption of RSS feeds and feed
  readers during 2004 election cycle.
• blogging software produces RSS feeds by default
  (usually)
• Increase in blog popularity spawned blog search
  engines and Google exposure.
• Mainstream media jumped in.

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Consuming feeds web-based readers
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Consuming feeds desktop feed readers
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Consuming feeds start pages
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Consuming feeds live bookmarks
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Consuming feeds browser presentation
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Consuming feeds gadgets/widgets
Gadgets are small applications that run on your
desktop. They provide a new way to get the
information you need when you need itlike RSS
feeds.
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Consuming feeds aggregation
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Consuming feeds remixing
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Program

• RSS Overview
• What is RSS?
• How do people consume feeds?
• Creating RSS Feeds
• Basic
• Podcast
• Feed Management
• Publishing
• Statistics

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Creating RSS Feeds

• Simple XML-based format.
• Relies on items being specified in a standard XML
  (plain text) format.

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Creating RSS Feeds
Manual
Automated

• Programmer adds to XML file using text
  editor or stand-alone feed generator
• File published manually upon update

• System adds to XML file programmatically
  when content is updated in database-driven CMS
• File published automatically upon update

updates are made to a single XML file
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Creating RSS Feeds Demo

• RSS feeds
• Podcast feeds

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Creating RSS Feeds Podcasts

• Podcasts are RSS feeds used to distribute updates
  about published media files to subscribers.
• Key element is tag.
• Like regular feeds, podcasts are not client
  specific but coding for iTunes is important

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Creating RSS Feeds Podcast code
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Creating RSS Feeds Podcast in iTunes
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Program

• RSS Overview
• What is RSS?
• How do people consume feeds?
• Creating RSS Feeds
• Basic
• Podcast
• Feed Management
• Publishing
• Statistics

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Feed Publishing

• Basic approach simply post XML file on your site
• Pros simple, maintain control
• Cons more work to manage, stats hard to obtain
• Advanced approach publish feed using FeedBurner
• Pros advance feed management, stats readily
  available
• Cons more work to implement, loss of control

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FeedBurner Services

• Publishing
• Ping service
• MyBrand
• Email subscriptions

• Smart Feeds
• BrowserFriendly
• Statistics

Availability of solid statistical tools is reason
enough to use FeedBurner. More at feedburner.com
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FeedBurner-enabled Feed
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Pings

• Ping notifying aggregators, search engines,
  directories of feed updates
• Manual pings using services like
• pingomatic.com
• pingoat.com
• bloglines.com/ping
• apple.com/itunes/store/podcaststechspecs.html
• Automated pings
• programmatic via CMS
• FeedBurner PingShot

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Roll-your-own Metrics

• Feeds cant be tracked like normal pages/files
  due to aggregation effect-- difficult to
  determine subscriber numbers, feed consumption.
• No good way to analyze user agents.
• Podcast media downloads can be tracked using
  normal log file analysis tools.

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FeedBurner Stats
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Promotion on USA.gov
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Resources/Contacts

• Webcontent.gov
• Reference Guide
• Contacts
• Russell ONeill russell.oneill_at_gsa.gov
• Steve Fleckenstein stevefleck_at_gmail.com