Blog your way up – part two
| Blog your way up – part two | |
18 June 2004
To launch our global publishing, we need, as previously discussed, to insert a RSS (Really Simple Syndication) file into our site code. Below is an example that can be customised to suit most would-be blog syndicators by changing the title, link and description and the tags that appear in italics. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?> The title, link and description are as previously discussed; the item tags relate to news items, further articles would follow the same format. Once you’ve created your RSS text file (any text editor will do) there are a few more steps still to go. 1. Save the text file as .rss (e.g. ebusinessblog.rss) and upload it to the root directory of your website. 2. Validate your RSS feed by passing it through RSS Validator. This will confirm if the file passes muster. 3. Place the "valid RSS" logo on your site (available from RSS Validator ) and create a hyperlink to the RSS text file (e.g. http://www.yourdomain.com/ebusinessblog.rss ) from your site page/s. Word the link along the lines of: Webmasters! Feature our E-business News Blog headlines on your site. RSS Feed For This Page. 4. Submit your feed to content aggregators. Some suggestions appear below 5. Update your feed regularly by adding new items to the .rss file and ensuring each item has its own link on your web site. 6. About six news items will prevent your channel looking stale. Replace older items as you go along. And that’s about it, really. Obviously this is very much a Quick Start guide. Further information and advice can be obtained from the following: Technology at Harvard Law You need only submit your newsfeed once to content aggregators; thereafter your newsfeed is tracked automatically as you update it. RSSTop55 contains a comprehensive list of submission links It’s also useful to see how your newsfeed – and those of others – displays. Try out these free downloads: | |