How to use RSS correctly

Written by Allan Burns


There is no doubt in my mind that RSS is here to stay. RSS is a simple and effective means of communicating your message to your visitors without invading their privacy or spamming them. It has many benefits over email and there have been many reports ofrepparttar death of email due torepparttar 139286 continual rise of mass spamming and non delivery due to spam filters. By no means is email dead, it is stillrepparttar 139287 best personal communication method besides picking uprepparttar 139288 phone. It's just that RSS does some things much better than email.

I have been informing and educating webmasters about RSS since I first discoveredrepparttar 139289 potential of this medium. A whole industry has now grown up around RSS and now there are directories that specialise in listing RSS feeds and tools to help you create RSS feeds. Everyone seems to be jumping onrepparttar 139290 bandwagon and everybody seems to have their own opinions about how RSS should be used. Even Google has joined in to offer adsense in RSS feeds.

The problem I see is that improper use of RSS may well send RSSrepparttar 139291 way of email. Currently it seems that if you publish an RSS feedrepparttar 139292 contents of that feed seem to be considered public domain. The reasons for this is, I believe, to do withrepparttar 139293 way content is packaged in RSS, this makesrepparttar 139294 content easy to syndicate. It is not that difficult to create a script or desktop application to strip outrepparttar 139295 content of RSS feeds and publish them on someone else's website. There is even a few applications being sold for just this purpose.



Using Feedburner to add statistics to your RSS feed

Written by Allan Burns


Out of many ofrepparttar free RSS and blogging services that I have tried one ofrepparttar 139285 most useful has been Feedburner. Feedburner allows you to publish your RSS feed and provides circulation statistics about your RSS feed. It also allows you to make your feed more friendly by using Feedburners Smartfeed system and can also make your feed browser friendly.

The most useful service provided by Feedburner are it's circulation statistics. These statistics are not only useful for yourself to see how popular your feed is but also to provide circulation statistics to potential advertisers. Feedburner can tell you which RSS readers are being used to read your feed, how many readers you have and which posts readers are clicking through back to your website.

Feedburners Smartfeed system can supplyrepparttar 139286 most valid feed by detecting which RSS readerrepparttar 139287 user is using. This irons out any potential compatibility problems there may be between your feed andrepparttar 139288 readers feed reading software. If your visitor click on your RSS feed subscription link Feedburner will provide your visitor with a web friendly version ofrepparttar 139289 feed rather than an unformatted XML file. This is great for educatingrepparttar 139290 reader about RSS feeds.

To use Feedburners services first you need to go to Feedburner and enter your feed link. Your feed link isrepparttar 139291 address you give your readers to add your feed to their feed readers. Take a look at my RSS sign up page at Newsniche to get a better idea of how this works.

Once you have your feed address enter it into text box onrepparttar 139292 Feedburner page. Clicking on ok will bring up a page with all ofrepparttar 139293 options for your feed, you will need to decide for yourself which services you need. Atrepparttar 139294 bottom ofrepparttar 139295 page will be your new feed address which you will now offer to your readers instead of your original feed address. Followrepparttar 139296 rest ofrepparttar 139297 instructions to completerepparttar 139298 process and then you will have an improved feed with statistics.

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