Blogging tip, RSS anyone?
RSS feeds are a simple way of allowing people to be notified of new content on your website. Using news aggregators like Newsgator and Bloglines, browsers with built in feed capability, or add-ons like Firefox’s Sage, your visitors can be notified whenever you post new content. Most blogging software like Blogger and WordPress creates these feeds for you. All you need to do is make sure that your feeds are visible and functioning. Are your feeds working?
Try subscribing, can you read them? If you’re having a problem subscribing, check your site source code. There should be a little bit of code in your head section that allows browsers and feed readers to identify your feed. It probably looks something like this:
<link rel=”alternate” type=”text/xml” title=”Atom 0.3″ href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/HighDesertWanderer” />
In both Firefox and IE7 you should also be able to identify a site with an RSS feed by the small icon 
displayed in the URL bar. If you don’t see that icon, your site might not be allowing your viewers to see your RSS feeds.
If your RSS feed is visible, but not readable, your problem likely originated with your blogging software. Try writing another post. It sounds like a stupid solution, but this will prompt the creation of a new RSS item and might also clean up any errors in the existing feed. If this doesn’t work, check your last 10-15 posts. Did you use any odd HTML, or special characters? Since your feed is created from your blog posts, removing any garbled code from your posts might fix your RSS. If the problem persists for more than 10-15 posts, consulting an expert would likely be your next option.
Verifying that your RSS feeds are working properly and visible to your readers is important. The people who subscribe to your site are people who have come to your site before, and want to visit again. You just need to let them know when!
Can you recomend an easy to use and install RSS reader? I’ve been meaning to set one up, but as usual have procrastinated like heck!
Comment by jan — November 13, 2006 @ 10:10 pm
I use the Sage plugin for Firefox that I linked to in the post. I like that a lot. It’s benefit for me is that when I have a few minutes, it’s easy to see what’s new. I hit the “check feeds” button, and it seeks out new posts on all of my subscriptions.
I’ve used Thunderbird to manage subscriptions as well, but I was already using Thunderbird for my e-mail. It’s more of a traditional subscription process. Each subscribed site is checked for new posts at regular pre-chosen intervals. You are notified when something is new, just like e-mail. Since my schedule tends to be a little erratic the regular interval updates tend to be annoying interruptions. For a less impatient person it would probably work well. They could choose a reasonable length interval and use it. It’s also conveniently a very nice e-mail program.
Comment by HDW — November 13, 2006 @ 11:11 pm
Cool. Thanks! I’ll check out Sage since I’m using Firefox for the moment.
Comment by jan — November 13, 2006 @ 11:30 pm
I used to use the feed reader on my protopage (dot com) to read most of the blogs I enjoy, but I got lazy with adding new blogs and found that it wasn’t all that I wanted it to be. Perhaps I’ll nose around in some of the other places you mentioned….
Comment by Bre — November 13, 2006 @ 11:30 pm
Well that was pretty easy. Just for that, I added your feed first… :)
Comment by jan — November 14, 2006 @ 12:01 am
Problem with RSS Feed in WordPress.
I have a subdomain that I installed wordpress for another blog site, but the subdomain site’s rss feed points to my parent site.
Can anyone come up with any suggestions?
Comment by Joaquin — November 29, 2006 @ 6:03 am
Honest problem or spam? It looks like spam to me, but I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. I removed your URL since it appeared commercial, but if you have an honest problem I’d be willing to take a quick look.
Comment by HDW — November 29, 2006 @ 9:10 am