(Please Note: Complete instructions for creating an RSS Feed are available below)

When RSS Feeds first came out only the larger news services and web servers invested in them. But, as more and more webmasters and marketers discover their positive effects on page rankings and realize each feed is considered an inbound (often permanent) link, they are being embraced on a much wider scale.

For the end user, their greatest advantage is the instantaneous transmission of information, which is delivered directly to anyone who has the feed in their feed reader. This offers users up-to-the-minute information. But, as a marketing tool, many are just now discovering that, with each new feed set up, another inbound link is created, one that, with promotion, will build a page's rankings and site traffic significantly. Plus, with email becoming increasingly uncertain as a form of communication, newsletters have also discovered this to be an excellent alternative, one that has wide appeal because of its anonymity.

And, too, authors are discovering the advantages of creating RSS feeds for their articles, since it can save them what is an otherwise arduous task of submitting their work to a multitude of submission sites. In fact, with this option, end users and newsletters can directly feed into their favorite authors, bypassing the submission sites altogether. Not good news for the submission sites-- unless THEY pick up the feeds, too. And many are doing just that.

While some hesitate to take on this new form of communication, the fact is, it is easy to create and maintain an RSS Feed and, at the time of this writing, the software is still available for free. In fact the only real barrier to Feeds becoming more wide-spread seems to be the lack of straight-forward instruction in setting them up. This has stopped many from pursuing this new, dynamic type of communication. (For instruction, see below.*)

And, too, some feel that there is less control with this new medium since, unlike email marketing, the recipient's remain anonymous. But with spam filters that block even those that have "opted-in" and regular, private email being erroneously blocked more and more often, the email marketer begins to wonder about the validity of their efforts.

While this does pose a serious question about the future of email marketing, it also provides an answer to those who use email to circulate newsletters or news about relevant site updates. By simply providing an RSS Feed, this information can be obtained.

Most of all, RSS Feeds keep marketers on their toes, since only those sites that are regularly updated, will benefit the most.

*INSTRUCTIONS:
1) PRIOR TO GETTING THE FEED
The first thing to understand is the simple dynamics of an RSS Feed. Whenever the "xml" (required extension for a feed page) file is refreshed, that automatically sends a msg (described below) to all feed readers that are linked to that feed.

A feed requires two separate types of file on the website in order to work: one file for each particular article or item (these are best kept in a directory structure) and one "xml" or 'feed' file, which is what the reader will actually 'read' every it is refreshed (only one of these is required regardless of the number of articles-- unless a website has a great deal of content and wishes to sort it by content). And, too, a reader (at the end-user's site) is required. Additionally, for any who pick up the feed later on, it's a good idea to create a secondary webpage that can hold a series of links to the archived, or previous, files. Often times, this is the ideal page from which to promote the RSS Feed, since it will offer an opportunity to for visitor to sample the type of information they can expect.

In the case of setting up an RSS Feed, having a feed reader is essential in order to check the feed's performance. The validator will trouble-shoot, line by line, when a feed fails to load. A feed reader is available to download for free at www-dot-rssreader-dot-com and a feed validator is available for free at slash-slash-feedvalidator-dot-org.

2) CREATING A CONTENT
Each item must be in its own html file. This is the basic structure of an RSS Feed. Though they work with standard links, they do not recognise links within files (i.e., "#"). The page can be simply or diverse as one chooses, but it must be in html. These are best organized by creating a separate directory within the main site directory.

3) CREATING THE RSS FEED
After at least one page is created, all that remains is to create the xml feed file that will link the reader to the content files.

Before anyone panics, xml is REALLY simple, at least for the purposes of creating a feed. The basics for any xml feed file are:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>

Like html tags, xml tags follow the open/close format (there must be matching tags opening and closing, and they must align). The first two lines, above, are "type of page" statement, which declares them to be an RSS feed, xml version. The question marks allow later versions to read them as well. The last specifies that this page is a channel, or rss feed.

Next, the basic feed must have specifications that identify it. For the sake of this example, let's say it's a newsletter about top novels. These identifications carry similar tags as the items (described below) and, in fact, differ only because they are not enclosed in "item" tags. The chief distinction between the two is that this "identifier" will be viewed as the title of the feed within the reader, while the "item" will be the update to that feed. Within the title tag is the title of the newsletter, then a basic description of the general newsletter content and lastly, the link to the basic website.

<title>Newsletter Title Here</title>
<description>Description of the overall newsletter</description>
<link>http://www.thelinkforthesitehere.com</link>

Additionally, some readers/validators require two or more tags in the indentification area such as:

<language>en-us</language>
<lastBuildDate>Sun, 12 Feb 2006 12:38:45 EST</lastBuildDate>

Next, each article or update will need it's own "item", which is the xml term for the re-direct. Each item can contain a variety of information, but the three basic portions that are required are the title, description and link. Again, this is shown below:

Like all tags, each item must have an item tag at the beginning and end. Other tags that are sometimes required are

<author>Author's Name(authorname@website.com)</author>
<pubDate>Thu, 02 Mar 2006 17:47:00 EST</pubDate>

Please note that the publication date must follow this format exactly and the author section must include an email address to be valid.

So, when the whole page is put together it would look like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>

<title>Newsletter Title Here</title>
<description>Description of the overall newsletter</description>
<link>http://www.thelinkforthesitehere.com</link>
<language>en-us</language>
<lastBuildDate>Sun, 12 Feb 2006 12:38:45 EST</lastBuildDate>

<item>
<title>Title of Item</title>
<description>This description should help grab the interest of
the reader-- this is what they will see when the feed is refreshed</description>
<link>http://basicsitelink.com/locationofactualpage.html</link>
<author>Author's Name(authorname@website.com)</author>
<pubDate>Thu, 02 Mar 2006 17:47:00 EST</pubDate>
</item>

<item>
<title>Title of Item</title>
<description>This description should help grab the interest of the
reader-- this is what they will see when the feed
is refreshed</description>
<link>http://basicsitelink.com/locationofactualpage.html</link>
<author>Author's Name(authorname@website.com)</author>
<pubDate>Thu, 02 Mar 2006 17:47:00 EST</pubDate>
</item>

</channel>
</rss>

There are many other tags that can be used, but this is enough to create a successful rss feed.--mo