Sunday, August 3, 2008

Adding RSS feed to your blog.


First of all . This is RSS feed logo. It can come in various colours, but bascially if you see this on a website then it has RSS feed. Sometimes it will just have a text link saying something like. Oh, I dunno. RSS feed.

The meaning of RSS. Rich Site Summary. easier to remember is Really Simple Summary.
There is more information about what RSS is and does at http://www.whatisrss.com/
If that's a bit technical there's a simpler explanation at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format)

An example of a webpage with RSS feed. http://www.aussiecooking.com.au/cook/Australian-Recipe-Sites
If you go to this website and scroll down to the bottom you will see a RSS feed link. Click on that link.

As you will see by the options, RSS feeds can be selected either by category updates or site-wide feeds. Let's choose site wide feeds. This particular RSS feed has only one option - Google reader. You dont actually have to subscribe to google reader (it's free though) to get the RSS feed link. If you click on that link it will take you to a google reader page. Copy the link that appears at the top of the web page that opens for google reader. In this case the RSS feed link is
http://www.taste.com.au/feeds/latest+recipes.xml

Once you've copied that link then go back to your blog. Click on the Customise link at the top right hand corner.
Click on add page element.
In the right hand column about 2/3 way down there is a page element called "Feeds".
Click on that and add the URL from the RSS feed you copied earlier and save.
And voila. There is the RSS feed in your blog. You can add multiple RSS feeds.
Mine is top right hand corner of this blog.

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