Stumped with RSS

  • Hi,

    First time posting here. I’m totally stumped with RSS. I’ve never used it before and don’t know what it should look like on the other end. How do people use it?

    I’ve found my rss link but don’t know which one to use. I’ve tried a number of plugins and nothing has helped. How do I set it up so people can “tap” into my feed? What do I supply —?posts, categories? Can someone please explain all of this to me? I also don’t know if I need to add code to my theme.

    Thanks!!

    Eric

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
  • Andrew Nevins

    (@anevins)

    WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support

    How do people use it?

    It’s read by computers as a means to getting data from your site. Then people decide on how to display that data as information.

    Andrew Nevins

    (@anevins)

    WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support

    How do I set it up so people can “tap” into my feed?

    It should already be set up by WordPress https://codex.www.ads-software.com/WordPress_Feeds#Finding_Your_Feed_URL

    Thread Starter motionographer

    (@motionographer)

    Thank you, both. When I have the URL, what do I do with it? I’ve seen rss icons on blogs that display a clean list of all the posts. Should I be using a plugin that organizes my content better or gives users a choice of what to syndicate?

    Thanks

    Andrew Nevins

    (@anevins)

    WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support

    I’ve seen rss icons on blogs that display a clean list of all the posts

    Could you post a link to a screenshot demonstrating this?

    Thread Starter motionographer

    (@motionographer)

    Sure. At this site:

    https://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/03/30/change-your-beliefs-change-your-world/

    They have an rss feed on the right. Here’s the link to their rss:
    https://feeds.feedburner.com/Collective-evolution

    It’s through feedburner which I gather is a plugin, but the plugins they currently have available, or at least the ones I found do no such thing. I guess this what users want so they can syndicate certain posts on the page…

    RSS feeds are intended for use in a newsreader application. I use Feedly and The Old Reader as my newsreaders, but there are many others.

    If you do not have any newsreader configured in your web browser, then your web browser itself might display the feed. I think this is what you describe as “a clean list of all the posts”.

    WordPress provides feeds automatically, but it does not provide any way to track who is using your feeds. Feedburner provides some statistics on the use of your feed, and other enhacements. However, Feedburner’s statistics are not very reliable. For example, a newsreader like Feedly might download the feed just once and display the results to many users. Feedburner would record just one download.

    Thread Starter motionographer

    (@motionographer)

    Got it. It’s making more sense now, thank you. One more question, if I have an rss icon on my site do I just make a link to my feed? If so, which one?

    Thanks

    If you only want to have one RSS icon, then the link should probably be to the site’s main feed, like: https://www.example.com/feed/

    WordPress provides feeds for comments, categories, search results, and probably others. It’s a lot of work to provide all the right icons depending on what the user is looking at. Web browsers should normally list all the feeds on each page without the need for any icons in the page itself. For example, Firefox lists them in the main menu under Bookmarks – Subscribe to This Page…

    Thread Starter motionographer

    (@motionographer)

    Thank you!

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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