Guide to RSS: Common Mistakes Cleared Up

There are several misconceptions floating around about RSS and RSS feeds. Here are a few of the more common mistakes and the truth behind the rumors.

First mistake: if an article is found via RSS feed, it's okay to reproduce its contents. In actuality, it doesn't matter if the content is in a feed or not. It was still created by somebody, and they have the right to dictate its use. While many think RSS feed is freely distributed for syndication purposes, in fact several groups have made strides in developing RSS tags that will clearly indicate if the content is allowed to be syndicated. The Creative Commons extension is a notable member of this group. It isn't supported on a vast portion of the internet yet, so be sure to check the TOS when considering a feed for syndication.

Second mistake: RSS feeds can't be arranged to accept private subscribers. It may be true that RSS doesn't presently have a way to protect files with measures such as passwords, you are able to use any security measures available on the web to isolate the whole feed. The only restrictions you'll encounter security will be those of your own web server. You can also use let the search engines know with a robots.txt file that certain RSS feeds shouldn't be indexed. Nearly all of the current search engines will understand the robots.txt file and follow the protocol.

Third mistake: You need to create a new feed every time you add content similar to the original one. When RSS first came into use this may have been the case, but now it's a better idea to simply expand your existing feed. You don't have to edit any of the feed's already existing parameters-just add the new, expanded parameters to your existing feed.

Fourth mistake: RSS is only available on blogs, and all blogs have these feeds on their site. It's true blogs may have brought the existence of RSS feeds into mainstream society, they're not restricted simply to blogs. They're often used for many other types of content as well; these days, there are likely more RSS feeds available for other, non-blog-related sites than there are for blogs. News articles, podcasts and press releases are among the more popular forms, but certainly not the only ones.

One last note: if you plan on making your own feed, you'll also need to know what a GUID (globally unique identifier) is. An RSS feed generally needs a GUID to let feed readers know when information is updated on it. You'll need a different GUID for each feed.

Now that these misconceptions have been addressed, here's a quick run-down of the way RSS readers work: A feed readers can be launched either from your desktop, or directly from the web. Desktop readers work very much like an email client-when your subscription feeds are updated, the new information (blogs, articles et al) will show up in the reader. Web RSS readers will do the same thing, only the information will show up in your browser rather than your desktop. More and more email applications are also including an application with which to monitor feeds.