Well. I have nearly finished Hugh’s book and have loved almost everything I read. Right towards the end though Hugh talks about not “getting” what a RSS feed or an XML feed is.
If you are wondering the same then here is my answer to him and explanation of why HE NEEDS ONE. An RSS feed is a feed either of headlines (my choice) a short extract (many peoples choice) or full posts (the choice of those who dont want traffic on their actual website)
What it does is provide the ability for people to follow your blog in a range of different ways other than visiting your site. But why would I want them to do that you ask yourself? Well put the shoe on the other foot and think of yourself of a dedicated Blog reader.
Hugh speaks about people visiting blogs several times a day. Of course I can understand the blog addiction and the desire to see if your favorite top few bloggers have updated lately. But, why stop at just a few? If you occassionally read 20 or 30 or even 100 blogs chances are what you are most interested in is “WHO HAS POSTED SOMETHING NEW?”
Just how long do you plan to spend visiting websites only to find nothing new? You could spend your life doing nothing else and still miss posts that are new, but because of RSS you dont have to. So how do I keep up to date without visiting websites? There are actually several ways of doing this, none of them totally ideal, but they all require that the blog you are interested in has a RSS, Atom or XML feed.
1. If your choice in blogs happens to be the same as someone elses then visit one of the many Blog aggregators springing up on the web. I run a couple myself, and have encouraged a couple of other people to set some others up. Some of them are listed over at the Blogdom of God which if its God blogs you are after remains the most comprehensive aggregator online.
2. Start your own Aggregator over at www.server.com even if you dont intend to publicise it to others. This has the advantage that you can get to choose which blogs to follow yourself rather than relying on someone elses to do so for you. Incidently, http://cavedoni.com/2004/02/rss1 is the best solution currently to make server.com and other aggregators read Atom feeds, and it seems to work so if you run your feed through that if you are on blogspot it makes people including you into aggregators much easiser.
3. Download Firefox and make use of its subscribe feature- kind of like bookmarks with an edge- you find bookmarks which auto-update with the headlines from you favorite sites making seeing who has something new a doddle.
4. Use an offline (or indeed online) News Reader. I need someone else to jump in here with some advice about this because like many people I never really got on with the ones I tried. So tell me- which is your favorite program to read RSS feeds with?
I get as much traffic to my feed as I do my site, so if Hugh wants to more than double his traffic he needs a feed. If you get featured on aggregators as well, then so much the better as people who use the aggregator to stay in touch will see your latest post title and/or a short extract and if interested can click through to your blog to read the rest.
Essentially most importantly RSS/XML feeds allow other websites to syndicate your headlines bringing you more readers. It amazes me that Hugh has been as successful as he has blogging without a feed, or titles for his posts or proper permalinks.
Trust me Hugh, we love what you have to say but even fans like me don’t visit your site every day so sometimes weeks go by without me knowing what you are saying coz I just forgot to pop by. If you had a feed, it would be in the Blogdom of God and I would know what you have posted on a given day and would visit your blog much more than I do now. As would many others.
So Hugh, get yourself a feed right away!
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