I created four RSS news feeds for my site. They are there and they
seem to work. No one can see them because I am not yet promoting them
in any way. I know where they are, so I am subscribed to them to see if
they work.
These feeds are script driven and are fed from a special SQL
table. The table is populated when certain content is added or
deleted.
The RSS feeds are only useful for users of my site. They are of no
interest to people who do not intend to use my site (such as answering
math questions from children).
I heard that having RSS feed is viewed favorably by internet gods such
as google. Is that true?
Regardless, where should I place links to my feeds? Right now I
created a special subdirectory with a single page listing my RSS feeds,
with links to the feed XML files.
Is that good enough? Should I bother with adding RSS tag to the
headers of some of my pages? They do it at craigslist:
http://chicago.craigslist.org/tls/
if you look at headers, you will see an "alternate link" tag
mentioning the rss feed. That could fit into some of the pages on my
site (the pages that present updated information). Should I do it?
any thoughts?
I am an RSS rookie, I learned about RSS yesterday, more or less. I
knew what it was for, before, but that was it.
thanks
i
Full Version: Placing and promoting RSS feeds
Ignoramus31199 <[Email Removed]> wrote:
| QUOTE |
| I created four RSS news feeds for my site. They are there and they seem to work. No one can see them because I am not yet promoting them in any way. I know where they are, so I am subscribed to them to see if they work. These feeds are script driven and are fed from a special SQL table. The table is populated when certain content is added or deleted. The RSS feeds are only useful for users of my site. They are of no interest to people who do not intend to use my site (such as answering math questions from children). I heard that having RSS feed is viewed favorably by internet gods such as google. Is that true? Regardless, where should I place links to my feeds? |
| QUOTE |
| Right now I created a special subdirectory with a single page listing my RSS feeds, with links to the feed XML files. Is that good enough? Should I bother with adding RSS tag to the headers of some of my pages? They do it at craigslist: |
Yes, see http://johnbokma.com/firefox/rss-and-live-bookmarks.html
Firefox users can subscribe very easy this way. IE7 will have RSS support,
so plan ahead :-)
--
John Perl SEO tools: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Experienced (web) developer: http://castleamber.com/
Get a SEO report of your site for just 100 USD:
http://johnbokma.com/websitedesign/seo-expert-help.html
Ignoramus31199 wrote:
| QUOTE |
| I created four RSS news feeds for my site. They are there and they seem to work. No one can see them because I am not yet promoting them in any way. I know where they are, so I am subscribed to them to see if they work. These feeds are script driven and are fed from a special SQL table. The table is populated when certain content is added or deleted. The RSS feeds are only useful for users of my site. They are of no interest to people who do not intend to use my site (such as answering math questions from children). I heard that having RSS feed is viewed favorably by internet gods such as google. Is that true? Regardless, where should I place links to my feeds? Right now I created a special subdirectory with a single page listing my RSS feeds, with links to the feed XML files. Is that good enough? Should I bother with adding RSS tag to the headers of some of my pages? They do it at craigslist: http://chicago.craigslist.org/tls/ if you look at headers, you will see an "alternate link" tag mentioning the rss feed. That could fit into some of the pages on my site (the pages that present updated information). Should I do it? any thoughts? I am an RSS rookie, I learned about RSS yesterday, more or less. I knew what it was for, before, but that was it. thanks |
Hi again,
The first thing to check is whether broken links are contained in the feeds
and whether the feeds are flexible enough to index entire sections of the
site (e.g. by changing LIMIT in the SQL query).
RSS feeds on their own can imply that a site is technologically advanced and
hence worth admiring and sending visitors to. With blogging tools, however,
I am not sure how true this is anymore. Google site maps only bring up
skepticism among members of this group (alt.internet.search-engines) so I
suggest you look at posts from the past week.
Like you, I also created one page which lists all feeds so that a user can
choose the most suitable feed/s (press the orange XML in my front page to
see this page). Moreover, I added the most relevant feeds to the header of
all HTML files in order to benefit from Firefox Live Bookmark and its
subscribers (Internet Explorer 7 will soon catch up on that). If you are
interested, I can send you my Linux scripts which add the links recursively
in command-line mode.
RSS are the way to go as far as I can tell. I slowly accumulate subscribers
and I believe that you must go on the RSS 'wagon' as soon as possible. RSS
support is growing exponentially and once visitors get overloaded in terms
of number of subscriptions, they no longer have an appetite for them. You
must entice them as soon as they are introduced to RSS so hurry and
promote. Largely owing to RSS, John Bokma is able to attract ~3,000
visitors a day.
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com
John Bokma wrote:
| QUOTE |
| Ignoramus31199 <[Email Removed]> wrote: I created four RSS news feeds for my site. They are there and they seem to work. No one can see them because I am not yet promoting them in any way. I know where they are, so I am subscribed to them to see if they work. These feeds are script driven and are fed from a special SQL table. The table is populated when certain content is added or deleted. The RSS feeds are only useful for users of my site. They are of no interest to people who do not intend to use my site (such as answering math questions from children). I heard that having RSS feed is viewed favorably by internet gods such as google. Is that true? Regardless, where should I place links to my feeds? Go to http://johnbokma.com/ and do "view source". Look at the head part. Right now I created a special subdirectory with a single page listing my RSS feeds, with links to the feed XML files. Is that good enough? Should I bother with adding RSS tag to the headers of some of my pages? They do it at craigslist: Yes, see http://johnbokma.com/firefox/rss-and-live-bookmarks.html Firefox users can subscribe very easy this way. IE7 will have RSS support, so plan ahead :-) |
Your message arrived only a minute before mine and it contains almost
identical details to mine. I must confess that it was you who inspired me
to take advantage of live bookmarks. Time will tell if it has made much
impact. I suppose there have been no studies or surveys on this subject
unless I'm just narrow-minded.
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com
| QUOTE |
| if you look at headers, you will see an "alternate link" tag mentioning the rss feed. That could fit into some of the pages on my site (the pages that present updated information). Should I do it? |
Yes. These links are used for rss autodiscovery, the most useful way
to find rss feeds. Many aggregators (eg. www.bloglines.com) use this
for their quick one click subscribe buttons; also that link is what
puts the "Add livebookmark for this page's feed" icon on the right hand
side of the Firefox browser's status bar.
You should also put some subscribe buttons on your page. Take a look
on the right hand colum of www.kbcafe.com/rss/ and also choose a page
that describes what these are all about.
Actually I am also in the process of formulating how I am going to be
advertising my rss feeds. Does anyone have any suggestions as to the
best way to project rss subscribe buttons on one's pages ?
Seth Russell
www.speaktomecatalog.com
Now sporting rss feeds for each catagory
On 12 Jul 2005 16:06:52 GMT, John Bokma <[Email Removed]> wrote:
| QUOTE |
| Ignoramus31199 <[Email Removed]> wrote: I created four RSS news feeds for my site. They are there and they seem to work. No one can see them because I am not yet promoting them in any way. I know where they are, so I am subscribed to them to see if they work. These feeds are script driven and are fed from a special SQL table. The table is populated when certain content is added or deleted. The RSS feeds are only useful for users of my site. They are of no interest to people who do not intend to use my site (such as answering math questions from children). I heard that having RSS feed is viewed favorably by internet gods such as google. Is that true? Regardless, where should I place links to my feeds? Go to http://johnbokma.com/ and do "view source". Look at the head part. |
Thanks. I think that this is the relevant one:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="John Bokma
RSS" href="/index.rss">
I will use something like this on some pages.
| QUOTE |
| Right now I created a special subdirectory with a single page listing my RSS feeds, with links to the feed XML files. Is that good enough? Should I bother with adding RSS tag to the headers of some of my pages? They do it at craigslist: Yes, see http://johnbokma.com/firefox/rss-and-live-bookmarks.html Firefox users can subscribe very easy this way. IE7 will have RSS support, so plan ahead :-) |
Thanks John. This is exciting, to be able to whip up something like
that in a day... I am standing on the shoulders of giants who created
perl modules for RSS...
i
On 12 Jul 2005 09:20:15 -0700, Seth Russell <[Email Removed]> wrote:
| QUOTE |
| if you look at headers, you will see an "alternate link" tag mentioning the rss feed. That could fit into some of the pages on my site (the pages that present updated information). Should I do it? Yes. These links are used for rss autodiscovery, the most useful way to find rss feeds. Many aggregators (eg. www.bloglines.com) use this for their quick one click subscribe buttons; also that link is what puts the "Add livebookmark for this page's feed" icon on the right hand side of the Firefox browser's status bar. |
Did not think of auto discovery. Thanks.
| QUOTE |
| You should also put some subscribe buttons on your page. Take a look on the right hand colum of www.kbcafe.com/rss/ and also choose a page that describes what these are all about. Actually I am also in the process of formulating how I am going to be advertising my rss feeds. Does anyone have any suggestions as to the best way to project rss subscribe buttons on one's pages ? |
Thanks Seth. I would love to hear answers to your question.
i
Since my feeds seem to work, I will publish the page containing them:
http://www.algebra.com/rss/
The most active ones and "new UNsolved problems" and "New Solved
problems". Let me know if you think that I violated some important RSS
rules.
i
http://www.algebra.com/rss/
The most active ones and "new UNsolved problems" and "New Solved
problems". Let me know if you think that I violated some important RSS
rules.
i
Roy Schestowitz <[Email Removed]> wrote:
| QUOTE |
| Your message arrived only a minute before mine and it contains almost identical details to mine. I must confess that it was you who inspired me to take advantage of live bookmarks. |
:-) thanks
They seem to get more and more hot.
| QUOTE |
| Time will tell if it has made much impact. I suppose there have been no studies or surveys on this subject unless I'm just narrow-minded. |
I have several subscribers who visit new pages often, which I like.
Also, the feed is fetched often by Google (every day), and the links in it
are followed.
--
John Perl SEO tools: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Experienced (web) developer: http://castleamber.com/
Get a SEO report of your site for just 100 USD:
http://johnbokma.com/websitedesign/seo-expert-help.html
Ignoramus31199 wrote:
| QUOTE |
| On 12 Jul 2005 09:20:15 -0700, Seth Russell <[Email Removed] wrote: if you look at headers, you will see an "alternate link" tag mentioning the rss feed. That could fit into some of the pages on my site (the pages that present updated information). Should I do it? Yes. These links are used for rss autodiscovery, the most useful way to find rss feeds. Many aggregators (eg. www.bloglines.com) use this for their quick one click subscribe buttons; also that link is what puts the "Add livebookmark for this page's feed" icon on the right hand side of the Firefox browser's status bar. Did not think of auto discovery. Thanks. You should also put some subscribe buttons on your page. Take a look on the right hand colum of www.kbcafe.com/rss/ and also choose a page that describes what these are all about. Actually I am also in the process of formulating how I am going to be advertising my rss feeds. Does anyone have any suggestions as to the best way to project rss subscribe buttons on one's pages ? Thanks Seth. I would love to hear answers to your question. |
Auto-discovery is important indeed so it is worth checking if it functions
compatibly with news readers and feeds-related services. I personally use
RSSOwl as my feeds reader and it has an autodiscovery facility that scans
the site for typical feeds locations (it flags many errors for the
Webmaster to see. Ouch!).
While the issue of vendor-specific subscription and auto-discovery, have a
look at the top of: http://www.schestowitz.com/Bookmarks/local_feeds.htm .
Feel free to copy the layout. I was inspired by Mullenweg and PalmAddicts
when adding these bits.
It is worth setting up a re-direction from http://xml.YOURDOMAIN.SUFFIX to
assign your feeds a more elegant URL.
Last but not least, I think people are most familiar with the amber XML
button so the RSS x.x button might only lead to confusion and hesitation.
It is worth placing such a button in a prominent place in most pages. I
personally only place them in sections where I generate pages on the fly
(Gallery, phpBB, PHP-Nukex2 and WordPressx2). Buttons are more painful to
add and manage (for example modify) otherwise.
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com
Ignoramus31199 wrote:
| QUOTE |
| Since my feeds seem to work, I will publish the page containing them: http://www.algebra.com/rss/ The most active ones and "new UNsolved problems" and "New Solved problems". Let me know if you think that I violated some important RSS rules. i |
Don't check their validity manually. Check using a feeds validator. Some
feeds clients (/readers) will display a warning whenever a feed which gets
displayed is invalid. So, you definitely want to avoid that embarrassment.
http://feedvalidator.org/
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com
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