Let's manually generate a basic RSS feed. Assume that we want to create a feed about documentation standards and guidelines related to the IT industry. Within this feed, we can combine respective topics such as:

- Writing style

- Concern of correct grammar, punctuation, and spellings

- Sentence pattern

- Guidelines for writing technical documents, white papers, installations sheets, customer service direction manuals, and user guides

- Sample templates

- Tips for conforming to international standards

- Signification of avoiding or containing colloquialism

- Rules for reviewing and editing

- Charges for writing beginners, experienced, and experts

Each topic identified hereinbefore forms an item for the RSS feed. Our first item can be written as follows

Item Title Writing Style

Item Description

The purpose of a document and its audience define its writing style. A formal publication such as a white paper or a management report must have the formal tone. In exchange, a user guide needinesss to be written in a more friendly tone. Learn more about writing style and create result-oriented documents.

Detailed Article URL www ITdocumentation dot com / WritingStyle.html

Author Writing Guru

Email WritingGuru at ITdocumentation dot com

Publishing Date Mon, 27 June 2005, 0900 EST

Gather similar newsletter for all part to be included in the feed. This data forms item info part of the RSS feed.

As for the channel news, define a feed title, Description, and its URL. In our reference these attributes can be:

Feed Title Guidelines for IT Documentation

Feed Construction Brilliant assemblage of writing tips and guidelines for documentation specialists of all experience levels working in the IT field!

Feed URL www dot ITdocumentation dot com

Using the Basic RSS Feed Format

The next course after collecting the feed data is to put in a official format, which the Internet browsers and RSS aggregators can understand and interpret to show it correctly on your PC. The format for this file is as follows:

Insert feed URL

Insert URL of the detailed article for the first item

Insert item broadcasting date

Insert URL of the detailed article for the second item

Insert item spreading date

:

:

Notice that there is only one instance of the channel tag, whereas thousand occurrences of the item tag. The number of item tags should be the same as the number of content you want to contain in your RSS feed.

The tags in red specify the extra data you can combine in an RSS feed. This data is not authoritative, but gives the article more credibility and offers the readers an option of communicating with the author.

Let's now look at inserting item newsletter in the above format. The first item in our case when inserted in the before format will look as follows:

http : // www dot domain dot com

of all experience levels working in the IT field!

http : // www dot domain dot com / WritingStyle.html

user guide essentials to be written in a more friendly tone. Learn more about writing style and create result-oriented documents.

Mon, 27 June 2005, 0900 EST

:

:

Use the before format to add news for other elements and your feed is performed!

Assign the feed a name and save it. Respective RSS resources say that all RSS feeds have the extension .rss or .xml. In reality, however, an RSS feed can have any extension or no file extension. Exceptional RSS feed generating software written in hypertext preprocessor (PHP) use the .php extension for the feeds they compose. It is also for the benefit of keeping things simple and filenames indicating their content that everyone might include .rss or .xml extensions to RSS feeds.

You can syndicate as lots elements as you want though try not to exceed beyond 10 part per feed for usability reasons.

In an RSS feed, items are typically arranged in the reverse chronological order with the present item being the first one and the oldest item at the end, just like news headlines.

Again if you are new to Internet, you can no doubt generate an RSS feed as long as you follow this basic feed format and you have excellence content to publish.

Validating the Feed

Use Feed Validator for an automated code validation of the feed. To do this, upload your RSS file of your web site. In the example hereinabove, the file will be uploaded on http : // www dot ITdocumentation dot com / rss / writingstyle.xml.

Next, go to http : // www dot feedvalidator dot organization. This site shows a text box where you neediness to enter the location of your RSS file, which in our example is http : // www dot ITdocumentation dot

com / rss / writingstyle.xml.

Click the Validate button for code validation to begin and wait for some time to view message informing you about appearance or absence of any errors in the file. If the validator reports any errors, fix them, and recheck the code until all errors are fixed.

Adding Digital Media

Adding digital media enclosing images, audio, and video can transport your audience to a certain realm. With this capability, your messages become as well more personalized and syndicate that human touch to the process.

Apparently actually embracing an audio file, you can contain a defined link in your RSS feed directing the users towards a file which when selected allows the surfers to download it. The subscribers can refer to it repeatedly and when ever they want to.

Moreover, RSS 2.0 supports a new feature named inclusion to enable feed creators enclose digital media content. When an appropriate inclusion reading software comes across such a feed item, it reads the accompanying link and content form to automatically download it and store it on a media device.

Using Software to Build an RSS Feed

Software offers a certain number advantages over manual:

- No requirement of any technical knowledge including that of XML or HTML.

- Spell check to eliminate spelling mistakes from feeds.

- No need to validate your feed.

- Eases the process of updating a feed.

- The option of adding your operation logo thereby giving an identity to the feed.

The next part will be about: "Tips for Creating Dynamic RSS Feeds"

If you can't wait till the next part release, or you can't discover the first 3 parts please download the extensive report from our web site in the downloads area.