Catholic RSS Feeds - Syndicating the Content of a Catholic Web Site

Introduction

Syndicating the content of one's web site is part of basic web site development. Although not as popular anymore as the web 2.0 technology of Twitter and Facebook, using rss feeds to syndicate a small Catholic web site is still basic and easy to understand through a learn-by-example method. You do not need to learn the meaning of all elements required in the rss feed code. Just following the framework given below (for a basic and standard RSS Feed) is all that is needed to get your Catholic web site syndicated in many RSS Feed Readers such as My MSN, My Yahoo, and Google Reader!

Example code of an rss feed .xml file

Given here is an example code presently accepted as the standard for an rss feed in Feedvalidator.org. The standard number of items that can be placed in a feed are 15 items.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
 <channel>
  <title>Your Catholic rss feed Title goes here....</title>
  <link>http://www.yourdomain.net/</link>
  <image>
   <title>Your Catholic image title goes here....</title>
   <url>http://www.yourdomain.net/images/yourimage.jpg</url>
   <link>http://www.yourdomain.net/</link>
   <width>88</width>
   <height>31</height>
  </image>
  <description>The description of your Catholic rss feed goes here....</description>
  <language>en-us</language>
<atom:link href="http://www.yourdomain.net/rss.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
  <item>
   <title>The title of the first item in your Catholic rss feed goes here....</title>
   <link>http://www.yourdomain.net/subdir/yourfilename.html</link>
   <description>The description of your first item goes here....Note: you can create as many as 15 items in this rss feed format. Studies discovered that having a full description on each item of a feed is very beneficial and gives a positive experience to subscribers...</description>
   <guid>http://www.yourdomain.net/subdir/yourfilename.html</guid>
   <pubDate>Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
  </item>
</channel>
</rss>

With this standard rss feed code as your guide to creating your own Catholic rss feed, you can already start syndicating all the content you will be producing for your Catholic web site. To complete the rss feed, save the whole file in .xml format (through NotePad or any text editor).

As of now, what is given above are the standards which the Web requires for a basic rss feed. The example code given above will be updated in case there are new standards set by the Web for creating and publishing a rss feed. To check if your rss feed meets the current standard, you can check it through the site, Feedvalidator.org.

Content that you can publish in your rss feed

Aside from the articles you write in your small Catholic web site, you can also publish video files and audio files from other web sites that are related to the Catholic faith and to web site development in general. This can make your rss feed rich with multimedia content. It can also help your subscribers obtain a fresh and more comprehensive picture of the Church and the Internet.

Some pointers for updating your rss feed

• for the item title, keep the character minimum the same as the minimum for the title of a HTML web page (maximum of 60 characters)
• for the item description, give a full description of the content of the item so that the reader gets the essential information in one reading; if he wants to learn more, then he can open the item for more details
• for the item pubDate, we need to find out the time zone difference so that the rss feed will be validated and delivered at the right time for its subscribers
• the more regularly you update your rss feed, the better it would be for all your subscribers
• once you have updated your feed, always validate it through Feedvalidator.org; in case something is wrong in the feed, we can then make the necessary adjustments

Placing RSS Feed Subscription Buttons in your Catholic Web Site Template

There are many RSS Feed Aggregators that give the coding to their RSS Feed Subscription buttons. And there are also many major web sites, such as Yahoo! and MSN, that enable the Internet reader to subscribe to RSS Feeds through their web site's My MSN page and My Yahoo! page.

Placing an orange XML button

To place an orange XML button on your site, just use this code,

<a title="RSS 2.0"
href="http://www.yoursite.com/your-rss-filename.xml">
<span style="border:1px solid;border-color:#FC9 #630
#330 #F96;padding:0 3px;font:bold 10px
verdana,sans-serif;color:#FFF;background:#F60;
text-decoration:none;margin:0;"> XML</span></a>

Placing an Add to My Yahoo RSS button

To place a Yahoo button, just use this code,

<a href="http://add.my.yahoo.com/content?url=
http%3A//www.yoursite.com/your-rss-filename.xml">
<img src="http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/us/my/
addtomyyahoo4.gif" width="91" height="17"
border="0" align=middle alt="Add to My Yahoo!"></a>

Placing a Subscribe with Bloglines RSS button

To place a Bloglines button, just use this code,

<a href="http://www.bloglines.com/sub/ http://www.yoursite.com/your-rss-filename.xml">
<img src="http://www.bloglines.com/images/
sub_modern5.gif" border="0" alt="Subscribe
with Bloglines" /></a>

Note

Don't forget to change change the "www.yoursite.com" with the domain name of your Catholic web site. And change the "your-rss-filename.xml" with your own filename for your Catholic rss feed. Remember to save the file as a .xml file. To do this in NotePad, when saving, select the "all files" option in the "save as type" function.

When you finally accomplish all of the coding, the buttons will appear below:

XML





Clicking the orange button above will let you view the Site Feed, while the other buttons will subscribe you to the Feed.

The new way for promoting and syndicating your content

What is given above is the standard way for a small Catholic web site developer to syndicate his site. The new way is by "burning" a feed with Feedburner.com. When you burn your Catholic rss feed with Feedburner.com, the site will provide you with a landing page, where there are already many rss subscriber buttons to choose from. All you need to do is burn your Catholic rss feed. "Burning" involves giving the URL of your feed to FeedBurner and they give you a new URL that will provide a landing page for subscribers to choose among a number of rss feed readers and aggregators.

Dennis Emmanuel Cabrera
Web Site Administrator

Published Articles Directory

Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5