RSS for dummies
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OK…I know practically nothing about RSS and don’t use it. But I do know that it’s something other people want, because it apparently helps them keep up with my blog more easily than remembering to check back all the time. So naturally, I want it to be available to them. One of the first comments I got when announcing my switch to this new site was, “OK, but where’s your feed?”
When I first started this blog, there was an icon in the sidebar that said something like “Subscribe to this blog” or “Feed for this blog” or something. But as soon as I started putting widgets into the sidebar, that disappeared and I have not figured out how to get it back. I added the meta widget but I don’t know whether this provides what people need or not. So I guess my questions are:
1) What exactly do I need to do so people can get the feed to my blog? and, bonus question:
2) Does anyone know of a site that will explain what RSS is and does very slowly and simply to me, as if I were a four-year-old? (I don’t expect anyone here to take the time to do that … just if you know of somewhere to direct me so I won’t feel so lost about it!)
Thanks for any help anyone can give.
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i’m not very techie myself, but i can explain rss in rather simpler but non-exhaustive way. your rss feed is the url your readers need so that they can subscribe to your feed. your feed is basically what you churn out as your latest posts in your blog. so when your readers subscribe to your feed from a feedreader site like bloglines or feedburner, they don’t have to visit your blog every time they want to read it, they get your latest posts through their feedreader.
your rss feed url is http://yourusername.wordpress.com/feed
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the faq is an excellent place to start if you have any blogging questions, especially if you’ve just only begun blogging.
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A good explanation of RSS can be found on Wikipedia at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS[removed reply as it doesn’t apply and would confuse folks – drmike]
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Doesn’t work. The URL be5 gives is for a regular wordpress install without the pretty permalinks and mod_rewrite working. We have both those features here.
Our feeds would be like the following:
http://example.com/feed/
http://example.com/feed/rss/
http://example.com/feed/rss2/
http://example.com/feed/rdf/
http://example.com/feed/atom/The first one is really the only one that you would need for the most part.
Hope this helps,
-drmike -
Strange…I thought for sure I had posted a reply to this thread but it’s not there … must have skipped a step. Anyway, thanks for the replies, they do help a bit (although the wiki link is WAY over my head). So … what I need to know is, now that I have the meta tag on my sidebar, does that give people who use feeds what they need in order to access the feed for my blog? Or is there something else that I need to put in there?
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Hmm, nothing in the deleted queue.
The meta links are fine. In fact most RSS readers should be able to pick up on the RSS URLs automatically. There’s a link in your HTML output. If you’re using IE, in your browser go View -> Source and look about a dozen lines down for teh RSS link.
Hope this helps,
-drmike
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