Trial, Failure, and an RSS Feed

After a class period of trying to create an RSS feed, I was no closer than when I started. The instructions I found online were confusing, the methods unclear, and the coding impossible.

However, from the comfort of my own couch, the lightbulb finally came on. Now, after reevaluating the situation, I think I have something resembling the coveted RSS Feed.

The process was confusing to understand at first, beginning with the assignment itself: "create an RSS feed." At first, I took this to mean we were supposed to "host" an RSS feed on one of our web pages. I scoured the web for ways to show other sites' RSS feeds on my own, but I couldn't fathom how. Every example entailed downloading an RSS reader, which didn't seem like something Kodi would have expected us to do. Distraught and astray, I went back to the drawing board.

Perhaps Kodi wanted us to publish and syndicate our own RSS feed with our own headlines. This seemed like a more difficult task, but we were eager for a new direction to try (it was, in fact, the correct assignment.) We searched the web for instructions about how to create our own RSS feeds, and found copious amounts of what looked like HTML code. We tried to copy some examples and save them to HTML files in Dreamweaver, but that didn't seem to yield the correct results. Class was over, and my brain was fried.

Now, from the couch, it's clear that we were almost there.

Copying some example code should have worked, had we understood what format the code was in. Although it looked like simple HTML tags, the markup was actually XML and -- the kicker -- had to be saved in .xml format! Once you've saved your RSS file as an XML extension -- say, "feed.xml" -- upload it to the web server where your site is located. Then all you need to do is put a link to your RSS feed (XML page) on your Web site (HTML page, presumably). The symbol for an RSS feed is an orange icon like the one shown on the previously-linked Wikipedia page.

When somebody clicks the link to your XML RSS feed on your HTML Web page, they will have the option to have your RSS feed added to their homepage -- likely Google, Yahoo, MySpace, or a separate RSS-reading program. Congratulations, you're syndicated!

To update your feed, simply edit the links in the XML file and they will appear on your reader's page as soon as it refreshes (the next time it requests the XML file from the server).

Phew.