RSS

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Meme comic about missing IRC and RSS

RSS is an acronym for a set of XML feed file format variants used for syndicating time-stamped content from web sites like blogs and podcasts, and sometimes a shorthand for feed file formats as a whole including Atom, or even more broadly for the concept of feeds or syndication in general.

RSS as an acronym has been used to mean: RDF or Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication.

Why

The most widespread use of RSS feeds may be to distribute podcasts. The addition of an enclosure element to the specification for RSS 0.92 passed the web address of an audio file to an aggregator. RSS feeds are the channel through which aggregators such as Apple Podcasts receive information about podcasts.

RSS formats are fairly widely used, from news sites to blogs (both self-hosted and services/silos), through e-commerce or classified sites such as Craigslist, though there have been shutdowns in recent years.

See feed file for a list of RSS formats and those often lumped in with RSS.

Many internet users rely on RSS to keep track of websites. Having an RSS feed makes your content more discoverable to your target audience because visitors do not need to manually check your site for new posts.

IndieWeb Examples

Main article: RSS/IndieWeb_examples

IndieWeb Examples publishing RSS on personal websites have been moved to a separate page

Alternatives

Instead of publishing or consuming RSS:

When using such alternatives, you should consider RSS or Atom's ubiquituous nature. Very few readers support Microformats at this point, compared to the thousands of self-hosted RSS feed readers.

Projects

In response to social silos turning off or removing access to their RSS Feeds, some groups have created work-arounds or alternate means of re-enabling RSS feeds. Some of these are listed below:

Silo Examples

Many silos offer RSS feeds for different kinds of content, but the details are not always easy to find. The projects above give access to feeds from some silos.

Silo examples offers specific information for several silos.

Autodiscovery

RSS feeds can be automatically discovered by feed readers if the homepage contains a link to it in its head: 

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="/feed.xml"/>

The title is important if there are multiple feeds linked, e.g. category and comment feeds.

Issues

Problems Consuming RSS

There are many known problems consuming RSS feeds. See feed#Criticism for an extensive listing.

Ambiguous Usage

Use of the term "RSS" in conversation, whether online or in-person, has been ambiguously and interchangeably used to mean:

  • RSS 2.0 in particular (implying all other versions of RSS aren't actually RSS, or are ignorable, or both)
  • RSS feed files of any version
  • RSS feed files of any version AND Atom feed files of any version
  • as a synonym for a feed file of any format

Items appearing as new again

When the GUID for an item in an RSS feed changes, old items that have already been read will appear again as new. With a podcast feed, this means software will try to download episodes you've already listened to again.

gRegor Morrill: I've experienced this several times with podcast feeds. Some of the feeds have 50 episodes in them, so suddenly my podcast software is trying to queue up a lot of episodes I've already heard, and I have to manually remove them.

  • Screenshot of Overcast.fm queueing up previously listened podcast episodes

Praise

Praise for RSS, example uses:

Criticisms

Causes Plumbing Misfocus

Discussion of RSS in the context of indieweb or openweb etc. typically causes everyone involved in such communication to shift their thinking / conversation to be plumbing-centric (since RSS is a format, not a user feature), instead of user-centric.

This is at the opportunity cost of discussing actual user-level features, such the features and levels in IndieMark, and against generally agreed upon IndieWeb principles, in particular:

  • UX and design are more important than protocols and formats.

Solution: refocus the discussion on use-cases.

When someone asks "Why don't you support RSS?" or requests "Please use RSS":

Ask them, "What's the use case you're trying to solve?"

Then document the use-case, and how you're solving it with building blocks on your own website.

And keep the discussion focused on use-cases, rather than plumbing.

See proof of work for some techniques to keep discussion focused on UX, use-cases, and other indieweb principles

Feed File Criticisms

Main article: feed_file#Criticism

RSS variants are all feed files, thus all the feed file criticisms apply as well.

Other Criticisms

Who is going to tell the normal people that RSS is dead?

Wait.

Who is going to explain to normal people what RSS was?

@craigmaloney
when you use RSS
Your meaning's a mess
That's annoying

You really can't tell
Plaintext or html
That's annoying

Description can be
Content or summary
That's annoying

And when I click it
Browsers show gibberish,
That's annoying

So instead use h-feed
An you won't write a screed
Start enjoying

  • 2021-07-10 Beyond RSS: Blaine Cook
    • "RSS was never meaningfully two-way. A lot of the indieweb stuff is effectively about adding that, though."

Shutdowns

Main article: feed#Shutdowns

This section specifically documents shutdowns or dropping of support for RSS feed files on sites, whether indieweb, corporate, and/or silos.

2015


More shutdowns are documented in feed shutdowns.

History

See the Wikipedia article on RSS for a more thorough history.

This section is a stub, please add to it to expand it to include notable events in the development of RSS.

Brainstorming

How many posts should I share?

An RSS feed does not need to show all of the posts that a site has published. This is important for websites that post a significant amount of content, for instance likes, replies, and notes.

Some potential ways to share posts:

  • Have a separate feed for all posts and one feed for website users
  • Share only the most recent 10 or so posts, depending on your needs
    • i.e. share a week of posts
    • Feed readers often cache feeds so you do not need to serve all of your content at once
  • Potentially have a maximum file size that ensures your feed cannot exceed a certain side
    • Technical details pending

If you share the body of your posts in your feed, you may want to opt for a shorter feed. This is because the file size of a feed will increase significantly if the body of each post is long.

See Also

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