Blog Feeds Part 3

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November 2nd 2008 FREE SEO Blog

I think we have covered what a blog feed is by this point. So in this installment of Blog Feeds I am going to jump right into it.

Setting up your feed

Let's now take a look at setting up our working blog feed.

Here is the process

This is the process. First we need to make our rss file. Then we will need to upload it to the proper folder on our hosting. Lastly we will put a link to it, so that when someone clicks on the link their browser will ask them to sign up to the feed. The other option is that we setup the link at a feed reader. Actually it is a good idea to do both.

Blog feed rss setup part 1

Lets go ahead and look at our xml file that will turn into our rss file.

Let's make our RSS file?

First, you need to copy the above text into a basic program like notepad or textpad. This coding above will eventually be customized for your exact blog. I am going to go through line by line and explain to you what each line of coding above means and what you need to put in it.

Before I do that I wanted to explain to you the terms. I think that will help you understand this all that much easier.

Main rss declarations

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>

This is the xml declaration. Suffice it to say that you don't need to change it.

<rss version="0.91"></rss>

These are the rss version declaration beginning and ending tags. Once again leave them alone.

RSS Channel declarations

<channel></channel>

Everything between these beginning and ending tags describes your blog feed channel. Once again leave them alone.

<title>This is where you put the title of your blog</title>

The above area is where you input the name of your blog channel

<link>http://www.yourblog.com</link>

This where you put the actual URL of your blog's main page

<description>description of your blog</description>

This is the spot for your blogs description. Keep it short.

<language>en-us</language>

This is your language declaration. For any and all english blogs don't change a thing.

Blog icon declarations

<image></image>

Everything between the <image></image> tags describes your blog icon. The <image> tags are the enclosures or bookends to the blog icon description.

<title>Blog icon title</title>

This is the name of your blog

<url>http://www.yourblog.com/blog-icon.gif</url>

This is the url where your blog icon is physically located

<link>http://www.yourblog.com/index.html</link>

This is where your blog icon will link to

<width>75</width>

This is the width of your blog icon

<height>75</height>

This is the height of your blog icon

Blog entry declarations

<item>

This is the opening tag for an individual blog entry. Leave it alone.

<title>Blog 1</title>

This is where you will put the title of your new blog entry

<link>http://www.yoursite.com/blog1.html</link>

This is where you put in the exact URL of this particular blog entry

<description></description>

Between these two tags is where you will put a more detailed description of this particular blog entry

Description of blog 1
By Your Name, Your Blog, month day, year

This is just my sample information - replace it with your own blog entry description

</item>

This tag closes the blog entry information. Of course don't mess with it.

There you have it!

So we have our xml/rss file written up. Now what do we do. Well, we need to save it out as an rss file first of all. Give the file a simple name like "myblog.rss" or "myfeed.rss". Next we need to upload it to the server. Put it in the same folder as the root page of your blog. Just in case you have a problem saving your file as an rss file try changing its extension to (.rss) once it is uploaded to the server.

Everytime you make a new blog entry page, you need to update your .rss file to reflect the changes. What you will need to do is add a copy of the area starting with the <item> tag and ending with the </item> ending tag. You will obviously need to update the individual area between the tags to be personalized to the new blog entry.

I recommend putting a link of your blog icon on your blogs home page. Link it to your .rss file. Everytime someone clicks on it, they will be prompted to subscribe to your newly made "Blog Feed".

Easy enough,... right! The only other thing I would recommend is syndicating your blog on a site like feedburner.com. If you go there you will be prompted to do just this. Everything will be explained at that site. Thanks for your patience and good luck blogging.