Hi.. I am looking for more information on RSS. I have seen "RSS feeds from ...." at http://www.petalingstreet.org
How is it done?

My blog is http://vishnu.bangsar.com.my

You're already doing it, look for this link on your site, towards the bottom in the right column

Syndicate this site (XML)

Thats an RSS feed - it's probably pointing to index.rdf (thats standard), but you can add another one to point to index.xml if you want to (I have) as some people prefer that.

If you look in your templates listing you'll see 3 different types of RSS templates, movable type is already generating the feeds automatically. =) You just have to link to them (which is already done for you, partially.)

RSS files are cool because they let you read your blogs with an News reader, and for some people, that's more convienent because you can see what's been updated easily. A search for News readers will probably find you a wide variety of programs that you could use (I personally recommend FeedDemon.)

Kristine

I've been wondering about RSS since I first started using Movable Type in March. All of the explanations I read were too confusing. I have finally taken the plunge and downloaded a news reader and it's pretty cool.

It's been bothering me that the default link "Syndicate this site" on my MT weblog gave no explanation of what it meant. So, I just wrote up an explanation so that when people click on that link, they get not only the RSS URL, but an explanation of how to use it. The page is here. Since I'm rather new to this, I would appreciate feedback to what I've written. Is it clear? Accurate? Accurate enough?

Thanks in advance.

Try What is XML? What is RSS? And why do I want it anyway? from Scriptygoddess. One of the most important things you can do to assist readers is switch to a "full post feed" as described in that tutorial, allowing people to read your entire post in a news reader rather than just the excerpt. Switching is cut-and-paste easy with the links provided.

Does that help?

Donna

Unfortunately, both of the links to 'cut and paste' templates in the Scriptygoddess post are broken.

Any other examples of RSS2.0 templates out there?

Mine are full text and sitewide, and are in this post:

http://www.movabletype.org/support/index.p...=14&t=32538&hl=

To make it a single blog simple look for the MTGlobalEntries tags and replace them, in their entirety, with MTEntries tags (opening and closing). Use the second example in the post with the templates.

Those are full text and you can view their output by subscribing to http://www.lisajill.net/index.xml

hth

Aside from what's been mentioned above, another nice thing about syndication is it makes it easy to shuffle content around from site to site. I use it to include posts between weblogs.

It also works well for including external content. I use it for weather updates, link updates (via del.icio.us) and to display news from other sources on my sites. There are a great many scripts available that make this dead simple, and Feedsplitter are but two templated worth a look.

Thanks Cedar, how to include external content using RSS was going to be my next question.

That Dive Into Mark link works for me. Here's Lisa's updated link.

Donna

I'd like to ask a question(s) in this thread.

Do I need any other feed than RSS 2.0?
What is the need/use for the Atom feed? (yes I read up about it, all I want is a bottom line).

Cheers!

Bottom line: No. Yes. Maybe.

However, it costs you next to nothing to provide feeds in the all of the common syndication formats. A better question might be, why not?

In a sense, your future proofing your syndicated content and providing others with the ability to parse your content in their chosen flavor. The various formats are a bloody mess and the wars behind the scenes are incredible, with the most vocal proponents of the various flavors taking no prisoners. There are some who believe in a 'scorched earth' method of evangelism and are actively working to subvert alternative formats.

For the casual user, without a vested interest in a particular format, it makes sense to support them all until the dust settles. These are not competing formats but complement one another and give both content providers and users alternatives.

That's for the tip.
P.S. Here's a silly Q:

All my archive pages have RSS feeds right?
How can I have a link feed to a specific archive?

Thanks.

You're probably not producing RSS feeds for all your archive pages; you have to add another archive template to do that. girlie shows how for category archives, and it's generally the same for others. It's even possible for individual archives, which is more reasonable when you include the comments; Phil Ringnalda shows how to make a comments feed, which is not quite the same thing but illustrates how to make comments RSS at least.

As feeds are simply XML templates, you would have them link to a specific archive as you would with any template: MTEntryLink archive_type.

This may be a dumb question, but as far as the default RSS templates listed, there is both 1.0 & 2.0 RSS Index listed. Is 2.0 an upgrade or a stand alone template? Meaning, do I need to have 1.0 if 2.0 is available?

Thanks

They are stand-alone templates. There's a whole messy political history behind the differences in the 0.9x, 1.0, and 2.0 versions, but the main result is any reasonable consumer of RSS feeds has to support all of them. You can fairly painlessly remove either if you wish.