What Is The Connection Between Web Feeds And Weblogs?

People new to RSS/ Atom web feeds sometimes confuse them with being synonymous to weblogs. For the record, web feeds are simply a method of syndication text, audio, or video content on the internet. Weblogs just happen to be an example application that uses web feeds. So blogs are not the only way to use web feeds, just a great example of how to use them.

All of the more popular blogging (weblogging) platforms, including WordPress, Drupal, and Texpattern automatically an RSS web feed. Blogger.com generates an Atom-based feed. Unfortunately, there’s no one common web feed format, and blogging platforms don’t necessarily use the same version of a format. For example, Textpattern currently supports RSS 0.92. Wordpress supports RSS 2.0.

The good news is that most good web feed readers and feed aggregators support multiple feed formats, including the older RDF (Resource Description Format). What’s more, Feedburner has an option that when you “burn” your feed with them, you can make it compatible for any format. (More about Feedburner in a later posting.)

If you’d like to learn more about RSS:

1. RSS Diary - by RSS/web feeds evangelist and guru Rok Hrastnik, author of several highly-acclaimed position papers about RSS, some available for free.
2. RSS Cases - written by me. My journal both overlaps and supplements Rok’s. I occasionally offer case studies into the use of RSS at three levels: end-user, marketing, development.

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to drop off a comment.

(c) Copyright 2006-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://www.chameleonintegration.com/

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