The University of Mississippi
Research and Sponsored Programs
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” It’s a very easy to use, technically simple standard generally used to create a “feed” of information about a website.
A good way to understand what RSS is and what it can do for you and your organization is simply seeing what other groups are already doing with it. Surfing the internet for a few minutes will likely turn up a few sites with RSS feeds:
CNN has one
Mississippi State has one
Yahoo has one
To get the most out of feeds like these, you’ll need an “aggregator.” With an RSS aggregator, you can manage and organize many different feeds. GreatNews is a very nice aggregator for Windows. It’s spyware free, powerful and costs nothing. Download GreatNews from curiostudio.com
Here’s a screenshot of GreatNews in action (click for fullsize view):
One of the best things about RSS is how easy it is to implement. Basically, all you need to do is create a properly formatted text file and put it wherever you put the files for your website. The following instructions will show you how to create that file using a tool created by the ORSP for use by the Ole Miss community. When you open the ORSP RSS feed creator, you should see a page that looks like this
As you can see, the page includes some easy to follow instructions. Note that the “Feed Image” field is optional. Our example will not include a feed image. If you choose to include one in your feed, keep in mind that these images should be small, 128x128 or smaller.
In the following example, the fictional UM organization “Office of Offices” is filling in the first part of the form.
This first section describes the general attributes of your feed: the feed title, a link to your organization’s home page and a brief description of what information the feed will provide. You’ll notice that the form is already generating your file for you.
Once the feed has been created, it’s time to add articles. Click on the blue “+” sign to add one.
Notice that once you’ve entered all your information, the RSS code has been updated to include what you’ve entered. It’s included between the <article> tags. Every time you add a new item to your feed, you’ll just be adding another <article> section.
When you finish adding articles, the RSS code will be finished and ready for publishing. Now you must create the RSS file. Copy the text in the “RSS Code” section of the page and paste it into a text editor like Notepad.
Save the file. Make sure you choose “All Files” in the “Save as type” field so you’ll be able to add the appropriate extension, “rss”, to your new file.
Upload your new rss file to your website and let everyone know that you now have an RSS feed. To make finding your feed even easier for your customers, you can embed a link to it in your web pages. For example, to embed the example feed into the Office of Offices’ home page, the webmaster would add the following line to the “head” section of the website's news page:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://www.olemiss.edu/office/office_news.rss">