Create (write) your own RSS feed file

So I’ve placed a few RSS feeds into the right column on this blog. One of these being for guest posts I write. So people visiting the blog can easily see my latest posts elsewhere.

Now I was going to use yahoo pipes to create the rss feed, but their site wasn’t working when I visited, so I’ve taken a temporary route until I revisit their site. So expect a post at a later date with my yahoo pipes solution or my own coded “less hassle involved” solution.

So here is what I originally wanted:

To create a RSS feed from a file on my server, add some star dust (php code on my site) , say a few magic words (yahoo pipes) and turn this into a RSS feed.

What I actually did:

Wrote the RSS file whilst drinking a mug of tea and chucked it into Google Feedburner. It took five minutes and then I went and crashed on the couch to read.

Benefits of Google Feedburner?

Google feedburner takes a RSS feed and then can present people with a RSS feed more suitable to their requirements. Plus you can view stats, turning email subscription options on, add adsense… okay I didn’t want any of that.

So currently I need to write a new entry in my own rss file for google feedburner to automatically add to it’s own rss file. At a later date when I do look at Yahoo Pipes or code together my own solution, I can just update what Google Feedburner uses and anyone subscribed won’t notice the change or have to fiddle about with a new RSS feed.

Create your own rss file:

1. Using a text editor like notepad++ create a file called feeds.rss
2. Paste the following:
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″ ?>
<rss version=”2.0″>

<channel>
<title>Title of your feed</title>
<description>Description of your feed</description>
<link>http://www.yourwebsite.com</link>

<item>
<title>Title of the Blog post</title>
<description>A snippet of the contents of the blog post. A few sentences perhaps.</description>
<link>Link to the blog post.</link>
<pubDate>Sun, 22 May 2010</pubDate>
</item>

</channel>
</rss>

3. Change the contents to your requirements and then every time you need to add a new RSS entry create a new <item></item> section above the last.

4. Then optionally add this rss file to Google Feedburner or Yahoo Pipes for further formatting etc if required.

Takes a 1-2 minutes to update your own rss file from now on. Not ideal, but okay for a stop gap.

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