What is RSS? RSS, an acronym for Rich Site Summary, is a text file following a specific standard in formatting to deliver LIVE web content. RSS is widely utilized by news sites, blogs and other online content publishers to feed content to their human readers through RSS readers or parsers.

How is RSS built, distributed and consumed?

1. Content publisher build the RSS

2. The link to the RSS is made public

3. RSS consumers may subscribe to the feed through online feed readers. Website developers may write their own RSS readers or parsers to display the content into a web page

Below is an example of how RSS is formed.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<rss version="2.0">

<channel>
<title>RSS Example</title>
<description>This is how RSS is formatted</description>
<link>http://freelancersjournal.blogspot.com</link>
<lastBuildDate>Sat, 27 Feb 2010 09:38:15 GMT </lastBuildDate>
<pubDate>Sat, 27 Feb 2010 09:38:15 GMT </pubDate>

<item>
<title>First item in this RSS feed</title>
<description>Description of first item</description>
<link>http://link-to-the-first-item/</link>
<pubDate>Sat, 27 Feb 2010 09:38:15 GMT </pubDate>
</item>

</channel>
</rss>

The above is very basic example, more robust RSS feeds got more tags like image, guid, etc.

Do you need a custom PHP RSS builder or PHP RSS reader?

I am offering my services in both writing a custom PHP RSS builder and writing custom PHP RSS reader. Email me at jnl [dot] pagobo [at] gmail [dot] com