Create Your Own RSS feed

Later on we will upload our RSS file the same way that you upload your regular HTML files to your website. There is no magic to it.

One more thing, when we start creating out RSS file you need to remember to save the file as a plain text document with no formatting. That means no bold, nu bullet points and so on. Personally I always use UltraEdit from IDM Computer Solutions. Check it out. It’s a great little tool.

Creating the RSS file

Now we need to create the actual RSS file. And since we are lazy...ehhh...smart we use a basic template as the one I have listed below. Your first action point is to highlight and copy the text within the "start copy" and "end copy" markers. So go ahead and when you are done, scroll down the page.

----- start copy ----- <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <rss version="0.91"> <channel> <title>Affiliate Juice</title> <link>http://www.affiliatejuice.com</link> <description>Website marketing tips</description> <language>en-us</language> <image> <title>Affiliate Juice</title> <url>http://www.affiliatejuice.com/rss/rss.gif</url> <link>http://www.affiliatejuice.com</link> <width>85</width> <height>40</height> </image> <item> <title>Article Heading</title> <link>http://www affiliatejuice.com</link> <description> Short description of my article. </description> </item> <item> <title>Article 2 Heading</title> <link>http://www affiliatejuice.com</link> <description> Short description of article 2. </description> </item> </channel> </rss> -----end copy-----

Now, open up your text editor and paste the text you copied into a new file. Save the new file as rss.xml or any other name but keep the .xml ending.

If you look at the text in your text editor you will see four chunks of text. The first one start with channel, the second starts with image, the third and fourth both start with item.

Are you with me so far? Great.

Editing the RSS file

I am sure you are grateful to me for providing this tutorial, but I suspect you are more interested in promoting your own RSS feed. So, now we need to edit each of these four chunks of text to fit your purpose.

Editing the channel bit

<channel> <title>Affiliate Juice</title> <link>http://www.affiliatejuice.com</link> <description>Website marketing tips</description> <language>en-us</language>

Editing is easy. Simply replace my title with yours. Replace http://www.affiliatejuice.com with your URL. Replace my description with - you guessed it - your description. And we are done editing the first bit.

One final comment, if your site is not in English you need to edit the language part too. Look up the official term for you language using your favourite search engine and replace the en-us bit.

Editing the image bit

You don't need an image if you don't want one. But if you do use an image some aggregators will use it to give your RSS feed a visual identity.

If you do want an image you need to create one yourself. Use any program you have and keep your image small. In my example the image is 85 pixels wide and 40 pixels deep.

After you have created your image save it to your desktop. We will upload it when we are ready to upload the RSS file..

Now, let's start editing the file.

<image> <title>Affiliate Juice</title> <url>http://www.affiliatejuice.com/rss/rss.gif</url> <link>http://www.affiliatejuice.com</link> <width>85</width> <height>40</height> </image>

Edit all the fields in the same way as before. Replace my title with yours, replace my links with yours and adjust the width and height to reflect the dimensions of the image you have created.

That's it. Easy, is it not.

Editing the item bits

The item tags hold information about the articles or other pages you wish to include in your RSS feed. I have two item bits in my example. If you want more items, just copy and paste the text and edit per below.

<item> <title>Article Heading</title> <link>http://www affiliatejuice.com</link> <description> Short description of my article. </description> </item>

Editing the item tags follows the same pattern as before. Replace title with your title, edit link to point to your article and include a text that describes your article within the description tags.

Now we have created a RSS file. Simple as that. Now save your file and remember to use the .xml extension.

Upload your RSS file

Now it is time to upload your RSS file and the image you created earlier to your web server. And again, there is no magic to it. Just upload the file the same way you would a regular html file. Remember to upload the RSS file and the image to the correct directories. In my example I would upload the RSS file to the root directory. For the image file I would have to create a directory called rss. I would then upload the image to this new rss directory.

The good news is that we are almost done.

Time to validate your RSS file

You do not have to validate your file. But it is quick and simple and it can help you catch a mistake before you start publishing and promoting your RSS feed.

To validate your file go to http://feedvalidator.org and enter the full URL to your RSS file. Click the button and await the reults. If there is a problem. Read this page again. Fix your mistake and validate again. Simple as that.

RSS feed validators come and go. If the URL I list does not work. Just do a search for "RSS feed validator" in your favourite forum or search engine.

And we are done. And yes, the RSS file validates just fine. Check it out here (link opens in a new window).

Next step: How to publish and promote your RSS feed