what is rss???

rss is a system where you can view content from websites in a centralized source, rather than having to view each site individually.

why

tl;dr: nice to have everything in one spot

long answer:

people post stuff online. to find out if someone's posted new content, you have to check. however, because there are many places where people upload content, it means that there's many places you have to check.

rss allows you to have one place to see updates.

it also eliminates some of the annoyances of site algorhithms.

how does it work?

websites (or "the place that's making the content") generates something called an rss feed, a file that stores "posts" on a website. posts is in quotes because this can technically be anything, but usually it refers to (mostly) blog posts and (sometimes) website updates. depends on how what's actually put in the feed by the site owners.

(web master??)

an rss reader allows you to view rss feeds in a nice an organized way. you give it a list of feeds you would like to keep track of (giving it links to the feeds directly), and then it will process the links every so often to create your own... feed.

the words are sorta confusing (a lot of "feeds"), but i suppose you can think of it as your own personal feed being a coagulation of the feeds that you want to check up on.

depending on the reader you should be able to organize it into groups, dividing your feed into your different interests. for my own rss reader, i even have the option of viewing the webpage directly.

i suspect most of these are common features. rss has been around for a long while, but it's still cool! i think! and this page is for people who don't know what rss is so whatever

of course, you can bypass all of this and just... read the rss feed directly, but it's effectively just text/code. specifically xml (and sometimes json), if you know what that means.

does this website support rss?

yes!

you can check it out here.

how much websites have an rss feed?

eh. percentage wise...

low, probably.

rss isn't a very prominent feature. it's nice when websites have it, but i don't think it's ever a top priority for businesses and what not. you'll typically be able to tell if a website has one by the rss logo.

or maybe they'd just tell you.

there are third party services to generate rss feeds for websites that don't make them directly. this typically comes at a cost, but if you're a fan of a specific site you can look into this option.

social media i've noticed has a decent chance of supporting rss, but comments under a post aren't part of the content, which is both understandable but unfortunate since the discussion is half of why i read stuff, (more than that, really).

as mentioned, my rss reader allows me to view the page directly, so it's not that big of a concern, however it is kind of slow since i'm loading the full page, and not just the text. for people using a reader on their phone, or who have slow internet, this may be a deal breaker.

how

how what??

how do i generate my own rss feed?

create a page on your website that follows the rss protocol.

there are technically two protocols (three if you count json, but i haven't ever used or seen it)-- rss and atom. rss is the original, but atom is the successor that i tend to see, so i'd just use that. both of them tend to support

what do you use to make your own feed?

eleventy has a built in rss feed generator, so i just use that. it does all the work for you thankfully.

example code below (or just look here):

import { feedPlugin } from "@11ty/eleventy-plugin-rss";

export default function (eleventyConfig) {
	eleventyConfig.addPlugin(feedPlugin, {
		type: "atom",
		outputPath: "/feed.xml",
		collection: {
			name: "posts",
			limit: 10,
		},
		metadata: {
			language: "en",
			title: "blog",
			subtitle: "description.",
			base: "https://example.com/",
			author: {
				name: "rovi",
				email: "", // optional
			}
		}
	});
};