{"id":94,"date":"2003-03-05T10:23:48","date_gmt":"2003-03-05T17:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dianeduane.com\/outofambit\/?p=94"},"modified":"2003-03-05T10:23:48","modified_gmt":"2003-03-05T17:23:48","slug":"what-the-heck-rss-is-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dianeduane.com\/outofambit\/2003\/03\/05\/what-the-heck-rss-is-anyway\/","title":{"rendered":"What The Heck &quot;RSS&quot; Is Anyway"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a fair question.  Keeping it simple (because that way <em>I<\/em> can understand it):<\/p>\n<p>RSS is short for either &#8220;Rich Site Summary&#8221; or &#8220;Really Simple Syndication&#8221;, depending on who&#8217;s telling you about it.  It&#8217;s a way to &#8220;syndicate&#8221; your blog, making it available to many more readers than would normally see it because it was merely linked to in someone&#8217;s blog or web page. Producing an RSS version of your blog makes it possible to send it as &#8220;news headlines&#8221; (or in longer formats if desired) to one of the various <a HREF=\"http:\/\/backend.userland.com\/directory\/167\/aggregators\">news aggregator sites<\/a> where blogophiles and others can quickly gather information from websites and blogs that interest them.  If your blog interests a person, he or she can have his or her news aggregator software pick up your blog immediately when it&#8217;s freshly published.  (This whole thing is an oversimplification of many more complex issues, and I beg the indulgence of bloggers far more educated in RSS than I am.)<\/p>\n<p>Publishing a blog in an RSS version involves taking a normal HTML-formatted blog and turning it into one formatted in XML instead (see <a HREF=\"http:\/\/pro.blogger.com\/docs\/example_rss.xml\">here<\/a> for what an XML page can look like).  There are various formats or &#8220;flavors&#8221; of RSS:  2.0 is the newest one:  Blog*Spot uses 0.91.  There are a lot of issues about RSS publication which I don&#8217;t yet understand, having other things to think about all day, like books and cats and husbands, and sheep not eating my rosemary bush again this year (it&#8217;s spring&#8230;the lambs get in through the fence, and their moms follow them, and eat my garden&#8230;).  But I&#8217;m working on it.<\/p>\n<p>More general data can be found <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.webreference.com\/authoring\/languages\/xml\/rss\/intro\/\">here<\/a> and <a HREF=\"http:\/\/backend.userland.com\/directory\/167\/aggregators\">here<\/a> and <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.xml.com\/pub\/a\/2002\/12\/18\/dive-into-xml.html\">here<\/a> and <a HREF=\"http:\/\/blogspace.com\/rss\/\">here<\/a> and <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.webreference.com\/authoring\/languages\/xml\/rss\/\">here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Now excuse me, because I swear I can hear sheep in the front yard again &#8212;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a fair question. Keeping it simple (because that way I can understand it): RSS is short for either &#8220;Rich Site Summary&#8221; or &#8220;Really Simple Syndication&#8221;, depending on who&#8217;s telling&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What The Heck &quot;RSS&quot; Is Anyway - Out of Ambit<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dianeduane.com\/outofambit\/2003\/03\/05\/what-the-heck-rss-is-anyway\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What The Heck &quot;RSS&quot; Is Anyway - Out of Ambit\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It&#8217;s a fair question. 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