July 1 - RSS Day in Russia

Runet users can easily take a brighter marker and trace a new date on the calendar: July 1 is RSS Day in Russia . Under this slogan is the action blog Miku .

The holiday came to Russia after RSS Awareness Day , which took place on May 1st at the English-speaking part of the Internet. Well, take the baton :)

In this article you will learn:
- What is RSS?
- History of technology RSS
- How to use RSS
- RSS readers
- RSS for developers
- RSS Icons
- Followers counters
- How to tell everyone that you also know about RSS?

What is RSS?

In April of this year, the Research Center of the SuperJob.ru portal conducted a survey “ Do you use RSS? », According to the results of which it turned out that 63% of Runet users do not know anything about the existence of such a service. "I have never used and do not even know how to start"; “What is this?” Is the most frequent answer given by respondents. More information about the results of the study can be found here.
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Definition:

RSS is a family of formats based on XML markup language. Usually used to present and transmit brief announcements of news and articles sites.

Website dedicated to RSS - www.orss.ru

A bit of history

RSS development began in 1997. This technology was first known when Netscape used it to populate the channels of its Netcenter portal. Soon, RSS was already used to broadcast content on many news sites: BBC, CNET, CNN, Disney, Forbes, Wired, Red Herring, Slashdot, ZDNet, and many others.

The first open official version of RSS was version 0.90, based on the RDF (Resource Description Framework) format. However, it seemed too difficult for many, and then Netscape introduced its simplified version - 0.91. And in 2000 there was a separation of the format:

• The development team from the RSS-DEV mailing list suggested RSS 1.0 format, which was based on the W3C XML and RDF standards.
• Dave Weiner, working for UserLand Software, published the RSS 0.92 specification, which is a development of version 0.91 and focuses on those users who find the RDF description unnecessarily complex.

The popularity of technology grew and already in June 2006 a competitor appeared RSS - Atom format. Details of the development of technology can be found in Wikipedia .

How to use RSS technology?

If you want to always keep up to date with the latest news from your favorite sites, then RSS will help you recognize the latest headlines immediately after they are published. And for this you do not even need to install special programs. All modern browsers have a built-in RSS-reader, or, more simply, a "news reader."

For example, in IE7, just go to the site and click the RSS icon: you will see a list of available news feeds that you can read directly from the browser.

RSS readers

If you do not want to use the browser, then you can read the news through on-line readers, install the program:

for Windows:
RssReader
Feeddemon
FeedReader

For Linux
Liferea
Akregator
Bottom feeder

For Mac OS
Newslife
Shrook
Vienna

A more detailed list of programs can also be found in the Internet Stuff Overview .

RSS for developers

If you have a website with constantly updated content, for example, a blog, then it will not be difficult to embed an RSS feed. Any blog engine ( Wordpress , Nucleus CMS , Serendipity , DLE , D2c-nuke , Limbo-cms , TextPattern ) has the function to create a news feed, you just need to specify a link to the feed (aka RSS feed, it’s also a news feed).
If you write the engine yourself, then you can help to form the RSS feed here .

RSS icon

At least every blogger once decides to make his own original design of RSS icons. Now the variety of icons is so great that newbies hardly know what it was originally. In fact, the Firefox developers invented the RSS icon:


Opera and Microsoft did not object, and the proposed design decided to make the standard RSS icons. A selection of such standard icons can be found on the official website www.feedicons.com . Well, if you want something more, you can look here: Smashing Magazine , Malevich's Square .

Count

Formed a ribbon? Draw a beautiful icon? It's time to collect readers!
And here we come to the aid of the service FeedBurner . Just register your feed address and you will be able to track the dynamics of changes in the number of subscribers to your feed. In addition, you can customize the newsletter feed to your readers. Do you have a wordpress blog? Install the FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin so that all RSS traffic is sent to FeedBurner. Then you will know a more accurate number of readers.


I hope after this article the number of users who do not know about the technology of RSS will decrease :)

Few of this article? You will find more useful links here .

How to take part in the holiday?

Want to take part in the celebration of the day of RSS in Russia?
Visit the official website of the day RSS in Russia ! Tell us what you know about RSS too and get a certificate of participation.

In addition, you can:
Put special RSS icons for the holiday
Download a wordpress plugin showing the ribbon with the flag of Russia, a link from the ribbon leads to the site of the day RSS in Russia (of course in nofollow :))

Cross post