Re: Placing and promoting RSS feeds

if you look at headers, you will see an "alternate link"
tag mentioning the rss feed. That could fit into some of
the pages on my site (the pages that present updated
information). Should I do it?

Yes. These links are used for rss autodiscovery, the most useful way
to find rss feeds. Many aggregators (eg. www.bloglines.com) use this
for their quick one click subscribe buttons; also that link is what
puts the "Add livebookmark for this page's feed" icon on the right hand
side of the Firefox browser's status bar.

You should also put some subscribe buttons on your page. Take a look
on the right hand colum of www.kbcafe.com/rss/ and also choose a page
that describes what these are all about.

Actually I am also in the process of formulating how I am going to be
advertising my rss feeds. Does anyone have any suggestions as to the
best way to project rss subscribe buttons on one's pages ?

Seth Russell
www.speaktomecatalog.com
Now sporting rss feeds for each catagory

Ignoramus31199 wrote:

On 12 Jul 2005 09:20:15 -0700, Seth Russell <russell.seth (AT) gmail (DOT) com
wrote:
if you look at headers, you will see an "alternate link"
tag mentioning the rss feed. That could fit into some of
the pages on my site (the pages that present updated
information). Should I do it?

Yes. These links are used for rss autodiscovery, the most useful way
to find rss feeds. Many aggregators (eg. www.bloglines.com) use this
for their quick one click subscribe buttons; also that link is what
puts the "Add livebookmark for this page's feed" icon on the right hand
side of the Firefox browser's status bar.

Did not think of auto discovery. Thanks.

You should also put some subscribe buttons on your page. Take a look
on the right hand colum of www.kbcafe.com/rss/ and also choose a page
that describes what these are all about.

Actually I am also in the process of formulating how I am going to be
advertising my rss feeds. Does anyone have any suggestions as to the
best way to project rss subscribe buttons on one's pages ?

Thanks Seth. I would love to hear answers to your question.

Auto-discovery is important indeed so it is worth checking if it functions
compatibly with news readers and feeds-related services. I personally use
RSSOwl as my feeds reader and it has an autodiscovery facility that scans
the site for typical feeds locations (it flags many errors for the
Webmaster to see. Ouch!).

While the issue of vendor-specific subscription and auto-discovery, have a
look at the top of: http://www.schestowitz.com/Bookmarks/local_feeds.htm .
Feel free to copy the layout. I was inspired by Mullenweg and PalmAddicts
when adding these bits.

It is worth setting up a re-direction from http://xml.YOURDOMAIN.SUFFIX to
assign your feeds a more elegant URL.

Last but not least, I think people are most familiar with the amber XML
button so the RSS x.x button might only lead to confusion and hesitation.
It is worth placing such a button in a prominent place in most pages. I
personally only place them in sections where I generate pages on the fly
(Gallery, phpBB, PHP-Nukex2 and WordPressx2). Buttons are more painful to
add and manage (for example modify) otherwise.

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com

Ignoramus31199 wrote:

On Tue, 12 Jul 2005 17:54:19 +0100, Roy Schestowitz
newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:
Ignoramus31199 wrote:

On 12 Jul 2005 09:20:15 -0700, Seth Russell <russell.seth (AT) gmail (DOT) com
wrote:
if you look at headers, you will see an "alternate link"
tag mentioning the rss feed. That could fit into some of
the pages on my site (the pages that present updated
information). Should I do it?

Yes. These links are used for rss autodiscovery, the most useful way
to find rss feeds. Many aggregators (eg. www.bloglines.com) use this
for their quick one click subscribe buttons; also that link is what
puts the "Add livebookmark for this page's feed" icon on the right hand
side of the Firefox browser's status bar.

Did not think of auto discovery. Thanks.

You should also put some subscribe buttons on your page. Take a look
on the right hand colum of www.kbcafe.com/rss/ and also choose a page
that describes what these are all about.

Actually I am also in the process of formulating how I am going to be
advertising my rss feeds. Does anyone have any suggestions as to the
best way to project rss subscribe buttons on one's pages ?

Thanks Seth. I would love to hear answers to your question.

Auto-discovery is important indeed so it is worth checking if it
functions compatibly with news readers and feeds-related services. I
personally use RSSOwl as my feeds reader and it has an autodiscovery
facility that scans the site for typical feeds locations (it flags many
errors for the Webmaster to see. Ouch!).

What would be those locations?

I'll need to check. Is it so important? Different clients will try different
locations. I know that Yahoo have some sophisticated way of discovering
feeds and it might be integrated into some browser add-on toolbar.

If you put an amber meta in your front page, feeds will probably be followed
and discovered. Also, if you add the RSS link to the page headers, you will
simplify discovery greatly. Not all people arrive at your front page after
all (links, search engines referrals, etc.).

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com

Ignoramus27036 wrote:

On Wed, 13 Jul 2005 04:22:18 +0100, Roy Schestowitz
newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:
Auto-discovery is important indeed so it is worth checking if it
functions compatibly with news readers and feeds-related services. I
personally use RSSOwl as my feeds reader and it has an autodiscovery
facility that scans the site for typical feeds locations (it flags many
errors for the Webmaster to see. Ouch!).

What would be those locations?

I'll need to check. Is it so important? Different clients will try
different locations. I know that Yahoo have some sophisticated way of
discovering feeds and it might be integrated into some browser add-on
toolbar.

thanks.

If you put an amber meta in your front page,

what is that?

feeds will probably be followed
and discovered. Also, if you add the RSS link to the page headers, you
will simplify discovery greatly.

I did that.

Not all people arrive at your front page after all (links, search
engines referrals, etc.).

Yes. Iplaced RSSheader links to pages that logically can be viewed as
representation of same updates as what I send via RSS.

The amber/orange XML button is what I was referring to. Very few sites use
other buttons to indicate feeds. The more familiar to the general audience,
the better. I haven't looked at the size of the GIF's or PNG's, but I
imagine it should not affect your choice and is no more than 300 bytes
anyway.

Thumbs up on your last paragraph.

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com

Ignoramus27036 wrote:

On Wed, 13 Jul 2005 14:40:14 +0100, Roy Schestowitz
newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:
The amber/orange XML button is what I was referring to. Very few sites
use other buttons to indicate feeds. The more familiar to the general
audience, the better. I haven't looked at the size of the GIF's or PNG's,
but I imagine it should not affect your choice and is no more than 300
bytes anyway.

Roy, can you please point me to a particular button? I am a little
confused, as I saw several. I will use the one that you would suggest.

thanks

The 'button' in the bottom-left of my front page is definitely the most
ubiquitous. If you press it, rather than getting an XML item (code that is
daunting to some), you will find yourself in a page where I have placed the
proper buttons which imply feed versions. For people who are intimidated by
feeds, there are also vendor-specific buttons which they might find
helpful. Look at the source of that little vendor-specific section. You
just need to shove the URL's of your feeds in the right place.

I can confirm that more and more people slowly subscribe to my site. I only
regret not doing it earlier.

Hope it helps,

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com

Ignoramus27036 wrote:

Thanks a lot for your help. I also regret that I did not develop good
features for a few years, not doing the right things (partly because we
had a kid).

I placed your button on http://www.algebra.com/.

Okay, I was going to remain quiet, but I feel like I must suggest an
improvement.

The placement of the botton in the front page is excellent, but all/most
pages below that level do not bring up the orange goodness in the status
bar of Firefox. If it is work in progress, then fine. Otherwise, you might
want to use a little Linux script to recursively add a feed link to all
HTML files. It would be painless. I already coded up the darn thing.

Some people must be entering your site at a deep level, e.g. after searching
the Web. You ought to encourage them or at least give them the possibility
to subscribe. You will then have them return.

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com

On Wed, 13 Jul 2005 15:48:14 +0100, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:

Ignoramus27036 wrote:

On Wed, 13 Jul 2005 14:40:14 +0100, Roy Schestowitz
newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:
The amber/orange XML button is what I was referring to. Very few sites
use other buttons to indicate feeds. The more familiar to the general
audience, the better. I haven't looked at the size of the GIF's or PNG's,
but I imagine it should not affect your choice and is no more than 300
bytes anyway.

Roy, can you please point me to a particular button? I am a little
confused, as I saw several. I will use the one that you would suggest.

thanks

The 'button' in the bottom-left of my front page is definitely the most
ubiquitous. If you press it, rather than getting an XML item (code that is
daunting to some), you will find yourself in a page where I have placed the
proper buttons which imply feed versions. For people who are intimidated by
feeds, there are also vendor-specific buttons which they might find
helpful. Look at the source of that little vendor-specific section. You
just need to shove the URL's of your feeds in the right place.

I can confirm that more and more people slowly subscribe to my site. I only
regret not doing it earlier.

Hope it helps,

Roy

Roy, what good does it do you that more and more people subscribe to
your site? I'm looking for specifics here (pretty please) as I think
there are distinctions which mean that RSS is simply inappopriate for
a lot of people who are over-enthusiastically embracing it - paying
for being told how to use it, too.

BB
--
www.kruse.co.uk/ seo (AT) kruse (DOT) demon.co.uk
seo that watches the river flow...
--

Ignoramus27036 wrote:

On Wed, 13 Jul 2005 16:16:08 +0100, Roy Schestowitz
newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:
Ignoramus27036 wrote:

Thanks a lot for your help. I also regret that I did not develop good
features for a few years, not doing the right things (partly because we
had a kid).

I placed your button on http://www.algebra.com/.

Okay, I was going to remain quiet, but I feel like I must suggest an
improvement.

Always appreciated.

The placement of the botton in the front page is excellent, but all/most
pages below that level do not bring up the orange goodness in the status
bar of Firefox. If it is work in progress, then fine. Otherwise, you
might want to use a little Linux script to recursively add a feed link to
all HTML files. It would be painless. I already coded up the darn thing.

Let me describe my thought process a little bit. I started off with
four feeds (new site feature announcements, newly submitted unsolved
problems, newly solved problems, and new contents added).

Because I had four different feeds, I did not want to "spam" all my
pages with am XML link to an arbitrary feed, cutting off other
feeds. instead, I placed links to relevant feeds to pages that
logically are related to the feeds. For example, I have a page where
tutors can review newly submitted unsolved problems, and solve
whichever ones they want. On that page, I placed a link to, drumroll,
the unsolved problems feed. I also have a page with recently solved
problems, with a link to the solved problems feed.

As of this morning, I also added a combined "Algebra.Com News" feed,
which is comprised of the last 5 site feature update announcements,
last 5 new content updates, last 10 unsolved problems and last 10
solved problems.

See my comment at the bottom of this message.

I feel that this is fairly acceptable for placing on all pages as a
header link element, where a link to another feed is not defined.

I am not sure what's the benefit of that though. Would that not dilute
the attention paid to more proper RSS feeds?

No. A very small percentage of your visitors will subscribe anyway --
probably a fraction of a percent. This fraction might account for thousand
of hits over the long run. Get these people subscribed now. You are not
punishing them. It is not a mailing list so it takes 5 second to
unsubscribe at will.

Some people must be entering your site at a deep level, e.g. after
searching the Web. You ought to encourage them or at least give them the
possibility to subscribe. You will then have them return.

That's a great point.

Making a site wide change of adding a default RSS button, where a more
specific one is not provided, is equivalent to adding one line of perl
to one module in my system.

Yes, I can imagine you already have something to pull 'off the shelf'
already. Needless to mention, a /generic/ feed needs to be assigned to all
pages, which makes it anything _but_ spamming (informative rather). Also
assign a title to the feed at the header: something like 'Algebra.com
announcements' or 'Algebra.com news'. You probably not want such a feed to
be too active, e.g. more than one update per day.

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com

Big Bill wrote:

Roy, what good does it do you that more and more people subscribe to
your site? I'm looking for specifics here (pretty please) as I think
there are distinctions which mean that RSS is simply inappropriate for
a lot of people who are over-enthusiastically embracing it - paying
for being told how to use it, too.

You raise an important point. Some people are repelled by feeds since people
use them to avoid site layouts, ads and promotions. However, they help you
get visitors back and, in your case, perhaps admire you as an SEO expert.

Feeds also assist modem users who cannot afford the time it takes to load
your pages. Unlike bookmarks, feeds are active (like newsgroups) and are
not invoked from bookmarks in 'passive mode'. Feeds will soon be able to
incorporate AdSense within. However, me and many others never intend to
incorporate the same filth (commercials) that visitors try to avoid.

Think carefully what you have to gain and what you have to lose. I add an
"?rss" stub to all URL's in my feeds so that, if ever these become
necessary, I can learn about users' behaviour. BBC and many others do
likewise. They have done that since 2004 and the number of feeds has only
been extended since. I think it can teach us a lesson or two.

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com

Ignoramus27036 wrote:

On Wed, 13 Jul 2005 15:36:10 GMT, Big Bill <kruse (AT) cityscape (DOT) co.uk> wrote:
Roy, what good does it do you that more and more people subscribe to
your site? I'm looking for specifics here (pretty please) as I think
there are distinctions which mean that RSS is simply inappropriate for
a lot of people who are over-enthusiastically embracing it - paying
for being told how to use it, too.

My main goal of having RSS on algebra.com is that

1) free registered tutors would be subscribed to the feed of unsolved
problems, and therefore will be able to pick more problems and solve
them sooner. Solving problems on my site is addictive.

2) students would be subscribed to the feed of solved problems,
perhaps they will learn something from solved problems.

3) Regular users would be apprised of my changes in a regular fashion.

These are not typical "opinion blog" or "tips and tricks" RSS feeds,
they are basically feeds of user content submissions.

Does it make any logical sense?

I find feeds most useful in forums. Do you know the annoying habit of going
round and round, back and forth looking for replies or new topics? In
Igor's case, the same may apply in the form of solutions to problems and
new problems respectively. Feeds will be a _huge_ selling point assuming
users know how to use them. You might want to include a short
feeds-oriented FAQ section. I know I have.

Roy

PS - In case you wondered about the subject line being changed, it is my
attempt to better summarise the points contained within. This thread has
taken many turns into different topics and only 2-3 people keep track.

--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com