Publish RSS Feeds

For any Web site that is regularly publishing new content, RSS is a popular and cost-effective way to provide site visitors with convenient updates. (RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, or Rich Site Summary in earlier versions.) A Website Administrator can create, edit, publish, and delete RSS feeds on your site.

RSS is often important in increasing site traffic. Your constituents can subscribe to automatic site updates as RSS feeds, eliminating the need for repeated site visits.

How do RSS feeds work?

  1. Your Website Administrator creates one or more RSS feeds for your site. The feeds are then available for use in Web pages or display templates. Each RSS feed may include multiple items of a single content type. (The feed cannot contain items of multiple content types.)

  2. An author editing a Web page inserts hyperlinks to one or more of the associated site's existing RSS feeds. For each feed, the author can also specify the format (RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0 or ATOM). An RSS feed is considered "published" when the page containing a hyperlink to that RSS feed is published to the Web. (Once a site visitor subscribes to the feed, the feed continues working even if the original page containing the hyperlink expires or is deleted. To be deactivated, the RSS feed itself must be deleted in Reports and Tools.)

  3. Using the RSS feed links on your site, site visitors can subscribe to a feed by adding it to an RSS reader of their choice. All site updates corresponding to that RSS feed will be sent directly to the RSS reader. RSS content can also be syndicated to remote Web sites for republication. This means that the feeds are aggregated and displayed on external sites not hosted by your organization.

Example: Client administrator creates an RSS feed

Velda, a Website Administrator, creates a new Press Releases content type for all of her organization's press releases. The content type includes a custom Release Date field.

She then creates a new RSS feed for press releases, configuring the feed to:

  • Use the new Press Releases content type

  • Show the 35 most recent press releases

  • Include the title of the press release, its release date, an associated image, and a 50-word description.