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Sunday, September 2, 2007

Feed Validators

RSS Feed Validators determine if your feed is valid.

Feed Validator - This is a validator for syndicated feeds. It works with RSS 0.90, 0.91, 0.92, 0.93, 0.94, 1.0, and 2.0. It also validates Atom feeds. If the validator finds any problems in your feed, it will give you messages for each type of problem and highlight where the problem first occurs in your feed. If you're unsure what a message means, click the "help" link next to the message for a fuller explanation.

RSS Validator - Feed validation service, enter the url and it would evaluate validity of feed RSS v9x validator.

W3C Validator - a free service that checks documents like HTML and XHTML for conformance to W3C Recommendations and other standards.

Redland RSS 1.0 Validator - Enter the address of an RSS 1.0 feed into the following form and it will be validated and formatted for display.

RSS 1.0 Validator - This prototype is based around a Schematron schema for validating RSS 1.0 by Leigh Dodds.

Subscribe to Feeds

How to subscribe to RSS Feeds:

In order to subscribe to an RSS feed or newsfeed you will need two things, an RSS reader (also known as a news aggregator) and url (web address) of the RSS feed that you wish to subscribe.

1.) Download a News Aggregator / RSS Reader

2.) Locate the web address (url) of the RSS feed (XML file) that you wish to subscribe.

A news aggregator or RSS reader is a software application that collects and displays news headlines and summaries from sources that you have designated.

An RSS feed is an XML document that contains the news headlines and summaries.

3.) Install the feed reader or news aggregator on the computer

4.) Insert the url of the news feed (there is usually an "add feed" button)

5.) Many of the news readers will allow you to set the interval that the software will look for a feed update others simply update daily.

6.) The information in the feed will be updated when the feed contains new content.

RSS News Aggregators

How News Aggregators / RSS Readers Work

1.) Websites summarize content in an RSS feed. (see FeedForAll a feed creation tool for help)

2.) Visitors download an RSS readers (aka news aggregator). There are generally two different types of RSS readers. The first kind of feed reader is a self contained program, the second kind of feed reader use a web browser. Many of the programs are free, but generally those that have a small fee are more robust.

3.) Visitors select the content and summaries they wish to view in a news aggregator or RSS reader. (news aggregator and rss reader are essentially interchangable).

4.) Content is added to the news reader by entering the url or web address of the XML file. Sites that have an RSS feed available typically have an orange rss or xml graphic like this - . Clicking on the graphic will provide the url of the feed. Some RSS readers will auto-detect an xml file on a site indicating that a feed is available. (assistance for those wanting to subscribe to rss feeds)

5.) Each time the feed is updated the content being viewed in the RSS reader indicates that there is new content. This insures that the customer has current information related to the topics they choose.

6.) Professionals estimate that RSS will soon rival email's popularity as a content delivery method.