Introduction

RSS Feeds are a convenient way for your users to find out what is new on your site. Most browsers contain RSS feed readers that notify users whenever a feed has been updated. RSS feeds allow users to follow changes on your site without constantly visiting your site to see what is new.

When the RSS Feed Option is installed, an XML RSS feed can be generated automatically for any editable page on your site by toggling on the RSS Feed control in the page editor. RSS feed pages are automatically published whenever their associated webpages are published and are checked by the Local Links checker.

Formatting a page to supply a feed

An RSS feed consists of a channel which contains items that are periodically updated. Both channels and items contain textual descriptions.

Each page on your site that generates an RSS feed is a separate channel, so your site can contain multiple channels. A channel's title is automatically generated using your organization's name and the page's page title. Any text that occurs at the top of a page before the first top-level section heading on the page is used as the channel's description. All formatting, such as bold and italics, and all links are stripped from the channel's description.

Items are the basic building blocks in an RSS feed. Items are automatically created for the first fifteen top-level section headings on your page. The section heading is used as the item's title. If the next paragraph or sub-section immediately following a top-level section heading contains a recognizable date or date/time string, then that time entry is encoded as the item's publication date. Any other text in the top-level section is included in the item's description. Basic text formatting, such as bold and italics, and all textual links are preserved in the item description. Links in the feed are fully expanded URLs that link to your published site. (So if you follow a link from the RSS XML page on your administrative site before you publish the associated webpage, the link might take you to a non-existent page.)