I have a personal blog that I built on Eleventy and published on multiple hosting services. One problem is that I don’t post about it very often because I’m usually busy with other things. So if you were someone interested in this content you would be forced to check it day by day in vain so see if I made anything new. It would be better if users could subscribe to content.
This idea is interesting because politics has shaped the web. It used to be standard to have RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or Atom feeds. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. Most subscription data is processed in isolation across social media or the platforms themselves. In fact, Google quite famously killed one of the biggest RSS readers, Google Reader, likely for incentives to funnel more of that content through itself. Still, many things support RSS and it’s the ideal destination for someone creating a small independent content feed, albeit one that feels dated. In fact, it’s still widely used in the podcast world.
Reading: How to create a blog template with rss feed
How RSS Works
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RSS started when XML was all the rage, so it’s an XML document. You simply add entries to the document as you publish new content. An RSS reader is an app that can read RSS content. Usually you give it an RSS URL and it will periodically poll the RSS feed document (the RSS document may give an indication of how often something is posted to make this more efficient). When new entries appear in the feed, it can alert the user that there is something new to see.
RSS Structure
The RSS specification is surprisingly easy to read and easy to follow. I’m just giving a summary, but there are a lot of things I won’t mention that might be relevant to certain scenarios. I strongly encourage you to join: https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html
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RSS
First, let’s start with thatThis is done via a
