Ok, before reading this please remember that I know NOTHING about xml, RSS etc and I am having to ask these probably really simple, silly questions coz i just cant find answers for them anywhere. Right, so I run a vacation rentals website, and I thought with all the fuss about RSS I could create a feed that shows the 5 newest vacation rentals to the site. I have no idea if what I have done so far is the right way to go about it. I created a php page which gets the info for the vacation rentals from the database. It then writes the xml to a file, example www.tiptopvillas.com/rss/new_rentals.xml Is this right? I basically got the xml format from other rss feeds and just changed them to suit my site. IF I have done that correctly, my next question is: Do I have to loadthe php file everytime I want to update the feed? With the way I have done it I can't see any other way to do it. What should I do next? Do I have to makesure it is valid or is that not important? Assuming I have got/will get the above sorted, what next? How do I get people to use my feeds? Do I just place a link on my website to the xml file and let them do the rest? How do I ensure people know that I have a rss feed they can use, basically how do I market it? Are there rss directories? Do people use them? I ask because I can't imagine the kind of people that visit my site having the knowledge to use this, or even have a website to put it on. Please be nice with your answers Hopefully the answers to the above questions will be of use to others thinking of doing similar things. Thanks. Edit: Are there any glaringly obvious things I need to do or have missed out?
Hey dude, with regard to your technical questions I have no clue. But with regard to getting ppl aware of your feed, you can submit it to various rss feed directories. Do a search on G and you'll find a few. One of the larger rss directories is www.syndic8.com Also, you should display the RSS and XML small button graphics on your site to let visitors know you provide a feed. Validating your feed is important and can be done here www.feedvalidator.org
Thanks, looks like what I have so far is valid, I will submit to rss directories once I am confident that it is all as it needs to be
Right, so my RSS feeds work and are valid, I have spent a couple of hours submitting them to RSS feed sites, what do I do next? Have I covered everything? I think this could be a really useful way of getting backlinks to my site but i am finding ithard to think outside the box interms of getting people to use it.