RSS
With RSS, people can see the new content of your website without visiting your site.
When a website offers an RSS feed, its content can be read in a feed reader app. It’s very useful for sites that publish regularly, like blogs and news sites. For a reader, it's easier to check the reader app. You can follow multiple sites and see what's new. No need to check every site manually.
RSS offers a better, distraction-free reading experience. Many news outlets track users and are filled with ads and popups. RSS also gives you full control. You choose what content to follow. You pick your news sources and read only what you want. After reading your feeds, you're done. Unlike in social media, where scrolling never ends.
Creating own feed
RSS is sent directly from a website to a feed reader, no platform is in between you and the reader. It's very simple and private. To follow a feed, you only need the feed URL. No need to give up any information or even email address.
RSS is an old tech and has been around since the '90s. RSS and Atom are two commonly used feed types. RSS is more popular, Atom more modern. Both work fine with feed readers, but use a slightly different format.
XML file
A feed is just a simple XML file with a specific format. You can create your own Atom feed very easily. Open a text editor and create a file called feed.xml. Add the following code for the basic structure.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<title>Blog title</title>
<link href="https://nvl.studio/"/>
<updated>2025-03-06T12:00:00Z</updated>
<id>https://nvl.studio/</id>
<entry>
<title>Blog Post</title>
<link href="https://nvl.studio/post"/>
<id>https://nvl.studio/post</id>
<updated>2025-03-06T10:00:00Z</updated>
<summary>Content of the post.</summary>
</entry>
</feed>At the beginning of the code is general feed information that stays the same. <entry> is a blog post or article in HTML format. Every time you publish a new blog post, add a new <entry> and update the <updated> time from the top. After creating the feed, place it at your website’s root.
Feed can include the full post or just a summary. If you include full posts, you may want to limit how many remain in the feed. If the posts are short, or if you use summaries, you can include even hundreds. If feed has all your content, your older posts are easier to discover.
Add link to the feed on your site. This is the main way people subscribe to your feed. Also add the following header tag so services can detect it. It needs to be added just to the main page.
<link href="feed.xml" type="application/atom+xml" rel="alternate" title="Atom feed" />Do it manually
If you don't post very often, updating feed manually is very little effort. Or you can write a simple script to update feed (my way).
CMS platforms, like WordPress, generate the feed automatically. You need to do nothing. There's also services that can read your site and generate a feed.
You can create multiple feeds for the same site. For example, if your content is in two languages, you might create en.xml and fi.xml. News sites usually have different feeds for different topics.
If you have a blog, you should offer an RSS feed. While it's quite niche and requires a feed reader, it offers a good way to follow your writing without visiting your site.