Here's the deal. You have a blog (we all do). But you probably know nothing about how RSS feeds work. That isn't a big deal. We all drive cars, yet only a few of us can actually fix them. The internet is pretty much the same way.
Just like changing your oil every however many miles, you may possibly need to do some maintenance on your RSS feed every so often.
I would never claim to be an expert, but I have definitely seen a few xml/rss based feeds. And I have spent quite a few hours trouble shooting issues with both RSS aggregators, feed readers and the RSS generators themselves. I've even written a few RSS generators, so I do have a clue as to some of the things that I am saying.
Since you're probably skimming this part of the post, I will start now with the bold text.
Here are things you can do to keep your RSS up to date and validated:
Double check that your feed validates. This one is easy. The W3C has already set up an rss feed validator for us. If you aren't familar with the W3C, don't worry about it. Just know that they know a hell of a lot more than you or I as to how the internet should work. And when it comes to valid RSS feeds, they write the rules.
Go here: http://validator.w3.org/feed/
type in your blog feed url and wait for the results. If your blog validates, you are in luck. If not, you may wish to review and troubleshoot the reasons for it not validating. If you are hosting your own blog, you should find the time to check that your feed is valid quite often.
Do not copy and paste straight from Microsoft Word. If you use Word to write your posts because you like the spell checker, you shouldn't trust the formatting that Word applies to your content. There is nothing wrong with using word to save posts in progress or using it for the spelling and grammar checkers. But the way Word uses quotes and the other characters that it sometimes uses are not web friendly.
There is an easy fix for this too. Copy the text from word, open up Notepad, paste the text and then reselect the text, copy and paste it into your blog software. This is definitely an extra step that may not seem necessary, but it will strip those nasty Word-centric characters.
Finish what you've started! If you are not using a blog editor that creates html for you or if you like to roll your own, you really need to make sure that all html tags that are opened are also closed. Most often your blog software will be doing this, and most likely you are using a built in editor. But opening a unordered list item and then not closing it is the most common rss/xml error I see on RSBS.
Use a service like feedburner. Not only does feedburner spit out some fun stats on your feeds, but it also will clean up your mistakes and it will make it pretty impossible for you to screw things up.
Go to http://feedburner.com
create a free account and get started. You may need to prove that you own the blog before you can open up all the feedburner options, but feedburner gives you "Troubleshootize" options that will pinpoint exact issues with invalid characters and it will help you to ensure that your feed is validated.
Hopefully some of these tips will help you to make sure your Beer Blog feed stays healthy and validated. If you have any other tips or if you know of something that I skipped over, feel free to add to the comments.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
