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How to Make an RSS Feed for your Dreamweaver Website


RSS feeds in Dreamweaver

We're going to make an RSS feed for our Dreamweaver website. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a way to provide your users a way to find out about any new website content you have made. An RSS content feed is also great for reaching out to new users looking for the particular type of content you are providing.



An RSS feed is usually made in an XML Format and is saved into the root directory of your website which is the best place for a search engine crawler to find it.

Most people will use an RSS Agregator to read your RSS content like Google Feed Reader. Once you make an RSS feed, you can put a simple link which will take people to the page of your feed and they can copy the URL of the RSS Feed into their RSS reading Software.

my rss feed


I have the link to my RSS feed on the side of the browser window.

People can just click on the RSS feed subscribe button from there. You can group it next to some of your other social bookmarking networks like Facebook, Flickr, MySpace and Youtube.







Making the RSS Feed in Dreamweaver opening an XML document - Step 1

So the first thing you need to do when making RSS feeds is to open up a blank XML document from Dreamweaver:

  • Open up Dreamweaver and from the opening menu you need to go to File > New :

file new


  • Select a Blank XML document from the document window and then press Create :

Select XML document and create

Now, your document encoding should already be preset to utf 8, version 1.0 :

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> 

Below the encoding you will need to add an opening RSS tag which is like the body tag you would use in HTML code. The tag will eventually be closed with a </rss> tag at the end of the document. So open the RSS feed by typing this code:

    <rss version="2.0">

All of you content will now go into a <channel> tag and this tag will contain all of the items for your RSS feed. It will be closed with a closing </channel> tag when you have finished entering all of the items for your RSS feed.

Set-up your RSS Feed Channel Information - Step 2

Ok, so by now you should have an open RSS tag and an open Channel tag like this:

    <rss version="2.0">

     <channel>

Now its time to put in some channel information so that when people find your RSS feed they will know the name of your website, some author information and a link back to your website. You may also want to supply and email address so people can get in touch with you.

I have filled the channel details in with my own information. If you want to, copy and paste this into your XML document and type over it with your own information. As you can see, the 'title tag' refers to the name of the RSS feed. The 'link tag' refers to URL of your website. The 'description tag' is a short description of what your RSS channel is all about. Then 'language tag' refers to the region. If you are from the United States you might like to put 'en-us.' You can specify your email address in the 'webmaster tag' and also add a 'copyright tag' too:

<title>Dreamweaver Tutorial Videos and Articles</title>
<link>http://www.dreamweavertutorial.co.uk</link>

<description> Dreamweaver Video Tutorials and Articles for the Beginner upwards! Dreamweaver, Fireworks, JavaScript, PHP and XML </description>


    <language>en-uk</language>
   
    <webMaster>[email protected]</webMaster>
<copyright>Copyright (c)2010</copyright>

How about an Image for you RSS Feed? - Step 3

You will probably want to put an image logo into your RSS feed for branding and identification purposes like I have done here:

rss feed image example

Why don't you take a look at my RSS Feed to see what I mean.

To put an image or logo into your RSS feed you will just need to create an opening and closing image tag and put the following information into it:

The title of the Image can go into the 'title tag'. The 'link tag' will be a clickable link back to your website. mine is set to my home page. the 'URL tag' will be the location of your image so that the RSS feed can reference it and know where to find it to put on display. You will also need to know the dimensions of the image and put those into the 'height tag' and 'width tag'. See below for the information we just discussed. Again, you can copy and paste this code into your XML document and amend it with your own RSS Image information.

<image>
<title>Dreamweaver Tutorial</title>
<link>http://www.dreamweavertutorial.co.uk</link>
<url>http://www.dreamweavertutorial.co.uk/images/rss-feed/mascot.jpg</url>
<width>227</width>
<height>89</height>
</image>

Adding an Item into your RSS Feed - Step 4

Its now time to add an item or RSS Content to your RSS feed. Everytime I make a new web page like this one you are viewing right now, I put I put a link to that page into my RSS Feed. The link goes into an Item Tag. Here is what it will look like on your RSS Feed:

an item in an RSS feed

Below is a typical RSS feed item for you to copy and paste into you XML document. First you must open an 'item tag' which will contain all of the information for that webpage. Next you will have the 'title tag' to put a title for that feed item. Next you place the link to the web page on your website so that users of your RSS feed can see the full story. You can put a short or long description into the 'description tag.' I usually put a small summary and my users can click on the link to go to my website and read the rest of the article. the 'pubDate tag' is used to tell RSS readers and your subcribers how old the link is. You can then close the 'item tag' and you have now completed one RSS feed item.

<item>
<title>Using the Find and Replace Tool in Dreamweaver CS4</title>
<link>http://www.dreamweavertutorial.co.uk/dreamweaver/articles/find-replace-tool-dreamweaver.htm</link>

<description>Learn How to use the find and Replace tool in Dreamweaver CS4. Treat it like a Lady or it will show you who wears the trousers!</description>
<pubDate>2010-03-16</pubDate>
</item>

Now you may either repeat the process and create another Item for your RSS feed, or you can close off the whole feed and publish it to your website server.

Closing the RSS tags of your XML file - Step 5

There is just one last thing to do to finish our XML RSS feed and that will be to first close off the 'channel tag' and then close the 'RSS tag' to complete our RSS Content Feed. Close the tags like this:

</channel>
</rss>

What to save your RSS Feed as and Where to Save it -Step 6

Save your RSS content feed as: feed.xml

Save it into your root directory where your Index.html file is also located.

Lastly, Upload your RSS Feed to your server! Any Problems? email me using the contact form.





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