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If you have been struggling to learn the answer to the question, “How do I put an RSS feed on my web page?” This post will explain the RSS Data Feed, and how to install it on your WordPress Blog web site.

For months I have been trying many different methods to try and learn how to make the RSS Subscribe button work properly, and then would get exasperated and move on to something else. I now “get it.”

RSS Explained in Steps:

Dave Winer, a software developer and entrepreneur in Berkeley, California is referred to as the pioneer of RSS (Really Simple Syndication.) There are other common terms for RSS but this is the official one.

RSS Data Feed:

Typically a publisher inserts some code in the website, usually behind the various forms of RSS feed buttons that you see on almost all websites, and the users of the website can register with an aggregator program that is commonly called a “News Reader.”

There are dozens of different types of News Readers and for this example we will discuss the one that is provided for free by Google, called the “Google News Reader.” Go figure.

When someone reads a web post that they are interested in and want to follow the author in future posts, the user subscribes by clicking on the “RSS Subscribe” button and then selects which News Reader they want to use.

Then in the future every time the publisher puts out new content the post is sent right directly to the subscribers News Reader. You may unsubscribe at any time.

How do I Put an RSS Feed on My Web Page?

For the purpose of this article we will discuss Feedburner, which is a company that is now owned by Google, (go figure again,) and the publisher has to sign up for a free account, and then “Burn a Feed.” What that means is that there is a box to type the url of your blog into, and then Feedburner will return a unique identifier feed for that website that can be used in the HTML code for subscribing.

For instance; for this website at LinkMoney.org the unique identifier returned is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/linkmoney/mvZE.
You should copy your new feedburner feed code to a file somewhere for future use. I mean your new code, not the example above.

Then comes the fun part. Depending upon which theme you are using for your WordPress Blog, you may already have a widget that is all set up to just place your feedburner feed code into, or you may have to build the HTML code yourself and install it in a “Text Box Widget.”

By now you no doubt know what a widget is for your WordPress Blog and you use them to insert nicely formatted sections of data for your readers enjoyment, such as Recent Posts, Archives, Blogroll, advertising block ads, etc.

If you see a widget box in your theme that is marked RSS Feeds, do NOT use that one to build your RSS Subscribe button. That one is used for publishers that want to automatically receive generated content from other publishers to be displayed on their own Blog.

So here is what you do. Select a “Text Box” widget, and click on the edit for that widget. Here is where you will paste some HTML code that includes an image of your RSS Subscribe button and a piece of code that actullay does the subscribing to the feed.

Now we shall discuss how to build the proper HTML code for this button. This is very similar to the post that we presented previously about “How to Make a 125 Banner Ad.”

The following example has a piece of bold text that says “Subscribe Here” within the display box. You do not have to do it exactly the same way, for instance you can use the title bar of the text box widget to say something like “Subscribe via RSS.”

The code <center> and </center> just positions the button image within the center of the text box on the final web page area.

<b> RSS Subscribe Here: </b> <br>
<center><a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/linkmoney/mvZE”>
<img src=”http://[***note this is the url where your image is hosted]” alt=”subscribe via rss” />
</a></center>
<br>

[***Note: the above note is where you insert your own unique url to the image.]

Then the second main part of the code shown, <img src=, is where the image is located. You may elect to host the image any where you wish. Just remember that wherever it is hosted it should be a reliable website or server that is on all of the time, otherwise your image might not display at all if that server is down for some reason or other.

As I explained how to host an image on Photobucket in the previous article about How to Make a 125 Banner Ad, I would suggest you go there to read the procedure. You will probably do better by parking the image on the same hosting server that your WordPress Blog is hosted on, but I have not done that yet.

Now when a reader wants to subscribe, all they do is hit the Subscribe Button and they will have your new posts directed to their News Reader. Really Simple Syndication indeed! I trust this helps you to understand RSS Data Feeds.

To those of you that might read this and say it is elementary, I say that is exactly what most of the new Bloggers need. All of this crud does not come easy to me and I think I am in the majority. So when I make a new discovery and learn how to do something after countless hours of trial and error, I try to simplify the description and write it up for the readers of LinkMoney.

From emails and comments I know that many people do appreciate this information and that is good enough for me.

Now if you find this post of interest you want to SUBSCRIBE with my nice big RSS Subscribe button at the top right of this page.

If you want to subscribe by email, go ahead and then in a future post I will explain how to set your email subscribe box up using feedburner also.

I’m Rich !

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