RSS/Atom feed

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There are numerous tutorials on the web about RSS feed. Almost every website that provides a feed, has a tutorial. So I thought, why not write myself one. And also, I'm using RSS on my new website and thought, I should. The disclaimer here is that this tutorial is for infants, newbees, laymen, laywomen (feminists behold), and people like my dad and not for hard-core web developers.

Let's say you are of the kind who doesn't like to read the newspaper on the shit-pot simply because it becomes too bunglesome during that crucial moment. So what you want is only the headlines and probably a few starting lines.

RSS feed is exactly that. It consists of a list of titles, descriptions, and links. To cut the crap short, it's stuff-that-you-find-on-a-website formatted in simple title-description-link format. What the stuff essentially is depends on the website whose RSS feed you're taking. For example, you can get rss feed for rediff.com's latest news or rss feed for one liner jokes from office-humour.co.uk, or even rss feed for guitar chords from chordie.com.

How to read an RSS feed?
When you ask for an RSS feed from any website (say rediff.com), you get something like "http://www.rediff.com/rss/inrss.xml". Yes, that's it. No fanfare or dough-nuts. Now, it's up to you to parse this file and display it as per your wish. But if you're like my dad, you'd be horrified to know this. So search for RSS feed reader on Google and you'll get about 118,000,000 results in about 0.96 seconds.

What is an RSS reader?
It is a software (duh!). A small utility for your desktop (for those lucky ones who have always on internet connection). But there are certain websites (Google reader) where you can choose (or give your own) RSS feeds and they'll display them in a well structured manner. Something like a personalized page of Yahoo or MSN.

How do they make the RSS feed for their website?
Well, that's for them to understand and you not to care about. But if you're really interested, read on. They publicly give a link like "http://www.rediff.com/rss/inrss.xml". So whenever they'll update their website, they'll update this file as well. What if they don't? Well, it's automated. If it isn't, then you better google for another website. The feed, by rule, ensures that you'll always get the latest content.

Is it free? If yes, why are the providing it?
I knew you'd ask this question. Yes, it's free. And the answer to why is same as why they're having their website at all? Simply put, advertisement. If I'm providing an RSS feed, people start using my RSS feed. Other people read my site's feed into another site and click to get details and eventually come back to my site. So traffic increases on my site.
And obviously you want traffic on your site, otherwise why have the site public at all?

Why is the title of this post named RSS/Atom feed, when you're talking about RSS feeds only?
You never stop asking questions now, do you? This is because to know what is an Atom feed, you need to do the following:
Copy the post and paste it into a text editor. Using Find-Replace dialog, replace "RSS" by "Atom", and you'll get an Atom feed tutorial.
Only difference is that the format of an RSS feed and an Atom feed is different. So, a pure RSS reader cannot read Atom feed and vice-versa.

And why in the world do they have two formats for the same thing?
Atom guys say it's an improvement over RSS. RSS supporters claim that Atom is bull and adding confusion to public.
Just as I like to read paper on my shit-pot and you don't.

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