Is your RSS feed healthy? Keep it available!
September 2, 2008 by Ginger
Filed under Maintaining your site
When using content management scripts, it’s common to experience “altered code” in the content you post. What I mean by this is that sometimes, the “rich text editors” we use (as in WordPress), or the HTML editors (such as Front Page) add textual characters into the coding of the pages that it creates. These extra characters are not only unnecessary, but they can cause serious issues with the way your site functions!
For example, RSS feeds are a great way to offer your visitors an easy way to keep up with your site updates by allowing them to subscribe to your feed with an RSS Reader, such as the Google Reader. (That’s what I use.) However, if your feed isn’t “healthy”, your visitors may become frustrated when they can’t subscribe… resulting in the possibility that they will forget all about your site. *Gasp!*
I recommend checking your RSS feeds on a regular basis to ensure that anyone interested in subscribing to your feed for site updates, is able to. The easiest way to do this is to use the free service over at FeedValidator.com, it’s easy to do, and should be added to your site maintenance tasks.
If your RSS feed is not valid, check the coding of your content. In a WordPress managed site, check the post’s code by going through your dashboard, clicking the post title as if you were going to edit it, and then click the HTML tab to view the code. If you see any strange ACII characters, or HTML code that doesn’t need to be there, remove it and click SAVE. Run your RSS feed through the validator again to make sure you’ve fixed the problem.
This is the type of problem I commonly help design clients solve. If your RSS feeds aren’t validating, and you need help figuring out why, feel free to call me, or contact me. If you’re unfamiliar with HTML code, these things can be tricky to find.
Customer retention is vital to all businesses, and every day that your feed is unavailable to your visitors, you’re missing more and more potential buisness. Keep your site, and your services within your client’s reach… keep your RSS feeds healthy!
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I'm a webmaster, designer, artist and consultant managing several full scale customized business web sites for clients. I'm also a creator of virtual goods on IMVU, and a casual PC game junkie.
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customer retention, feed readers, lost traffic, RSS, RSS validator, site updates, subscribers
