RSS: What, why, and how

July 1, 2014 by

Josh Simmons

"How do I keep visitors coming back to my website?"

This is one of the most popular questions that we get from Catholic parishes, dioceses, and schools. The answer: Give them a reason to come back by providing fresh, relevant, and dynamic content.

A great way to do this is to utilize RSS in two ways:

1. "Pull" great content from other websites to offer on your website.
2. "Push" content from your website to your audience or other websites.

What is RSS?

RSS, short for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, is an easy way to push and pull content between websites and other mediums. RSS compiles frequently updated content - often news or blog posts - into a "feed" or "channel" that can then be displayed on a website or through a RSS reader. Each entry of a RSS feed usually includes a headline, summarized text, and other data such as a publishing date, author's name, and picture.

Why is RSS important?

RSS is important for your website in two ways:

1. "Pull" Content - RSS provides you with an easy way to pull in dynamic content from other websites and display it on your website. The content gets automatically updated so your website remains relevant and fresh - giving your visitors a reason to come back frequently.
2. "Push" Content - Providing your visitors with an RSS feed of your dynamic content (such as news) allows them an easy way to receive and consume the content without having to remember to visit your website. In short, your content goes out to them instead of waiting on them to come to you.

How to "pull" great content using RSS

Pulling content from other websites via RSS and displaying it on your website is fairly simple. If you're not using eCatholic, you may need to use a RSS feed API such as Feed2JS to help you create the necessary code to then embed into your website.

If you're using eCatholic, displaying content from a RSS feed is super easy. All you need is the URL of the RSS feed. Here's a video showing how it works:

How to "push" content out using RSS

Pushing content out from your website using RSS can be challenging if your website platform does not already include a built-in RSS feature. If this is the case, you'll need to talk to your web developer about creating an RSS feed.

If you're using eCatholic, a RSS feed of your news modules and aggregate "News" page is enabled by default and visitors can click on the corresponding RSS icons to subscribe. You can also enable the RSS icon in the header of your website for visitors to subscribe to site-wide news.

Now that you know what RSS is, why it's important, and how to use it, get out there and start pushing and pulling!