In the previous article we discussed how to read an RSS file with PHP. In this article we will focus on the theoretical aspects of how to build an RSS file.
One of the many ways in which you can make your content more widely available to many readers is to submit your RSS document to an RSS aggregator. An RSS aggregator acts like a "newspaper" in that it constantly checks for new content from all of the submitted RSS documents and then publishes that content. In some aggregators you can even set the intervals at which the aggregator should check for new content. An aggregator can be an online site or it can be a desktop-based application. Below is a screen shot of an online aggregator:
To summarize, an RSS document is a summarized version of your website that you make available on the Internet for the purposes of attracting traffic to your website. You can build a RSS document in two ways, a simple version that includes only the required elements, and an enhanced version that includes the required elements as well as additional elements that give more detailed information about the document, such as when it was created and by whom.
Conclusion
In the final installment of the RSS reader article, we will be creating an RSS reader application that will be able to both read and create RSS documents.