Three Types of Feed Formats Supported by WordPress

Posted on November 15, 2007
Filed Under WordPress Syndication |

In the blog world, web contents are syndicated by feeds, which are a short summary of content presented in a pre-defined structured way that tells you exactly what is new and up to date. The mechanism of feeds were developed for delivering updated web contents to readers and to avoid the boredom of searching for information.  WordPress supports 3 types of feeds, that are RSS, RSS 2.0, and Atom.

RSS Feed

In the original RSS version 0.91, a piece of content is described under a channel. There are usually several items in one channel. Every item has its own title, description, and link. A channel also features a title, link, and description of the whole RSS content. The following code shows an example RSS 0.91 feed:

<?xml version=”1.0″?>
<rss version=”0.91″>
<channel>
<title>the title of this feed</title> <link>a valid URL to this feed</link>
<description>description of this feed</description>
<language>language code, for example en-us</language> <item>
<title>Title of first item</title> <link>Url of first item</link>
<description>Short description about this item.</description> </item>
<item>
<title>Title of second item</title> <link>Url of second item</link>
<description>Short description about this item.</description> </item>
</channel>
</rss>

RSS 2.0 Feed

RSS 2.0 is very similar to the original RSS format, only with several enhancements:

<rss version=”2.0″>
<channel>
<title>The Name of the Feed</title>
<link>http://www. put_website_url_here.com</link> <description>Feed Description.</description>
<language>en-us</language>
<copyright>Copyright notice</copyright>
<pubDate>Fri, 15 Nov 2007 10:15:08 GMT</pubDate>
<lastBuildDate>Fri, 15 Nov 2007 10:15:08 GMT</lastBuildDate>
<managingEditor>you@domain.com</managingEditor>
<webMaster>webmaster@domain.com</webMaster>
<item>
<title>Title of First Item</title>
<link>Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.> <description>The item 1 content.</description> <author>you@domain.com</author>
<pubDate>Fri, 15 Nov 2007 10:15:08 GMT</pubDate>
<enclosure url=”http://www. put_website_url_here.com/
filename.mp3″ length=”0001″ type=”audio/mpeg”/>
<guid isPermaLink=”false”>id_01</guid>
</item>
<item>
<title>Title of Second Item</title>
<link>http://www. put_website_url_here.com</link> <description>The item 2 content.</description> <author>You@domain.com</author>
<pubDate>Fri, 15 Nov 2007 10:15:08 GMT</pubDate>
<enclosure url=”http://www. put_website_url_here.com/
filename.mp3″ length=”0001″ type=”audio/mpeg”/>
<guid isPermaLink=”false”>id_02</guid>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>

Atom Feed

The format of Atom is somehow different from RSS.  The following code block shows the structure of Atom:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>
<feed xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom”>
<title>Story title</title>
<subtitle>Story sub Title</subtitle>
<link href=”http://packtpub.com/”/>
<updated>2007-11-15T15:45:08Z</updated> <author>
<name>Author</name>
<email>email address</email>
</author>
<id>urn:uuid:60a76c80-d399-11d9-b91C-0003939e0af6</id> <entry>
<title>Wordpress Complete</title>
<link href=”http://packtpub.com/wordpress/book”/>
<id>urn:uuid:1225c695-cfb8-4ebb-aaaa-80da344efa6a</id> <updated>2007-11-15T15:45:08Z</updated>
<summary>WordPress is a fanastic CMS. This book covers everything about WordPress.</summary>
</entry>
</feed>

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