Thursday, August 04, 2005
RSS Glossary - Getting Started
RSS GLOSSARY
Blog - A blog is a public Web site with personal posts ordered so that the most recent is always first. Often these posts are also archived and searchable. Posts may come from one or many individuals, and the messages often share a common theme. The most recent blogs posted, with links and a brief description, are available via RSS.
Channels - These are XML links to new articles or blogs. Sometimes called a feed.
Feeds - These are XML documents used for Web syndication, often with links to new articles or blog posts and brief descriptions. Sometimes called a channel.
Proxy server - An indirect means of connecting to the Internet. A desktop connects to a server, which then connects to the Internet. Sometimes this is done to filter content or intercept viruses before they infect an internal network. If you are connecting to the Internet via a proxy server, you will need to make some changes in your RSS reader configuration.
RSS or Really Simple Syndication - This is an XML-based Web syndication tool for Web sites and blogs. RSS repackages new content with information such as a date, a title, a link, and a brief description. An RSS Reader then interprets this feed so that the user need only read the description and link to the news story or blog post. The RSS concept first surfaced in the late 1990s. Who came up with it first is in some dispute, but versions of RSS protocols have been developed by UserLand, Netscape, and O'Reilly and Associates. (Text corrected 9/29/04.)
XML (Extensible Markup Language) - A markup language that describes many different kinds of data so that programs can modify and validate data. Its primary purpose is to share structured text over the Internet.
