https://chriscoyier.net/2024/01/13/exposed-rss/

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January 13, 2024

Exposed RSS

I get sites not having an "RSS" for "Feed" link on their website
while actually having an RSS feed. I don't like it, but I get it.
Maybe they picked an off-the-shelf theme that doesn't have that.
Maybe they just forgot. Maybe they even don't want to.

I somehow never considered sites that have an RSS feed that don't
expose it in the HTML. As Robb Knight says:

    This is called RSS auto-discovery and is a standard way to expose
    RSS feeds to help browsers and other software to automatically
    find a site's RSS feed.

    Like the standard link, a lot of sites were also missing this.
    This is (at least as a first step) what feed reeders like 
    NetNewsWire will use to automatically find a feed when you paste
    in a URL. If you have an RSS feed, you should have the following
    in the head of your website:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="My Cool Website" href="https://example.com/feed.xml" />

<!-- use application/atom+xml for an atom feed -->
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="My Cool Website" href="https://example.com/atom.xml" />Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

I typically don't even bother looking for a feed link. If I can smell
that your site has a feed and I want to subscribe to it, I just chuck
your homepage URL into my feed reader "Add" function and let it find
what it needs. If it doesn't find one I'm like oh well bummer.

So yeah -- if you're going to bother having a feed, or get one for
free, make sure you've got that <link> tag in place or anybody like
me will assume you don't even have one.

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[Chris Coyier        ] Chris Coyier is my name and I live in Bend,
Oregon with my family. I like to put it down here in the footer so
you have an easy place to copy and paste it from when you're writing
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