Content syndication refers to providing the content of your blog via a "feed" -- which is a representation of the content of your site that can be accessed by machines and other automated readers readers. People use that feed can subscribe to your feed through websites like Bloglines or desktop news readers like NetNewsWire.
feed, rss, syndication, xml RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and ATOM are the names of two popular formats for syndicating the content of a blog on the internet. By providing access to your blog's RSS or ATOM feed, you enable readers of your site to subscribe to your content via news reader applications. When you update your content, your subscriber's news reader will see the feed change, and allow your subscriber to see your content (and the other content on the web they've subscribed to) in a structured way, from within their reader application, without having to visit your website to check for updates.
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is the tag-based formatting that your RSS feeds and ATOM feeds are presented in. If you encounter orange XML buttons on various sites you visit, these buttons are referring to the fact that the site is syndicated in XML. XML provides the standard structure that your content is delivered in. RSS and ATOM feeds are frequently referred to as simply "XML Feeds".
You have many choices. Here are a few:
news, readers, recommended, rss You can subscribe to a blog by using either the URL of the blog you want to subscribe to, or by using a direct link to a blog's XML feed. Just enter either into the add subscription area of your news reader and your feed will be automatically detected and added to your news.
By providing a feed, you are enabling visitors to subscribe to your site, and receive your updates via their news reader. There are numerous reasons this is far superior to email:
Yes. Squarespace automatically creates ATOM and RSS feeds for your blogs, and embeds these feeds within your blog pages for you. From within most modern news reader applications, individuals can simply enter the URL to your blog, and auto-discovery will pull the embedded feeds into the reader that individual is using.
If you'd like to see the direct URLs to your feeds (so that you can provide links to your readers), these URLs are enumerated for you in the configuration for your journal page. At the top of the configuration screen, click the Feeds tab to view your feed list. We also recommend using our RSS Syndication components to present these feeds to your readers.
You should add an RSS syndication page or widget to your website in order to effectively present these feeds.
RSS, over time, will most likely increase the amount of readers to your site -- as it will become much easier for individuals who like your content to keep up to date with what you're doing on your site.
One way to address this concern is by syndicating only entry excerpts to individuals accessing your RSS feed. By selecting the option in your Squarespace Journal configuration to only syndicate excerpts, individuals will have to access your site directly to receive the full stories that they're interested in.
That said, you may still notice that individuals visit your site less now that they're subscribed to your RSS feed -- but that trade-off is quite relative. By providing readers with an RSS feed, you're adding to their convenience, and making it easier for them to contact you and access your content at the appropriate times. In general, by catering to the needs of your visitors, you'll always come out on top.
Yes, but we're honestly not sure why you'd want to. RSS and ATOM feeds allow your visitors to keep in touch with your content, and as such, it's generally a very good idea to provide these feeds. You can disable this option from your Journal settings.
A feed subscriber is just like a visitor who bookmarks your site in their browser. They do not provide personal data when they subscribe, so there is no way to know who they are. See this blog entry for more information on RSS subscriber statistics.
feed, rss, subscribers, who This is set in the configuration area for your Journal -- see this guide for accessing the configuration for your journal page. The setting is called 'Feed Title' within the 'Journal XML Syndication Options' section.
An RSS feed is not intended to be read by your web browser, which is why you are seeing the code.
Site visitors can use a variety of methods to subscribe to your feed -- websites like Bloglines, Internet browsers like Flock or desktop readers like NetNewsWire. They work sort of like an Internet browser that keeps scanning your site, notifies subscribers when something new appears, and then shows it to them.
If a visitor adds the link to your feed to their reader, the reader will regularly scan the content of your journal and broadcast updates to them.
Squarespace is able to give you an estimated subscriber count for your RSS feed by evaluating the number of unique IP addresses we see accessing your feed within a 24 hour period. We also use information provided by Bloglines, Google Reader, and a number of other services to futher refine this number beyond what just a unique IP count allows -- resulting in a very accurate view of who is looking at your feed.
The number we report in your dashboard, Feed Subscribers, represents the result of the aforementioned calculation applied to the previous calendar day.
If you need more information on this, please read this detailed Squarespace blog entry.
calculations, feed, rss, subscribers Squarespace doesn't currently have a feature to merge feeds on your site, however you can use a third party service for this, such as:
http://www.blogsieve.com/create_a_new_feed.html
http://www.rssmix.com/
http://xfruits.com/
Yes. You can view your RSS list in the configuration for your journal page. See this guide for accessing your page configuration. In the configuration screen, navigate to the Feeds tab to view the category RSS list for your journal. You can manually link to your category feed to allow visitors to subscribe to category updates.
individual, journal, rss, separate Yes. You can do this by accessing the configuration for your journal page (see this guide for accessing your page configuration). In the configuration screen, scroll down to the "XML Syndication / iTunes Options" section, and add this to the Fixed Feed URL field. As a note, this will replace your existing RSS URL, so subscribers to your site will need to update this in their feed readers.
When you add a journal page to your site, Squarespace automatically generates an RSS feed for your content. Visitors to your site can add your RSS link to a feed reading application (such as Bloglines, Google Reader, etc.) to receive a notification when you add new content. Feed reading applications are common on the web and used by tens of millions of people daily.
You can display your RSS link by adding an RSS page, or an RSS widget to your site. If you have multiple journals you can set which feed(s) you would like to display.
See this FAQ entry for more information on feed readers, and this FAQ entry for a detailed explanation of RSS.
notification, reader, rss 
