RSS Feed Viewer

Most websites publish RSS feeds at standard locations based on their platform. For WordPress sites, try yoursite.com/feed or yoursite.com/?feed=rss2. For Blogger, it's typically yoursite.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default. Medium uses medium.com/@username/feed. Check your website's HTML source for link tags with type="application/rss+xml" which indicate the feed URL location.

If you can't find it through common paths, look for an RSS icon (usually an orange icon with radio waves) on your website—clicking it reveals the feed URL. Many websites include feed links in footers or sidebar widgets. For websites you don't control, browser extensions like "RSS Feed Finder" can automatically detect feed URLs on any page you visit. Once you locate the feed URL, verify it works by pasting into an RSS viewer—you should see your recent articles or posts. If you manage the website and can't find a feed, check your CMS settings to ensure RSS is enabled; some platforms disable feeds by default and require activation in settings.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Atom are competing standards for web feed syndication, similar in purpose but different in technical implementation. RSS 2.0 is older, more widely adopted, and uses simpler XML structure. Atom is newer, more rigorously specified, and includes features like better internationalization support, required update timestamps, and clearer content encoding. Both accomplish the same goal: syndicating content updates in machine-readable format.

For practical purposes, the difference rarely matters to end users. Most feed readers support both formats transparently, and good RSS viewers display both identically. Content publishers typically don't need to choose—many platforms automatically generate both formats or use RSS 2.0 as the de facto standard. Atom's technical superiority matters mainly to developers building feed systems, who appreciate its stricter specifications and better namespace handling. If you're publishing a feed, RSS 2.0 remains the safest choice for maximum compatibility. If you're consuming feeds, treat them interchangeably—any good viewer handles both. The important thing is having a valid, well-structured feed in either format rather than stressing about which specification to use.

Not directly, but several services can generate RSS feeds from websites that don't publish them natively. Tools like FetchRSS, Feed43, and RSS.app allow you to create custom feeds by specifying which parts of a webpage to monitor. These services periodically scrape the target website, extract specified content (headlines, articles, product listings), and generate an RSS feed you can view in any RSS reader or viewer.

However, this approach has limitations: generated feeds update only as frequently as the service checks the website (often hourly or daily), complex websites may be difficult to scrape accurately, and websites can block scrapers or change structure breaking the feed. Website terms of service may prohibit scraping, so verify legality for your specific use case. For monitoring specific competitors or non-RSS sites, web page change detection services like Visualping or ChangeTower offer alternative approaches designed specifically for that purpose. They monitor web pages and alert you to changes without requiring RSS infrastructure. If you need to monitor multiple sites systematically, invest in proper competitive intelligence tools rather than relying on improvised RSS generation.

This typically results from caching at various points in the feed delivery chain. Your website may cache the feed file for performance (common with WordPress caching plugins), CDNs like Cloudflare may cache the feed, feed readers cache content to reduce server load, and RSS viewers themselves may cache to avoid repeatedly fetching the same data. These caches can have TTLs (time-to-live) ranging from minutes to hours, meaning new content doesn't appear immediately.

To troubleshoot: First, verify the feed itself actually contains new content by viewing the raw XML URL in a browser with cache disabled (hard refresh with Ctrl+F5 or Cmd+Shift+R). If new content appears there but not in readers, the issue is reader-side caching that will resolve itself when cache expires. If new content doesn't appear in raw XML, check your website's caching settings and RSS-specific cache configurations. Many WordPress caching plugins have separate settings for feed caching—reduce or disable it. If you publish through Feedburner or similar proxy services, they have their own cache timings to check. For mission-critical feeds requiring immediate updates (like podcasts or time-sensitive news), minimize all caching layers and set explicit cache headers on the feed to short durations like 15-30 minutes.

This is a strategic decision with trade-offs. Full-content feeds provide better user experience and build audience loyalty—subscribers can read everything without leaving their feed reader, making them more likely to remain subscribed and engage with your content. Summary-only feeds drive more traffic to your website since readers must click through to read full articles, generating pageviews and potential ad impressions or conversion opportunities.

Best practice depends on your business model and goals. If you monetize primarily through advertising, summary feeds may drive more beneficial website traffic. If you're building authority and audience relationships (thought leadership, personal brands, B2B content marketing), full-content feeds serve readers better and build stronger connections. A middle-ground approach: include full content but also provide compelling reasons to visit the website—exclusive comments sections, related articles, downloadable resources, or tools available only on-site. Many successful publishers use full-content feeds and monetize through other means: email list building, consulting, products, or services. Remember that frustrated readers unsubscribe from overly restrictive feeds; generous feeds build audiences. Consider your feed as a customer service feature that builds relationships rather than purely a traffic driver. Test both approaches if possible and measure subscriber retention and engagement to inform your decision.

Direct RSS subscriber counting is challenging because the technology wasn't designed with analytics in mind. Feed readers fetch your feed file but don't report back subscriber counts like email services do. However, several approaches provide estimates: Server logs show unique IPs accessing your feed URL, though this overcounts (each check counts as a "subscriber") and undercounts (aggregators appear as single subscribers serving thousands). Google Analytics can track feed traffic if you add tracking parameters to links within your feed.

More reliable solutions involve feed proxy services. FeedBurner (Google's service) provides subscriber statistics by routing your feed through their servers—readers subscribe to the FeedBurner URL, which tracks subscriptions and fetches your actual feed. Feedpress and other alternatives offer similar tracking with better reliability and support than FeedBurner's largely-abandoned service. These services provide subscriber counts, popular items, click-through tracking, and even demographic data. Implementation is simple: point your existing feed URL to the proxy service, and update your site to advertise the proxy URL instead of your direct feed. Existing subscribers gradually migrate as they re-fetch. For high-value feeds, the investment in a paid tracking service ($10-30/month) provides concrete ROI data justifying feed optimization efforts and demonstrating audience growth to stakeholders.