pf » How to add RSS Autodiscovery to your site

June 15, 2005

How to add RSS Autodiscovery to your site

I sometimes see web sites or blogs that have RSS feeds, but fail to include the one line of HTML that enables RSS autodiscovery. Even some well known blogs such as 37 Signals - Signal Vs Noise omit the feature. Jason Kottke's blog has autodiscovery support on the main page, but not on his entry pages.

Adding that one line of code to your template will make it easier for people to subscribe to your RSS feed. Here's how:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" 
  title="RSS Feed for petefreitag.com" 
  href="/rss/" />

The above link tag should be added inside the head tag of your HTML document.

You will of course need to change the value of the title and href attributes to fit your needs.

If your feed is an ATOM feed you will want to change the type to application/atom+xml.

If you have multiple feeds for the url you can just specify multiple link tags.

When you enable autodiscovery for your rss feed it allows browsers and aggregators to automatically detect the RSS feed when your browsing, and it makes it easy for the user to subscribe to it. Both FireFox, and Safari 2.0 support autodiscovery of RSS feeds out of the box, here's what it looks like when you find one:

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add to del.icio.us | Tags: rss, autodiscovery, html, atom, blogs

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Comments

On 06/15/2005 at 7:30:12 PM MDT freaksauce wrote:

That's awesome I wondered why mine wasn't working, thanks Pete!

On 06/15/2005 at 10:12:58 PM MDT Michael Dinowitz wrote:

The trailing slash is illegal according to the w3 validator.

On 06/16/2005 at 10:27:21 AM MDT Pete Freitag wrote:

Michael - The trailing slash on the link tag is required if your document type is XHTML, if your doctype is HTML 4.0 then you should not have the closing slash on the tag.

On 06/27/2005 at 6:41:15 AM MDT Jonson wrote:

Dear sirs, Please tell me what is required to implement RSS feeds in Online Traffic School Educational site. Send me the reply as soon as you can. Thankyou, Jonson.

On 10/07/2005 at 9:18:48 PM MDT M. Mortazavi wrote:

I do not see the RSS icon on Firefox, when I go here, for example:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/rss/front.htm

i.e., I don't see any autodiscovery for it.

On your website, and on the WSJ feed website, I do see the auto-discovery icon on Firefox. I know how to subscribe when the icon is there but how does one subscribe when the icon is not present.

On 10/21/2005 at 12:53:56 AM MDT Reddick wrote:

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On 10/21/2005 at 12:55:58 AM MDT Reddick wrote:

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On 11/17/2005 at 9:12:05 AM MST Mathew wrote:

Submit the links for your RSS feeds to www.rsspool.com/rsspool/addrss.asp and get your rssfeed listed in google.com and other search engines.

On 11/19/2005 at 11:03:21 AM MST naser wrote:

yeah, I use the same trick too :)

On 03/10/2006 at 8:35:33 PM MST Ikey wrote:

Hello:

I was at your blog a month ago, and read about adding autodiscovery tags at blogs. I did it.

I have not seen any sign of improvement in traffic since then.

Unless there is an error that I made which I am unaware of.

Ikey Benney http://maychic.com/clickbankbuddy/index.cgi

On 04/04/2006 at 11:30:55 AM MDT Ray Corbett wrote:

Hi,

I inserted the above code in the index.html of my site http://www.search-wiz.info but nothing happened. If you have time look at the site and click on view source and you'll see the code, but nothing is appearing on the page.

I'm new at this, but isn't the graphic above supposed to show up on the page somewhere? And, if so, how do you control where it is going to show up on your page, by just pasting the code between the head tags? Obviously I'm confused.

Help...Ray

On 07/22/2006 at 10:47:41 AM MDT Shivangi Garg wrote:

Site is very comprehensive and informative. I enjoyed the visit. Comments from http://www.giftwithlove.com

On 03/05/2007 at 3:52:19 AM MST Arvind Kumar wrote:

Womenbrands.com deals with daily issues related with women in the age group of 16 to 50 years.for more on women issues log on to www.womenbrands.com

On 03/10/2007 at 1:26:21 PM MST vikas wrote:

Thanks for sharing.

On 04/20/2007 at 9:35:55 PM MDT narendra wrote:

thanks man its great

On 06/14/2007 at 9:11:55 PM MDT Tecnometro wrote:

Hello which feeds can you recommend me?

I read that feeds are the future in the information and I wanna know which feeds service you use?.

http://tecnometro.blogspot.com/

On 06/20/2007 at 8:07:55 PM MDT Runstream wrote:

We need more people like you educating - Great article!

http://runstream.com

On 06/24/2007 at 7:34:28 PM MDT suray wrote:

Great! Remarkable, I've implemented it and it works.

On 06/25/2007 at 3:02:42 AM MDT LeoTheMaster wrote:

Is it working for Windows Live Spaces !

On 06/29/2007 at 7:57:57 PM MDT celexa wrote:

I want to say - thank you for this!

On 07/05/2007 at 3:48:44 PM MDT cosanostradamus wrote:

. OK. So how do we then check to see if it's working, hm?

http://blog-me-no-blogs.blogspot.com/ BLOG ME NO BLOGS .

On 07/11/2007 at 11:16:05 AM MDT Feedst wrote:

Guys, Here's an easy way to generate your own autodiscovery tags:

http://www.feedest.com/toolAutodiscovery.cfm

Hope this helps.

On 08/15/2007 at 9:23:16 AM MDT Roman wrote:

This works on Netscape and fire fox but not on internet explorer

On 08/24/2007 at 2:48:48 PM MDT Debi Winters wrote:

Thank you.

On 09/14/2007 at 6:27:28 AM MDT Mike wrote:

There are a lot of things that we do not do

On 09/22/2007 at 5:37:54 PM MDT Joe Smith wrote:

Hey whats up, check this out: http://www.holyvideogames.com/

On 09/23/2007 at 4:59:44 PM MDT cosanostradamus wrote:

. On 07/05/2007 at 3:48:44 PM MDT cosanostradamus wrote:

>> "OK. So how do we then check to see if it's working, hm?" <<

Anybody ever answer any questions here?

http://blog-me-no-blogs.blogspot.com/ BLOG ME NO BLOGS .

On 09/29/2007 at 12:52:30 AM MDT speedyeoh wrote:

That owesome....I will use it in my blog

On 09/30/2007 at 4:54:03 AM MDT mark wrote:

add this to my site to link to picasso gallery and ebay and works just great thanks for sharing Comments from http://www.collieryroad.com.com

On 10/08/2007 at 10:33:02 AM MDT Alex R. wrote:

So how do we know which format of feeds were currently using? On Wordpress I'm running 2.3 'dexter' what feed is this?

www.blogindiversity.com

On 10/08/2007 at 11:03:18 PM MDT cams4life wrote:

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On 10/11/2007 at 3:25:25 PM MDT RT wrote:

This is all very interesting. My question. I use Word Press 2.3 which is .PHP format.

Where do I use this piece of script?

On 10/17/2007 at 2:49:23 PM MDT Carla Backmon wrote:

Hello Pete, I really appreciate the information. I working with the DotNetNuke module and I am hoping that this option is available within the module. They have not got back to me yet about that but if not I put in a request to see if it could be added to the module it would definitely be an asset. New on the Blog Scene, Carla Backmon http://www.savvmari.com

On 10/21/2007 at 4:32:29 AM MDT flashyshades wrote:

thanks for the tips, hopefully they will work like a charm. like all bloggers, i certainly want my lovingly crafted site to get the most traffic possible

(ahem)

http://www.flashyshades.com

On 11/10/2007 at 2:58:11 AM MST Masturi wrote:

I see. Okey guys I will try this tip. Thanks Masturi http://refleksie.blogspot.com

On 11/11/2007 at 4:54:40 PM MST MemoTrek Blogger wrote:

Thanks a lot for this tip! Been looking for this for quite some time. As we use Joomla! - and this doesn't seem to be enabled by default this hint was really useful! Cheers!

www.memotrek.com/blog/

On 11/19/2007 at 1:06:41 AM MST victor wrote:

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On 11/25/2007 at 7:43:08 AM MST Girl-Woman wrote:

How do you know what your feed is? I tried to implant but it didn't work. I am on blogspot and it says Atom at the end of the post. My feed is feedburner.

On 11/26/2007 at 2:53:49 AM MST K.S. balamurugan wrote:

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On 11/27/2007 at 12:25:25 PM MST Software Dungeon wrote:

This is the coolest tip. Tell me does it create much more traffic?

On 11/27/2007 at 3:27:07 PM MST musa wrote:

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On 11/27/2007 at 3:32:10 PM MST musa wrote:

http://elokcomputer.web.id Hello Pete, I really appreciate the information. I working with the DotNetNuke module and I am hoping that this option is available within the module. They have not got back to me yet about that but if not I put in a request to see if it could be added to the module it would definitely be an asset. New on the Blog Scene, Carla Backmon

On 12/02/2007 at 9:08:00 PM MST wmwebtr ödüllü seo yar??mas? wrote:

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On 12/02/2007 at 9:08:48 PM MST wmwebtr ödüllü seo yar??mas? wrote:

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On 01/10/2008 at 3:34:41 AM MST nitin wrote:

Hi, I inserted the above code in the index.html of my site http://ideas1000.blogspot.com but nothing happened.

On 02/02/2008 at 4:14:45 AM MST Jamie wrote:

I'm having trouble with my blog. I tried to add an RSS feed link (on the right) but I don't think I did it right.

http://big-brother-9-blog.blogspot.com

On 02/08/2008 at 12:09:57 AM MST Anju Jindal wrote:

Site has very useful content and articles. Will recommend this to others. http://www.hyderabadonnet.com

On 02/13/2008 at 4:36:16 AM MST K.S.Bala Murugan wrote:

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On 02/15/2008 at 4:24:21 AM MST Oil and Gas Jobs - Oilcareers wrote:

Very interesting and also very nice! Thanks to the developers!

On 03/10/2008 at 4:22:53 AM MST Ajit wrote:

sir, I'm trying to develope an RSS aggregator in c# .net. i want to add Autodiscovery feature to it.

I'll tell u the requirement,

if i give the site link then it shud display rss feeds present in it.

so can u please guide me.

On 03/22/2008 at 6:48:09 AM MST Martin wrote:

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On 03/24/2008 at 1:44:51 AM MST iwan wrote:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Gudang-kl Can I increase my google adsense with RSS Autodiscovery?

On 03/27/2008 at 12:13:38 AM MST Anju Mittal wrote:

We liked the information available here. http://www.keralaflowerplaza.com

On 04/04/2008 at 1:45:20 PM MST Debi Winters wrote:

Thank you.

On 04/05/2008 at 3:35:26 PM MST Debi Winters wrote:

Thank you.

On 04/10/2008 at 9:16:23 PM MDT David Hepworth wrote:

Thank you for the useful advice!

On 04/12/2008 at 11:59:24 PM MDT kursat wrote:

thanks mean

http://www.kursatsenturk.com

On 04/14/2008 at 12:54:27 PM MDT Muhabbet wrote:

thank you mean

http://www.muhabbetx.org

On 04/18/2008 at 2:47:27 AM MDT juler wrote:

Hi there, am behind http://lessonko.com website, thanks for this post.... it help me alot...

On 04/18/2008 at 10:31:05 PM MDT daps wrote:

I used it for my blog

http://slsecurity.blogspot.com

it works fine. If any one have a time please visit my blog. you will find very useful info. there.

On 04/21/2008 at 7:41:29 AM MDT Kim wrote:

Thank you for the info on autodiscovery... it took me a bit to get it to work but I did... http://www.cabinfevergifts.com

On 04/25/2008 at 1:55:57 AM MDT ingiborishka wrote:

http://dealjoin.blogetery.com/2008/04/22/hello-world/ this is my first post on blog

On 04/27/2008 at 3:48:00 AM MDT Kunal wrote:

Hi,

Can any one help me with making RSS autodiscoverable when rss is present in iframe of the page????

On 05/15/2008 at 5:31:58 AM MDT Anju Mittal wrote:

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On 06/14/2008 at 4:07:42 PM MDT Shodiqiel Hafily wrote:

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On 06/24/2008 at 7:26:32 AM MDT http://www.juliusmamaril.com/category/blogging wrote:

What an awesome Piece of code and tips Surely use this in my sites: www.myce101.com, www.juliusmamaril.com,www.gadgetbites.com. Thax for the tips....Perfect

On 06/24/2008 at 7:30:38 AM MDT http://www.gadgetbites.com/category/blog wrote:

That's good Tips.. Gonna try it in mine www.mywifefashion.com www.myreviews101.com

On 06/24/2008 at 7:33:32 AM MDT http://www.mywifefashion.com/sloggi-launches-live- wrote:

Thanks for the tip... http://juliunizeer.myce101.com www.villamaniboc.com ... Ok

On 06/28/2008 at 4:07:38 AM MDT s.jana wrote:

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On 06/30/2008 at 6:13:32 PM MDT juliunizeer wrote:

Perfect :http://www.myce101.com,http://www.juliusmamaril.com, http://www.juliunizeer.myce101.com,http://tetzmemore.myce101.com

On 07/08/2008 at 5:53:16 PM MDT Hoang wrote:

This is my blog: http://webmasterseoblog.com

On 07/15/2008 at 6:38:53 PM MDT PetMono wrote:

hello autodiscovery.

my blog catalog site has not updated recent posts in almost two months. they can't figure it out nor can i. maybe you can? i added a menu page in front of my blog that lists most recent posts and i placed rss info on both menu page and page one of the blog...

my site = http://petmonologues.com my feed = http://www.petmonologues.com/pet022207/feed/

On 07/17/2008 at 12:21:52 PM MDT Tamela wrote:

My recent post is not being updated. I can update my thumbshots but not my posts. And i have been trying for more than a week now. It just keeps saying Last Crawl: Error on whatever date it crawled. I am new at this stuff so can you explain it in layman's terms how I can update my posts. Thank you so much!

On 07/19/2008 at 11:04:36 AM MDT Gelinlikler,Gelinlik Modelleri wrote:

thanks link www.gelinlik-resimleri-modelleri.blogspot.com

On 07/22/2008 at 8:47:02 PM MDT Debi Winters wrote:

Thank you.

On 07/22/2008 at 9:19:24 PM MDT Debi Winters wrote:

Thank you.

On 07/29/2008 at 8:58:14 PM MDT cuhenk wrote:

Thank you for the useful advice!

free-ebookandsoftware.blogspot.com

On 07/30/2008 at 3:31:44 AM MDT kishor wrote:

i want to add read more link in RSSAggregator module of dotnetnuke

On 08/26/2008 at 4:47:08 AM MDT wishsomez wrote:

sun shining well!!! sun shining well!!! sun shining well!!!

On 08/27/2008 at 9:58:24 AM MDT Viv wrote:

I am not sure how to add this to my site. I just changed the template and I am having trouble understanding exactly where to place this code.

On 09/28/2008 at 11:00:37 PM MDT fhands wrote:

add my blog:

http://xpromusics.blogspot.com/

http://musicafree-mp3.blogspot.com/

On 09/30/2008 at 5:31:27 AM MDT XXX wrote:

Quality info top man!

On 10/15/2008 at 12:19:01 PM MDT somesoft wrote:

Download antivirus program http://www.some-soft.com

On 11/07/2008 at 1:16:05 PM MST Daniel Hunt wrote:

Thanks Pete, I'll add it to my website to see if it can be discovered.

On 11/30/2008 at 6:16:59 AM MST David S wrote:

How did I miss this? Worked first time, thank you :-)

On 12/11/2008 at 7:21:21 AM MST Adrian Ovalles wrote:

Search continental www.loogico.com

On 12/11/2008 at 2:53:57 PM MST mlln_dolar wrote:

Great tip. Go here to get all the lastest news from around the world. http://realhotnewz.blogspot.com

On 12/12/2008 at 4:50:43 AM MST Madhu wrote:

url name- http://www.uttarbharat.com uttarbharat.com helps you to order online to send Gifts to Delhi, Birthday gifts to Delhi, Anniversary Gifts to Delhi for any delivery date.

On 12/18/2008 at 2:47:58 PM MST British Homes Group wrote:

Thanks, we will add it and see if it works becasue a few readers above seem to be having problems with it.

http://blog.britishhomesgroup.com

On 01/03/2009 at 12:31:10 AM MST Celine wrote:

SEO Add Links - One Way Links Building Tool. Increase traffic, get high pagerank

On 01/05/2009 at 11:20:02 AM MST Michael Haltman wrote:

This is a great tip, but as a novice to feeds I am not sure how to reconfigure the code you provided. If my site is http://politicsandfinance.blogspot.com, and I use feedburner, can you tell me what it should look like?

I really appreciate it.

Happy New Year.

Mike

On 01/09/2009 at 11:52:00 AM MST Anonymous wrote:

this my blog :

http://vertizone.blogspot.com

plz check it out, n give me comments or critics from u all... what's wrong about that blog? thx...

On 01/09/2009 at 1:59:08 PM MST Julius wrote:

Please check my blog because this is new revised and I guess the RSS Feed is not working...Make a comment to on how to improve with this blog....thanks. @ www.affiliate-rocks.blogspot.com

Cheers,

Julius

On 01/11/2009 at 11:16:23 AM MST jay wrote:

I have tried to put the script in my blog but I don't see any RSS icon. I have tried in IE, Avant, Google Chrome, Netscape, Firefox. Is there anything I am missing? Plz help, thanks @ www.xrangeglobal.com

On 01/21/2009 at 6:16:31 PM MST Mark Vasquez wrote:

Why is my blog image is not showing,it did that before and i took my blog down and put it back up,and it showed why is it doing it again

On 01/23/2009 at 9:13:18 AM MST domredsea wrote:

an excellent explanation and wonderful blog:)

On 02/06/2009 at 1:29:33 AM MST Electric cars wrote:

Thank you for the briefly explain that how to add rss, it?s understandably difficult for many people to embrace Google?s Chrome browser since it?s a little too bare-bones for most. For basic browsing or for productivity efforts in Google Docs, it?s great. I also enjoy using Chrome with FriendFeed and other JavaScript-heavy sites dueto the fast V8 rendering engine. But as I?ve pointed out before, without commonly available features in Firefox like a vast catalog of extensions, Chrome isn?t likely to see huge jumps in market share until the second half of this year. http://www.nopycars.com

On 02/16/2009 at 3:20:29 PM MST Grannyann wrote:

my latest posts (or any posts), are not showing up in the blog catalog: http://www.anntuckerblog.com (on page 8) can someone tell me how to get them there. thanks

On 02/27/2009 at 11:32:23 AM MST AM wrote:

Yes good to know but how would you add that code to an IWEB pages where my documents are on... I tried the code, it didn't work! Thanks

On 03/05/2009 at 8:31:31 AM MST priya wrote:

100

Please visit my blog php-webdevelopment.blogspot.com. you will get nice tips about web development scripts.

On 03/12/2009 at 1:56:10 AM MST Alex wrote:

101

Ow yea! I got working RSS both on Fire fox and IE7.

Booya! http://www.epiclosers.com/

On 03/22/2009 at 9:32:17 AM MST Elizabeth Ann Tucker wrote:

102

I cannot get my current posts to show up on my site in Blog Catalog. What am I doing wrong or what is missing?

On 05/05/2009 at 1:47:27 PM MDT Dr. Digital Bones wrote:

103

This is too slow

On 05/23/2009 at 4:18:51 PM MDT Altair wrote:

104

hi i can't use it, it just show some error, and now my post doesn't show up!

please look here, and give me some respons: http://killer-generation.blogspot.com

On 05/28/2009 at 7:48:15 PM MDT Lee wrote:

105

What's nice is that Blogger includes this RSS autodiscovery functionality by default, like in this blog - http://redheadedkids.blogspot.com

On 05/31/2009 at 10:56:21 PM MDT ????? ?????????????? wrote:

106

What's nice is that Blogger includes this RSS autodiscovery functionality by default, like in this blog - http://al3ashek2.blogspot.com/

On 06/01/2009 at 1:56:34 PM MDT sandeep wrote:

107

Very Nice post indeed.I will use it for my blog http://www.mygr8blog.com Cheers, Sandy

On 06/16/2009 at 1:01:24 PM MDT Mehul wrote:

108

Wounder why mine was not working not sure it was the problem from blog catalog or form my this blog http://www.prime-targeting.com

On 06/19/2009 at 7:37:18 PM MDT Aisha wrote:

109

Sorry, but i still don't understand it....

On 07/02/2009 at 3:07:13 PM MDT USB Company wrote:

110

Thanks for this very useful tip, i will be implementing this over at www.usbcompany.co.uk/blog

Merci!

On 07/02/2009 at 10:34:25 PM MDT Angie's Recipes wrote:

111

I am using feedburner, what should add it? Original blog feed or feedburner?