There are many different ways you can share your Write Freely blog with the world. One of the most powerful ways to do so is through the built-in RSS feed. RSS “syndicates” your blog posts into a feed that updates whenever you publish new content. This way, anyone who uses an RSS feed reader as their source of reading content will be notified through their feed reader when you publish new content.
Also, RSS allows you to syndicate your content through email marketing platforms, so if your users don’t use an RSS feed reader they can instead sign up for email notification (through a third-party email marketing platform). Write Freely RSS support comes bundled with the system itself.
How Does RSS Work?
RSS uses a markup language, similar to HTML, to describe your content and divide it into discrete sections that can be easily interpreted by other programs. Every time you create new content and publish it, Write Freely pulls the content from the database and updates the RSS feed with the new content. You don’t have to do anything extra to get this feature to work, Write Freely is able to generate and update the RSS feed automatically.
How To Share Your Write Freely RSS Feed With the World
The RSS feed for your Write Freely blog is easy to access. By default, all Write Freely installations will serve an RSS feed at the main domain on a page called “feed”. You can access this page by simply typing in your main domain and /feed after it, as below, replacing “example.com” with your own domain:
https://example.com/feedThere are a few different ways to instruct your readers on how to use your RSS feed.
One of the best ways to inform your readers of your RSS feed is to use a classic “contact” page. Create a page with your contact details, a link to your RSS feed, and perhaps an email signup form. Basically, the purpose of the contact page serves a few valuable functions:
- Lets your readers know your contact options
- Lets them know you have an RSS feed
- Provides a vehicle for generating important feedback (at this time, Write Freely does not support comments on posts)
Other Uses For RSS Feed
Your RSS is not only valuable for updating RSS readers. You can use your RSS to sync with other services. Since the RSS feed is always updated whenever you publish new content, you can use it to automate you content syndication in several different locations.
Use RSS to Send Out Emails
One of the powerful automation features you can leverage with RSS is email delivery. RSS works nicely with popular email marketing platforms like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and others. Of course, you must have an account with one of these services.
But in general, all you need to do is set up an email campaign with RSS, plug in your feed, and select your delivery preferences. Now, whenever you publish new content, your readers who have signed up to your email marketing campaign will receive an email notifying them of new content to read.
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