A Modern Guide to Creating an RSS Feed From Scratch

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In a world completely saturated with algorithms, the idea of a direct, unfiltered line to your audience feels almost revolutionary. Social media platforms are the gatekeepers, deciding who sees your content and when, often leaving creators guessing. This is exactly why the humble RSS feed is making such a big comeback.

It’s not just about nostalgia for old-school internet tech; it’s a strategic play for audience ownership.

When a follower subscribes to your RSS feed, they get every update, every single time. There's no algorithm to appease, no engagement-based sorting, and absolutely no "pay to play" nonsense. This creates a reliable, consistent experience for your most loyal readers and helps build a much deeper sense of community.

Why RSS Feeds Still Matter in a World of Algorithms

Think of an RSS feed as your own private content hotline. Instead of shouting into the chaos of a social media timeline and just hoping for the best, you’re delivering your work directly to people who have explicitly asked for it. This simple shift is a game-changer for anyone serious about building a sustainable online presence.

Regaining Control Over Your Content Distribution

The power dynamic completely changes when you control the distribution channel. You’re no longer renting an audience from a massive tech company; you're building one that's truly yours.

Here’s why that’s such a big deal today:

Algorithm-Proof Your Audience: You're building a connection that can't be throttled by another platform's changing business model. Your subscriber list belongs to you.

A Better User Experience: For many readers, a curated feed reader is a calmer, more focused space than a frantic social media app. It’s a sign that you respect their time and attention.

The Engine of Content Syndication: An RSS feed is the magic behind countless automations, from powering email newsletters to populating content on other sites and apps. In fact, check out our guide on building an email list to see just how well these two strategies work hand-in-hand.

The technology itself, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, has been around for a while.

This diagram breaks down the flow perfectly: a publisher creates content, the feed updates, and a subscriber's reader app automatically pulls in the new stuff. It’s a simple, elegant system that puts the user back in the driver's seat.

The Modern Case for an Old Technology

Despite its age, RSS is proving its value more than ever. The tech, first cooked up by Netscape way back in March 1999, is in the middle of a major resurgence. While its usage dipped for a while, the modern push for privacy, control, and a break from algorithmic fatigue has sparked renewed interest. Today, feed readers like Feedly serve over 15 million users, and RSS adoption is climbing as people get tired of the social media circus. You can dig into more stats about this comeback on vpntierlists.com.

Ultimately, creating an RSS feed is a statement. It says you value a direct connection over platform-mediated reach. It shows you respect your audience's attention and want to give them a reliable way to keep up with your work. Before we jump into the "how-to," understanding this powerful "why" is the most important first step.

Crafting Your First RSS Feed with Basic XML

Alright, let's get our hands dirty and build an RSS feed from scratch. It might sound a little technical, but an RSS feed is really just a simple, structured text file. You don't need any fancy software—just a basic text editor and a bit of curiosity.

The language we'll be using is XML, which stands for eXtensible Markup Language. Think of it as a cousin to HTML. Instead of defining how a page looks with tags like <p> for a paragraph, XML uses tags to describe what the data is—like <title> for a blog post's title. When we arrange these tags in a standard way, we create a feed that any RSS reader can instantly understand.

This flow diagram nails the core concept: the RSS feed creates a direct, unbroken line between you (the creator) and your audience.

That simple, powerful connection is exactly why it's worth the effort to set up your own feed.

The Anatomy of a Basic RSS Feed

Every valid RSS 2.0 feed kicks off with a couple of standard declaration lines and is wrapped entirely in an <rss> tag. Simple enough.

Inside that, there’s one main element: the <channel>. You can think of the <channel> tag as a container for your entire publication. It holds all the high-level info about your site and, most importantly, all of your individual posts.

Laying the Foundation: Channel Tags

Within the <channel>, there are three tags you absolutely need to include to describe your blog:

<title>: The name of your blog or website.

<link>: The full URL to your website's homepage.

<description>: A short, snappy summary of what your content is all about.

After these core channel tags, you’ll start listing your actual posts. Each one gets its own <item> tag. Think of each <item> as a single entry in your feed, whether it’s a blog post, a podcast episode, or a news update.

For a quick reference, here's a breakdown of the essential tags you'll be working with.

Essential RSS Feed XML Tags Explained

XML Tag	Required/Optional	Purpose and Example
`<rss>`	Required	The root element that wraps the entire document. Declares it as an RSS 2.0 feed. Example: `<rss version="2.0">`
`<channel>`	Required	A container for all metadata about the feed and its content. All other tags go inside this.
`<title>`	Required	The name of the channel (your blog). Example: `<title>My Creative Journal</title>`
`<link>`	Required	The URL to the website corresponding to the channel. Example: `<link>https://www.myblog.com</link>`
`<description>`	Required	A short description of the channel. Example: `<description>Exploring art, tech, and everything in between.</description>`
`<item>`	Required (at least one)	Represents a single post or entry in the feed. The `<channel>` can contain multiple `<item>`s.
`<pubDate>`	Optional	The publication date for a specific `<item>`. Crucial for chronological sorting. Example: `<pubDate>Wed, 02 Oct 2024 13:00:00 EST</pubDate>`
`<guid>`	Optional	A unique identifier for an `<item>` to prevent duplicates. Can be the post's URL. Example: `<guid>https://www.myblog.com/post-123</guid>`

Getting familiar with these tags is the key to building and troubleshooting your feed down the road.

Adding Your First Blog Post

Now for the fun part: adding your content. As mentioned, each <item> represents a single piece of content. Just like the <channel>, every <item> needs its own set of tags to describe that specific post.

Here are the most common and essential tags for any <item>:

<title>: The title of the individual blog post.

<link>: The direct URL to that specific post.

<description>: A summary of the post, or even the full content.

<pubDate>: The exact date and time the post was published.

Pay close attention to the <pubDate> tag. It needs to be formatted according to the RFC 822 specification to work correctly. A common and safe format to use is Day, DD Mon YYYY HH:MM:SS TZ, like Tue, 15 Sep 2024 10:00:00 EST. Getting this right is what allows feed readers to sort your content chronologically. No one wants to see old posts first!

Putting It All Together: A Complete Example

Let's build a complete, copy-paste-ready example with two sample posts. You can save this as feed.xml or rss.xml using any plain text editor. This file is your final product—the actual RSS feed you'll eventually upload to your server.

Here's a quick pro-tip: XML is very picky about special characters like &, <, and >. If your post description contains HTML, you absolutely should wrap it in a <![CDATA[...]]> section, like in the first <item> example. This tells the parser to treat everything inside as raw text and not try to interpret it as more XML tags, which prevents a world of validation errors.

With this simple file, you've officially learned how to build an RSS feed by hand. And while platforms like Feather can automate this whole process, understanding the nuts and bolts is an incredibly valuable skill to have.

How to Host and Validate Your New RSS Feed

You’ve successfully crafted your feed.xml file—a perfect, self-contained little package of your latest content. But right now, it’s just a file sitting on your computer. To bring it to life, you need to put it online where feed readers and other services can actually find it. This is called hosting, and it’s much simpler than it sounds.

After that, we’ll tackle the most crucial quality-control step: validation. This is a non-negotiable process that ensures your feed is error-free and will work reliably across the countless apps and platforms that pull in RSS feeds.

Choosing a Home for Your Feed

Your XML file needs a public URL so it can be accessed from anywhere. You have a few straightforward options for this, and each one has its own perks.

The most common method is simply uploading the file to your own website’s server. If your blog is at www.mycoolsite.com, you can place your feed.xml file in the main folder.

Your Website's Root Directory: This is the ideal solution. You upload the file via FTP or your hosting control panel, and the final URL will be clean and professional, like www.mycoolsite.com/feed.xml.

A Subdirectory: If you prefer to keep things tidy, you could place it in a subfolder. This would give you a URL like www.mycoolsite.com/feeds/main.xml. Just make sure you stay consistent!

GitHub Pages: For a completely free and rock-solid option, you can host your file using GitHub Pages. Just create a repository, upload your XML file, and enable Pages. This gives you a public URL you can use immediately.

The key is to have a stable, permanent link. This URL is what you’ll be sharing and submitting to directories, so you want it to be a permanent address, not something that will change later.

The Critical Step of Feed Validation

Once your feed has a public URL, you absolutely must validate it. Think of a validator as a strict proofreader for your XML code. It scans your file and checks it against the official RSS 2.0 specification, catching syntax errors, formatting mistakes, and any missing required elements.

Skipping this step is like publishing a book full of typos. It might work for some readers, but for others, it will be a garbled mess. An invalid feed can fail to update, display incorrectly, or be rejected entirely by major platforms like Apple Podcasts or Feedly.

The gold standard for this task is the W3C Feed Validation Service. It's free, thorough, and trusted by everyone. You just paste your feed’s public URL into the validator, and it gives you a pass/fail grade along with specific, actionable feedback on any errors it finds.

Finding and Fixing Common Validation Errors

Let's walk through a real-world scenario. You paste your feed URL into the W3C validator and see an error that says: XML parsing error: xml.sax.SAXParseException: The entity "T" was referenced, but not declared.

This cryptic message often points to one tiny culprit: an unencoded ampersand (&).

For example, your post title might be "Branding & Marketing Tips". In XML, the & is a special character used to start character entities (like & for an ampersand). If you use a raw & in your text, the XML parser gets confused and throws an error.

The fix is simple:

Locate the error: The validator will usually provide the line number where the error occurred.

Find the character: Open your feed.xml file and go to that line. You'll see the rogue & in your <title> or <description>.

Replace it: Change every instance of & to its proper XML entity: &.

So, <title>Branding & Marketing Tips</title> becomes <title>Branding & Marketing Tips</title>.

Once you make the fix, re-upload the file and run it through the validator again. You should get a green "Congratulations!" message, confirming your feed is now valid and ready for the world.

Automating Your RSS Feed with Modern Tools

Getting your hands dirty with XML is a fantastic way to understand the nuts and bolts of how an RSS feed works. But let's be honest—for a modern creator, that manual process becomes a huge time-sink. The real magic happens with automation, where your RSS feed becomes something that just works without you ever thinking about it.

This is where a smarter, more connected workflow can save you a ton of time and prevent a lot of headaches. Instead of tinkering with XML files and running validators every time you publish, modern tools handle the entire process behind the scenes. It's a total shift from manual labor to effortless content distribution.

The Problem with Manual Feed Management

If you're managing your feed by hand, you know the drill. For every single new post, you have to:

Open your feed.xml file.

Painstakingly create a new <item> block.

Copy and paste the title, link, and description, crossing your fingers you don't mess up any special characters.

Get the <pubDate> formatted just right according to the RFC 822 spec.

Remember to update the channel's <lastBuildDate>.

Upload the new file to your server.

Run the URL through a validator again, just to be sure you didn't break anything.

This might be fine for a couple of posts, but it gets old fast. It's tedious, and it's shockingly easy to make a mistake. One misplaced ampersand or a forgotten closing tag can take your entire feed offline, cutting you off from readers and breaking your newsletter automations.

One-Click Publishing and Automatic Feed Generation

This is precisely the problem platforms like Feather are built to eliminate. When your blog is powered by a modern system, creating an RSS feed isn't a separate, technical chore—it's just a built-in part of your publishing process.

When you use Feather to publish your Notion pages as a blog, the RSS feed is generated automatically. The second you publish a new post in Notion, Feather does all the heavy lifting. It grabs your content, wraps it in perfectly structured and valid XML, and updates your public feed instantly.

There's no XML to write, no files to upload, and no validation headaches. It just works.

Finding Your Auto-Generated Feed URL in Feather

So, where do you find this magical, self-updating feed? In Feather, it’s always at a clean, predictable URL. You can find your feed URL right in your Feather dashboard under your site settings.

It usually follows a simple format:

For your whole blog: yourdomain.com/feed.xml

For a specific author: yourdomain.com/author/author-name/feed.xml

For a specific tag: yourdomain.com/tag/tag-name/feed.xml

This automatic creation of feeds for authors and tags is a game-changer. It lets your readers subscribe only to the topics or writers they're most interested in, giving them a much better experience. For example, if someone only wants to read your "Case Studies," they can subscribe to that specific tag's feed and get only the updates they care about.

This is the foundation of an efficient content machine. You can put all your energy into creating amazing content in Notion, knowing the technical distribution is handled for you. This kind of automation is at the heart of modern content systems, letting you explore powerful strategies without getting bogged down in the weeds. To see how this fits into the bigger picture, check out these powerful content automation tools. In the end, it’s all about making the RSS feed invisible so you can spend your time where it really counts: creating for your audience.

Promoting Your RSS Feed to Grow Your Audience

So, you've built your RSS feed. That's a huge step toward truly owning your audience connection. But a feed without subscribers is like a radio station with no one tuned in. The next crucial phase is getting it in front of people—not by shouting from the rooftops, but through smart, strategic promotion.

Your goal is to make subscribing as easy and intuitive as possible for your most engaged readers. Let’s get that feed working for you.

Make Your Feed Discoverable on Your Website

The first and most obvious place to start is your own website. If a visitor has to hunt for your feed, you've probably already lost them. Visibility is everything, and there are two non-negotiable things you need to do right away.

First, add an RSS auto-discovery link tag to the <head> section of your site’s HTML. It’s a simple line of code that looks like this:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Your Blog Name" href="https://yourdomain.com/feed.xml">

This little snippet is a game-changer. It’s what allows browsers and feed readers to automatically detect that your site has a feed, often displaying that small RSS icon in the address bar. It’s the behind-the-scenes signal that makes subscribing a one-click affair for anyone who knows what they're looking for.

Second, place a visible RSS icon somewhere prominent—the footer, sidebar, or header are all great spots. Make sure you link this icon directly to your feed URL. This visual cue is a clear invitation for anyone who prefers to follow content through a feed reader.

Here's where things get really efficient. One of the most powerful ways to use your new feed is to hook it up to your email marketing service. Platforms like Mailchimp or ConvertKit have "RSS-to-Email" campaign features that basically put your newsletter on autopilot.

It works like this:

You give the platform your feed URL.

You set up an email template that pulls in data from your feed, like post titles and summaries.

You pick a schedule—daily, weekly, whatever works for you.

From there, the service automatically checks your feed for new posts. When it finds one, it populates your template and sends out a newsletter digest to your subscribers. You don’t have to lift a finger. This single integration transforms your feed into a content engine for your email list, ensuring subscribers never miss an update.

Making sure your RSS feed is a core part of your distribution requires a solid content marketing strategy.

Submit Your Feed to Directories and Aggregators

Beyond your own site, you can tap into massive, pre-existing audiences by submitting your feed to popular directories and content aggregators. Think of these platforms as discovery engines where millions of people are actively looking for new content.

Getting your feed listed puts your work right in front of them. Here are a few essential places to submit your feed:

Feedly: This is a big one. With over 15 million users, getting listed in Feedly's directory is a must.

Flipboard: This platform turns your blog posts into a beautiful, magazine-style format, exposing your content to a more visually-driven audience.

AllTop: A classic aggregator that organizes top blogs by topic. It's fantastic for driving highly relevant, interested traffic your way.

Submitting is usually just a matter of filling out a form and dropping in your feed URL. Once you’re approved, every new post you publish gets automatically pulled into these platforms, amplifying your reach far beyond your direct audience. This tactic is a core piece of any good content syndication plan, which you can learn more about in our guide to content syndication services.

Got Questions About Your RSS Feed? Let's Clear Things Up

Once you get your hands dirty with your new RSS feed, a few questions are bound to pop up. It happens to everyone. Getting straight answers to these can save you a ton of headache down the road, so let's tackle some of the most common ones I hear from people building their first feed.

RSS vs. Atom vs. JSON Feeds: What’s the Real Difference?

You've probably seen these three terms thrown around. While they all do the same basic job—syndicating your content—they each have their own quirks.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication): This is the old guard, the one that started it all. It’s a straightforward XML format that’s become the go-to standard for everything from blogs to podcasts. Its biggest selling point? Just about every app and reader out there supports it.

Atom: Think of Atom as the slightly more modern, refined cousin to RSS. It was designed to clean up some of the confusing parts of the original RSS spec. It’s more standardized and technically a bit richer, but it never quite overtook RSS 2.0 in popularity.

JSON Feed: The new kid on the block. Instead of clunky XML, it uses a cleaner, more modern JSON structure that developers tend to love. It’s a breeze to work with if you're a programmer, but support for it in feed readers is still hit-or-miss.

How Do I Add Images or Podcast Episodes to My Feed?

This is where your feed goes from a simple list of text to a dynamic channel people actually want to follow. To pull this off, you’ll need to get friendly with a specific XML tag inside each <item>.

The <enclosure> tag is your secret weapon here. Whether you’re adding a blog post’s featured image or a full podcast episode, you’ll use this tag with three key pieces of information: the URL of the media file, its length in bytes, and its MIME type (like image/jpeg for a picture or audio/mpeg for an MP3).

For podcasters, it’s worth noting that major platforms like Apple Podcasts also look for their own special tags, like <itunes:image>, to properly display things like your show’s cover art.

Help! My RSS Feed Isn't Updating. What Now?

This is probably the single most common frustration people run into. If you’ve published new content but your subscribers aren't seeing it, don't panic. It's usually one of a few simple things.

First, go back and look at your XML file. Did you remember to update the <pubDate> for your new items and, just as importantly, the <lastBuildDate> for the whole channel? Many feed readers rely on these timestamps to know something has changed.

Next, copy your feed’s URL and run it through the W3C Feed Validation Service. A tiny, missed syntax error—like a forgotten closing tag—can break the entire feed for some apps.

Finally, check your website’s caching. Sometimes, an aggressive caching plugin or server setting can get "stuck," serving an old version of your feed.xml file to visitors. If you're using a tool to generate your feed automatically, this is rarely an issue, but it's a frequent culprit in manual setups.

Does Having an RSS Feed Actually Help With SEO?

An RSS feed isn’t a direct ranking factor that will shoot you to the top of Google, but it does have some nice indirect perks for your SEO.

By its very nature, a feed encourages content syndication. When other sites pick up your content through your feed, it can lead to more backlinks and referral traffic coming your way. That’s always a good thing.

It also gives search engine crawlers another way to discover your new content quickly, which can speed up how fast your latest posts get indexed. When you add that auto-discovery link to your site’s header, you’re essentially putting up a big, bright sign for both users and bots that says, "Hey, fresh content this way!"

Ultimately, an RSS feed creates a better experience for your most loyal readers, and any positive user signal you can send to Google is a win for your site's SEO in the long run.

Stop wrestling with XML and start publishing. With Feather, your Notion pages become a beautiful, SEO-optimized blog with a perfectly formatted RSS feed generated automatically. Focus on creating, and let us handle the rest. Get started with Feather today.