So you want to add an RSS feed…

Well tough luck that’s a search term dominated by corperations trying to sell you services for your podcast on the blockchain…
(Sung to the tune of Do You Want To Build a Snowman from Frozen)

… At least, that’s my experience of the space this evening.

Before we start yes I did miss two days, I started working out again on Tuesday, leading to intense tiredness, and Wednesday is my regular beer & bitch night with my buddies, it used to be work buddies but now we’re just buddies. But I am back on the wagon, now, on with this post.

It’s just an XML file

That’s all RSS is, a standardized XML file. The website w3schools.com was where finally, after about an hour of searching, I found a nice description of the format, all the tags, what they were for. I’ve been using this website since I got frustrated with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX’s horrible WYSIWYG editor, they are consistently the best resource I know of for web development fundamentals. Even if it is still running .asp.

That’s all you need if you want to write your own RSS generator. I’m writing mine in python - The next post will be about that. If that’s all you were here for you can leave now, because I’m about to rant.

What on earth is the rest of this nonsense then?

BEFORE THAT I was catfished by not one, but two websites masquerading as resources. rss.com and rss3.io (I am not going to turn their names into links because I do not want to contribute to their google page rank).

rss.com, rather than being a resource for the nerdy webdev that just wants to know what tags to put where, is instead selling their subscription service for your podcast. At a very “reasonable” 5 bucks a month for educational podcasts. It upsets me that they managed to get the domain. I don’t have their detailed history, if you do please send me an e-mail and I’ll update this with it.

I know nothing about rss3.io save the following:

  • They have broken links on their homepage. I’m actually glad they do, it was the first red flag that made me google them.
  • They’re approximately 1.3 months old. Children when compared to the grandpa that is their namesake.
  • The plugin for them supported by my CMS asks you to put private keys in a plaintext config file.
  • Their most recent twitter post as of writing is apologizing for something that went down at their last party. Don’t worry - They’ve released a “Happy Family” NFT to make up for it.

That was enough for me to yeet that option out the window. If I’m honest, any one of those in isolation would warrant yeeting.

So. I’m rolling my own. Someone has already done this yes, but I wanted to get a little cosy with a schema I’d heard so much about but knew so little about before now. That’s for tomorrow though!

Talk soon,
Meghan