Secrets of RSS

One of the best ways to keep readers coming back to your feed is to make it recognizable by branding it, much as you would for a product you want to sell. One of the main ways of branding your feed is to make the name of your feed stand out by giving it an image (Figure 10.4).

Adding an image to your feed is simple with the <image> elementjust make sure the image you want to use has a URL (that is, it's online):

<?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE rss SYSTEM "http://my.netscape.com/publish/formats/rss-0.91.dtd"> <rss version="0.91"> <channel> <copyright>Copyright 2005.</copyright> <pubDate>Wed, 14 Dec 2005 07:00:00 GMT</pubDate> <lastBuildDate>Mon, 12 Dec 2005 07:00:00 GMT</lastBuildDate> <docs>http://www.rssmaniac.com/steve/info.html</docs> <description>This feed contains news from Steve!</description> <link>http://www.rssmaniac.com/steve</link> <title>Steve's News!</title> <language>en-us</language> <image> <title>Steve's News</title> <url>http://www.rssmaniac.com/steve/Image.jpg</url> <link>http://www.rssmaniac.com/steve</link> <description>Steve's News</description> <width>144</width> <height>36</height> </image> <managingEditor>steve@rssmaniac.com (Steve)</managingEditor> <webMaster>steve@rssmaniac.com (Steve)</webMaster> <skipHours> <hour>8</hour> <hour>9</hour> <hour>10</hour> </skipHours> <skipDays> <day>Sunday</day> </skipDays> <item> <title>Steve shovels the snow</title> <description>It snowed once again. Time to shovel!> </description> <link>http://www.rssmaniac.com/steve</link> </item> <textinput> <title>Search for other items</title> <description>What do you want to find?</description> <name>search</name> <link>http://www.rssmaniac.com/find.php</link> </textinput> </channel> </rss>

You can also use the <title> and <description> elements for the channel to carry branding information, especially if you have a trademark you can use in those elements.