RSS interview questions

What is RSS? Explain the purpose RSS?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication / RDF Site Summary / Rich Site Summary.

The frequently updated work like the blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video need to e published in a standardized format. RSS is a family of such Web feed formats. An RSS document is also called a feed, web feed or a channel. It comprises of full or summarized text as well as metadata (dates and authorship).

The purpose of the RSS is to let the publishers join the content quickly and automatically. It also benefits the readers who need timely updates from specific websites. The initials "RSS" are used to refer to the following formats: " (RSS 2.0)", " (RSS 0.91)".

Explain how RSS Works with an example.

With the help of RSS, the website authors can maintain a list of notifications on their website in a standard way.

This list can also be used to find out the latest updates even by people.

The RSS aggregators are used to automatically access the RSS feeds and organize the results per your criteria.

Describe the steps to get your RSS file up on the web.

Authors add the content on the website through the content management programs. These programs have a publish facility that creates the HTML files.

These programs can even update the RSS feed XML file simultaneously. Thus they add an item that refers to the new content and then they remove old content.

Authors who do not use special tools maintain the XML files on their websites by themselves

Some services even read requested websites themselves periodically and then determine changes automatically.

Explain RSS Element.

The element describes the RSS feed and usually contains one or more elements which define the content in the RSS feed.

Explain child elements of . i.e. The Element, The Element, The Element, The Element

Child elements of has three required child elements:

http://www.sample.com
Sample website
en-us

The file now needs to be saved with a .xml extension.

Review the RSS file for any special characters that XML does not accept like “&:. Such characters need to be escaped.

The feed now needs to be validated. If the validator finds any problems in your feed, it will give you messages for each type of problem and highlight where the problem first occurs in your feed.

Benefits to RSS

• Ability to publish latest updates to the readers.
• RSS displays the news and headlines to overwhelm the user. If the user wants details, he can click on the link of the actual content.
• RSS has the ability to control the flow of information users receive
• If the user feels that the content quality is not acceptable, he just needs to remove the feed from the RSS reader to avoid any content being read from that source.
• Allows user to scan information from different sources.
• Can be typically used for weather reports, blogs, headlines, discounts,

Why Create RSS?

• RSS is a very strong technology used to display latest information from various sources.
• RSS can be considered as the most acceptable standard to publish news.
• RSS can be used to increase site traffic since different contextual information can be displayed.
• RSS is simple to create. RSS can be used as a source of income on the site as well.
• Allows user to subscribe or unsubscribe content coming from different sources in a simple manner.

Explain the disadvantages of RSS.

• Graphics and photos are not supported by ALL RSS feeds.
• RSS feeds don’t display the actual URL or name of the website. This may confuse the user.
• Publishers can’t determine the number of users who must have subscribed using its feed.
• Publishers cannot know the reason why some feeds were unsubscribed.
• Creates more traffic on the site and server.
• Finding RSS feeds can be difficult as they may not appear in search results.

RSS more effective than Email. Comment

RSS avoids the problem of Spam commonly observed in Emails. If the spam filter is ON, it may cause important emails to be rejected. This problem is avoided in RSS since the messages will always reach their intended target as it is with the help of RSS reader or RSS aggregator that fetches the messages.

Explain how to use RSS as an autoresponder with RSS Autopublisher.

An autoresponder is used to deliver messages to people who request them. The messages are delivered in a sequential manner. The RSS autoresponders work the same as email autoresponders except that they are used to deliver messages and not emails. The RSS autoresponder will send out messages in a timely manner as specified by the user. Campaign and sales messages are common scenarios where aurotresponder needs to be used. RSS autopublisher is used to publish the autoresponder messages as well as usual RSS feeds.

What is the difference between news aggregators and feed readers?

RSS feed readers and news aggregators are almost the same and used for reading feeds. News aggregators are used specifically to view news related feeds but technically can read any feeds.

What Is Atom in RSS?

An Atom is a XML document used to describe related information which is known as feeds. This document can contain elements or attributes from other XML namespaces. Atom is most commonly used for syndication of Web content such as Weblogs and news headlines to Web sites.

An example of RSS document with explanation.

The first line defines the XML version and the character encoding used in the document. The next line defines the version of RSS. The element is used to describe the RSS feed. The element has three tags;
http://www.sample.com
Sample website
en-us