Discovering Feeds

Returning to the beginning of this article, those links or buttons labeled Atom, RSS, or XML all lead to a syndication feed. Clicking on them will open that feed in your browser (or whatever application you've defined to handle the feed). Either your publication tool adds this to your site, or you can add it easily—just create a hypertext link with the appropriate label.

To make your site easier to subscribe to—after all, not every reader is going to know what to do with this XML file that opens—you can also include buttons and links that specific aggregators provide, such as Bloglines, NewsGator, and so on. These should be marked clearly at the site, or instructions provided in the tool. Again, your publication tool may also provide this.