• RSS feed Creator

RSS Glossary of Terms
Blog Terms and Glossary

Podcasting Tutorial : Podcasting for Fun and Profit

Podcasting is like broadcasting in that someone creates a show for an audience.  The difference is that broadcasting is done for a general audience to tune in (through television, radio, or Internet radio) while podcasting is much different, you can target a specific niche which makes the power of podcasting much more exciting.

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A glossary of terms is helpful in learning new paradigms of information.

This glossary is broken up into RSS glossary terms and blog glossary terms to better help you understand these two interconnected marketing tools.

RSS Glossary

Aggregator
There are two main types of aggregrators:

1) Web-based  or centralized aggregators aggregates many RSS feeds on behalf of many RSS subscribers. These types of aggregators allow individuals to sign up for the service and read their feeds online in just one site. There's no need to download and install any programs. Find a list of online free RSS readers, here.

2) Desktop/software aggregators require individuals to download and install a program to the computer. This type of aggregator usually has a lot more functions available to the user. Find a list of RSS reader software programs, here.

Autodiscovery
The means by which spiders that are looking for RSS content will find your RSS feed. A code is placed in the head tags of your website page, either the index page of your website or your on-site blog home page.

Channels
These are RSS/XML links to new articles or blogs. Sometimes called a feed.

Feeds
These are RSS/XML documents containing headlines and descriptions used for Web syndication, often with links to new articles or blog entry posts and brief descriptions. Also called a channel, news feed, content feed, xml feed or web feed.

Feed Validator
Tests the formatting of feeds to ensure that they are correctly formed and readable by aggregators and RSS readers.

Headline Element
In an RSS feed, the headline is an element that acts as a title to corresponding link referenced in the feed. Think of it as the same as the title to a listing in the search engine results.

Ping
PING is an acronym for 'Packet Internet Grouper.'  To ping your RSS feed is to send a small automated packet of data to announce updates to your feed. See RSS Tools for pinging services. 

Podcasting
Podcasting entails audio content that is delivered via an RSS feed presenting a downloadable or streaming file (often mp3). Learn more about podcasting...

RSS or Really Simple Syndication
An XML-based Web syndication tool for Web sites and blogs. RSS repackages new content with information such as a date, a title, a link and a brief description. An RSS Reader then interprets this feed so that the user need only read the description and link to the news story or blog post. Originally developed in the late 1990s for my.netscape.com.

RSS Publisher
A Web server that publishes RSS feeds for retrieval by aggregators and RSS readers. These publishing services search the web for updated RSS feeds as well as provide directories that list available RSS feed for syndication. Read more about rss publishing...

RSS Reader
An application that reads many RSS feeds on behalf of one or more RSS subscriber. Most RSS readers are also RSS aggregators, but with a few exceptions. Firefox reads RSS files, but does nothing more than compile the items in a menu tree. Therefore, it's an RSS reader, but not an RSS aggregator.

RSS Subscriber
A Web user who reads RSS feeds using a Web browser, an RSS aggregator or an RSS reader. 

Scraping
Content produced in HTML format can be converted into RSS by a process known as 'scraping'. Scrapers attempt to automatically identify items suitable for RSS by analyzing the markup on a web page. Feeds produced in this way tend to be of lower quality than those tailor made by other means, although scraping can be enhanced by the use of special HTML tags designed to assist scraping programs

Syndication
In general, syndication means the distribution a news article through a syndicate - in this case an RSS feed - for publication in a number of newspapers or periodicals simultaneously. Used in the context of RSS because RSS syndication is all about distributing content for reuse or redistribution on other websites.

XML eXtensible Markup Language
RSS is based on XML. XML is simply a programming language just as is HTML.

Blog Glossary

Blog
A blog is a public Web site with posts or entries ordered, most often, with the most recent first. Most often these posts are also archived. Posts may come from one or many individuals, and the messages often share a common theme. In the most modern blogs, the most recent entries posted are made available for syndication via RSS.

Blogroll
A list of links in the sidebar of a blog, often linking to other blogs. Can be managed via a blog link management system such as www.blogrolling.com

Comment Spam
Comment spam occurs when someone posts off-topic commercial remarks with links in a blog's comment section. Some comment spam is overt but just as often it takes the form of innocuous remarks such as "I agree with your article!" or "Hey, great site!" in a blog's comment section: the spammer's gain is found in the personal details link, which takes you to a dubious (often pornographic) site. One reason comment spam is a major problem is that if readers visit the spammer's link(s), their site often tries to install browser hijackers, tracking cookies or other adware/malware on the duped reader's computer. Most comment spam is automated by spambots rather than actually people.

Reciprocal Link
If you blogroll link to our blog, we will blogroll to your blog

Sidebar
One or more columns along one or both sides of most blogs main page, usually used for blogroll links, contact information etc.

Trackback
A system by which a ping  is sent to another trackback-aware website (usually another blog) to notify that site that a link to them has been made (usually within an article being posted). The objective is to notify the subject of an article that they have been mentioned in another article elsewhere.

Weblog
An online journal or diary that is frequently updated (also referred to as a blog).