What is an RSS Feed and how do I generate one?

RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regular updates from web content.

RSS is really handy for those who regularly visit the web. It allows you to stay informed easily, by retrieving all the latest content from the websites you are interested in, and displaying them together in the one easy-to-read place. It also saves you time by not having to visit each site individually every time. 

Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers offer their content in the form of an RSS Feed to the public through their website. 

 << Just look for the RSS Feed icon on the websites of your choice. 

All you need now, is some good RSS feeds and a feed reader platform like tchop to feed them all through.

Most news feeds have a page dedicated to RSS Feeds. Most of the time if you just google a certain website or channel with the word RSS you should get a list of URLs to use. 

How to generate an RSS Feed URL:

When you click on an RSS icon, a new page will open in your browser. The URL of this new page will have the word "rss" in the address or a page of XML code will appear. Whichever url opens when you click on the RSS Feed icon, is the url you need to make the connection with tchop.

With our rss feed integration - tchop Integrations, you can set up content from any website to populate its contents automatically to your chosen mix.

tchop tip: If the website you want to feed content from, has no RSS Feed icon, here is another way you can generate an RSS feed url:

 Look through the website's source code:

1. Right click on the webpage you want to feed the content from. The webpage should be a landing page that populates new posts like "news" 
2. Choose "View Page Source"
3. From the source code page, press: Ctrl-F on PC and Command-F on Mac
4. In the "Find" search bar type: "feed" or "rss".
5. Check the "Find" results for a url that has either "rss" or "feed" in the address. It usually looks something like this: <a href="http://www.wikihow.com/feed.rss" />
6. Click on that link and you will see the RSS Feed url you need to connect the feed to your tchop app channel.

NEXT STEP: Now that you have generated your choice of RSS Feed urls, it's time to integrate them into tchop. Check out our FAQ - How do I automate content using the tchop RSS Feed Integration?

tchop Blog: If you would like to read more on our Integrations features, check out our tchop blog posts:

Three easy ways to add instant web content to your app using URLs, RSS Feeds and Slack Integrations

How to generate RSS feeds from Google search results, so you never miss out any important online news.

How to use Slack as a publishing tool for your own branded news app