Syndication is, simply put, the practice of offering content to publishers.
This is commonly seen as cartoon strips in newspapers,
where the artist syndicates his work to newspaper publishers.
More than one newspaper can carry the same syndicated cartoon
on the same day. The online version of syndication works on similar
lines: someone who creates content—like news sites or bloggers—
allows the content to be passed on to those who would like
to publish it on their site, or just be informed of new posts.
The message that is sent out is called a feed, which besides the
core content of the creator also contains meta information. There
are mainly two formats in which the feed is structured—RSS and
Atom, both of which are based on the XML file format. RSS or
Really Simple Syndication (or Rich Site Summary) is the more commonly
used format (there are different versions of RSS including
one called RDF) and it is common to refer to a feed as an RSS feed
even though it may be an Atom feed.
To be able to display the feed, one needs an application that
can recognise the main formats. A standalone application is called
a feed reader or feed aggregator. Newer browsers like Opera 9 and
IE7 include an RSS feed reader, as do some e-mail clients.
Additionally there are Web sites that can offer similar functionality
as a standalone client.
Websites that create RSS feeds have links to them on the site. If
the browser supports RSS feeds, clicking on the link will launch
the inbuilt client or the external feed reader.
The list of sites offering a feed can be had from many online
sources, like syndic8.com. Some sites offer a list of feed links as a
file. Such a list is created in OPML (Outline Processor Markup language)
which is also based on XML, and all feed readers are capable
of reading/opening it. Lists of feeds created by you can also be
saved as an OPML file which makes it easier to open these feeds in
another feed reader.
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