So what exactly is RSS? You’ve probably heard about it, but might not fully understand what it means. RSS is an acronym for “Really Simple Syndication”, although it’s sometimes referred to as “Rich Site Summary” as well. The word “syndicate” means to publish simultaneously. For example, an author who writes a column might get their column syndicated across several newspapers.

The term you typically come across is “RSS feed”. It’s called a feed because it feeds your content into feed readers, similar to syndicating your content across several readers or visitors. But an RSS feed is really a document. It’s a document created in a language called XML – short for Extensible Markup Language. It might sound confusing, but so does the meaning of HTML – Hypertext Markup Language. That doesn’t stop you from creating websites, does it?
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