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There are several optional elements in the channel so I’ll reference a few of the more popular ones.

The first is the generator element. This element simply tells the aggregator or feed reader what generated the RSS feed, ie Wordpress, Typepad, etc.

The image element is one of my favorite as it allows you to insert a logo into your feed that shows up in popular feed readers and aggregators.

The language element identifies which language the feed is in. If you do use the language element (which is often supplied by the publishing platform) you must adhere to standard RSS language codes.

If you want to be friendly to to RSS developers it’s always nice to include either the lastBuildDate or pubDate elements for a channel. These elements indicate the last time the feed was updated. As I’ve discussed before this is a very valuable tool for RSS readers to know when a feed was updated so the machine knows whether there are new items in the feed without checking each post individually.

The rating element helps to describe the nature of the content in the feed. For instance, iTunes uses this to determine which podcasts contain content that explicit - much like video games and movies. Although this is not that important of an element for the ways RSS is used today in the future it could provide a lot of value for filtering content.

The ttl element is another valuable element I recommend including in your feed (if you have a choice). Basically it tells aggregators and feed readers how many minutes to wait until the feed should be checked again for more content. Unfortunately for us RSS developers it, like lastBuildDate, are available in less than half of RSS feeds.

The copyright element simply provides a human readable copyright that applies to the feed and the content of the feed. It acts in the same way as any other copyright statement on other mediums. If you are lacking this element your content is still protected under its originating copyright (if one exists).

And that wraps up what I think are important channel elements. Next week we’ll move on to items - which are how posts are included in an RSS feed.

The RSS Board recently released some statistics regarding element usage in RSS feeds. If you are curious, check it out. If you are an RSS developer it should be quite important to you.

What’s in your RSS feed? (series)
The Title
The Description
The Link

Tags: RSS, Tutorial

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