[Feeds] Re: Should we standardize on a single URL path to RSS feeds?

Steve <steve@monkinetic.blog> Mon, 16 December 2024 18:50 UTC

Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2024 18:50:40 +0000
To: "feeds@ietf.org" <feeds@ietf.org>
From: Steve <steve@monkinetic.blog>
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Subject: [Feeds] Re: Should we standardize on a single URL path to RSS feeds?
Archived-At: <https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/feeds/scbMB6TWy7_cKSNAt1q1dc8aRN8>

Hello folks,

I believe this is considered a solved problem. RSS/Atom autodiscovery was first proposed back in the early 2000s, see an early work from the "RSS Advisory Board": RSS Autodiscovery [1] in 2006 recommending using a <link> element in the page's <head> to identify alternate representations of the content:

> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS"

> href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheRssBlog">

The same recommendation was being made in 2015, see Superfeedr [2] here:

> This mechanism is called Auto-discovery and is performed using a rather simple mechanism: a simple <link> tag to add inside the <head> section of the HTML document.

Then another example, in 2022 by Pete Freitag [3]:

> I sometimes see web sites or blogs that have RSS feeds, but fail to include the one line of HTML that enables RSS autodiscovery. Even some well known blogs such as37 Signals - Signal Vs Noiseomit the feature.Jason Kottke's bloghas autodiscovery support on the main page, but not on his entry pages.
>
> Adding that one line of code to your template will make it easier for people to subscribe to your RSS feed. Here's how:
>
> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
>   title="RSS Feed for petefreitag.com"
>   href="/rss/" />

There was a proposed (but expired) draft RFC describing this mechanism back in 2007 [4].

I would recommend anyone doing feed discovery (publishing or reading) follow this practice.

--Steve

[1] https://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery
[2] https://blog.superfeedr.com/rss-autodiscovery/
[3] https://www.petefreitag.com/blog/rss-autodiscovery/
[4] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-snell-atompub-autodiscovery

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On Monday, December 16th, 2024 at 8:52 AM, Mark <mark=40openrss.org@dmarc.ietf.org> wrote:

> Hey Tim,
>
> Oh I'm not a part of the working group.
> Your question is precisely why I'm inquiring about it. I'd love to know what the recipients of this mailing list think about it, whether or not standardizing on a RSS feed path makes sense discussing in this group, or if the idea even makes sense at all. :)
>
> Mark Kennedy
> Engineer
> openrss.org
>
> On Monday, December 16th, 2024 at 10:22 AM, tim rice <whoneedsgravity@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Morning Mark,
>>
>> Is this within the purview of the IETF, and does a similar standard for the other examples that you mentioned exist already?
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>> -Tim
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 16, 2024 at 7:15 AM Mark <mark=40openrss.org@dmarc.ietf.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hey,
>>>
>>> My org works on providing RSS feeds for websites that don't have them. And we're seeing a lot of feed readers adopting the unfortunate practice of probing multiple paths to a website just to try to find if there's an RSS feed available (e.g. /rss, /.xm, /feed, etc). It hogs up quite a bit of unnecessary resources. It becomes an even harder hit for servers when all the requests happen at the exact same millisecond. :(
>>>
>>> We could benefit from standardizing on a single path so that feed readers can easily find a site's RSS feed. Kind of like the robots.txt file or the favicon.ico file. Everyone knows where they are.
>>>
>>> Has the working group ever discussed something like this? I'm curious of your thoughts.
>>> Thanks and hope your week is off to a great start!
>>>
>>> Mark Kennedy
>>> Engineer
>>> openrss.org
>>>
>>> --
>>> Feeds mailing list -- feeds@ietf.org
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[Feeds] Re: Should we standardize on a single URL… tim rice
[Feeds] Re: Should we standardize on a single URL… Mark
[Feeds] Should we standardize on a single URL pat… Mark
[Feeds] Re: Should we standardize on a single URL… Teotime Pacreau
[Feeds] Re: Should we standardize on a single URL… Mark
[Feeds] Re: Should we standardize on a single URL… Damon Hart-Davis
[Feeds] Re: Should we standardize on a single URL… John Levine
[Feeds] Re: Should we standardize on a single URL… Dan Wing
[Feeds] Re: Should we standardize on a single URL… Rob Sayre
[Feeds] Re: Should we standardize on a single URL… Steve
[Feeds] Re: Should we standardize on a single URL… Martin J. Dürst
[Feeds] Re: Should we standardize on a single URL… Mark
[Feeds] Re: Should we standardize on a single URL… Martin J. Dürst
[Feeds] Re: Should we standardize on a single URL… Mark
[Feeds] Re: Should we standardize on a single URL… Martin J. Dürst
[Feeds] Re: Should we standardize on a single URL… Jens Oliver Meiert
[Feeds] Re: Should we standardize on a single URL… Martin J. Dürst
[Feeds] Re: Should we standardize on a single URL… Jens Oliver Meiert