Mac SEO Blog

When EverWeb debuted eight years ago, it came with a number of preinstalled widgets that mirrored those found in Apple’s defunct iWeb product. One of those widgets was the RSS Feed widget.

The acronym RSS has never had one fixed meaning so you may find it referred to as either Rich Site Summary, Really Simple Syndication or Really Straightforward Syndication. What RSS does, though, is clear – it enables you to easily access updates to website contents and display these updates in an uncomplicated way. RSS, therefore, is ideal for frequently updates blogs or news headlines or media that may get frequently updated such as podcasts, audio and video content.

Adoption of RSS in websites grew in the early 2000’s and there are many apps, such as Feedly and FeeddlerRSS, that you can use to subscribe to the RSS Feeds of your choice. These content aggregators make managing multiple RSS Feeds that much easier.

Why Use EverWeb’s RSS Feed Widget?

Using an RSS Feed app to view the latest content from your favourite feeds is a great way to consume content, but you can also add RSS Feeds directly in to your website using the RSS feed widget. This is useful if you want to, for example, let your visitors know that there is a new blog post available on your site. It is also a good way to link to content from other sites that may also be of interest to your visitors.

Adding The RSS Feed Widget To Your Page

EverWeb’s RSS Feed widget is a fixed width widget, so if you are using a Responsive Page Layout in your site, the widget will need to placed inside of a Responsive Row widget. If you need to add a Responsive Row widget to your page, first drag and drop the Responsive Row widget on to the page from the Widgets tab. Once the widget is on the page, you can name the Responsive Row, e.g. “RSS Feed Row” before drag and dropping the RSS Feed Widget on top of the “RSS Feed Row”.

If you are using a Centered or Left Aligned Page Layout, just drag and drop the RSS feed widget directly on to the page.

Finding the Feed URL

Once the widget is in place on the page, the next step is to add the Feed URL you want to the URL field in the Widget Settings. Some external websites publicise their RSS Feed link which makes it easier for you to add it in to your own site. If you cannot find the Feed URL link of the site you want, try one of the following URL formats:

• https://website.com/feed/
• https://website.com/category/feed/
• https://website.com/tag/feed/
• https://website.com/blog/rss.xml

It may take some time to figure out the Feed URL by intelligent guessing. If you have the technical ability you can also look at the target site’s source code to see if you can find the Feed URL, or you could simply ask the Website Owner instead which may be the easiest option!

If you are using your EverWeb blog as the Feed URL, the URL will follow the structure of your website so if the blog is on the top level of the website the Feed URL would be

https://www.website.com/blog/rss.xml

If you are an EverWeb+Hosting customer who has purchased EverWeb Site Shield Addon, you would use HTTPS, otherwise use HTTP at the start of the URL. Also note that the name of the blog is the default name in EverWeb. If you have changed the blog page name, you will need to use your replacement name instead of “blog” in the URL.

Styling The RSS Feed Widget

Once you have entered a valid URL in to the Feed URL field, the widget will update. This may take a few moments. By default five entries will be displayed. Each entry consists of a Title and the first 150 characters of the entry’s text. You can change these values in the Widget Settings as desired.

Styling the contents of the RSS Feed Widget is easy. In fact, styling the widget is done in the same way as you would for the Blog widget in your EverWeb blog’s index and archive pages. Let’s start with the Titles of the entries. By default, the Titles are in a blue color and underlined. This is because the Titles are in fact Hyperlinks to the entries themselves. So to style the Titles, first click on the first title in the Widget. All the Titles will become highlighted. Now go to the Hyperlinks Inspector and change the color and underlines as you want. If you want to change the Title text font and size, click on the Fonts button in the Toolbar, or use the Command+T shortcut key.

To style the text content or the Date (if you have checked the Show Date checkbox in the Widget Settings), click on the text content or one of the dates in the Widget. As with the Titles, all of the text or date entries will become highlighted. Use the Fonts Panel to change the color, font and font size of the selection.

Use the other Widget Settings to select the Style of the Widget itself. You may also want to adjust the refresh rate of the widget. This will depend on how often the RSS Feed content is updated. If the content is frequently updated, use a smaller value in this field. If the content is not updated often use a larger value.

In summary, EverWeb’s RSS Feed widget is a versatile and very handy widget to keep your visitors up to date with the content of your site.