RSS how to help your site visitors...?

Ok, so RSS is obviously the in thing right now and everybodies buzzing about it. And yes it's pretty cool and very useful and blah blah blah.

But the problem is, lots of people don't get it. Techies get it I'm sure, and I kind of get it, but let's face it for most of us there are a million things we want/need to be doing and researching RSS isn't top of our priorities.

So what does that little orange button with white writing on it mean to the average visitor to your website or blog? What is XML or RSS? What the hell is a feed? Subscribe? What are they talking about??

Now, on BifSniff.com I went with an orange button that said XML. I chose that approach because I figured those that new what it was would use it and those that didn't might catch up eventually. But at least the button accurately described what lay behind it. If you click the button you get taken to an "Atom formatted XML site feed".

But I'm pretty sure that a lot of people see it and, if we're lucky, think "I wonder what that is...?" and move on.

Also, although I chose the XML button, others use RSS, others have FEED and so on. As I posted already, Dave Winer came up with the idea of having ALL the buttons say 'Subscribe'. After all, that's what it's for ultimately, whatever you call it. This might be a brilliant idea, but as I think Dave is suggesting on his own site, it also really requires a common action to take place on click. In other words, all the buttons might be the same, but ideally the buttons should also all do the same thing.

Ideally, clicking the button would add the feed to whatever you use to read feeds you subscribe to.

I found an article which has some very nice, easy to understand material on aggregators. It also explains that OPML is an "XML format for outlines", going on to explain simply that an OPML file can be used to contain a list of all the feeds you are subscribed to. I imaging Dave Winer hopes that perhaps one day everybody will have a single OPML file for their feeds which any/all feed-readers they use would access thus allowing the 'subscribe' button to simply add a new feed to that one file. But I'm not all that techie so I could be talking through my arse.

As I also already posted, perhaps we could consider an interim solution of simply having the subscribe buttons go to a page which helped educate users about feeds and how to use them and what software/sites we advocate, or how to get the feeds into their existing feed-readers. That solution still appeals to me but it means messing with the current expected action on pressing one of those orange buttons with white text.

So what about having a second button, or link? So now you would have:



OR:




Of course, it's a simple idea, and I'm not the first to think of it - in fact just this second I found an article about RSS which advocates something similar.

The site above is onthe right track, I think, having a page explaining about RSS and allowing people to use the link if they wish. By pulling together easy to understand information about feeds and aggregators with links to relevant material and software, we could create a creative commons licensed page which anyone could use to help site visitors understand about subscribing.

If you think this is a good idea, please leave a comment. Also, feel free to use the buttons above...

Perhaps I will try and grab some time to put together a draft help page for my own sites which others could use if they wanted - I'll keep you posted.

Also, if you are based in Cork and this was of interest to you, you should check out Tom R's IT@Cork event on RSS for non techies.

UPDATE:
Alan of Spoilt Child design has a lovely solution on his site where he uses Subscribe with the term webfeed and also a help button which links to Wikipedia's RSS entry. His help button is a nice simple question mark - so I stole his idea and did up an orangey version... but, hey, I'm giving him full credit! ;)

I don't know if it's necessary to include the term webfeeds or rss as Alan suggests over at Tom's blog, but I do see the validity of the suggestion all the same... for now I haven't nicked that idea though!

Overall, it's a much neater solution, and I think it works very well - I reckon it's a lot clearer than my initial attempt above. So if you want to use this solution Alan has said anyone can use his buttons, or if you prefer the orangey version just take mine below. I'll be implementing this design myself asap I reckon.

Thanks Alan!