For a couple of days, I’ve been working on getting an RSS feed up. I’m not using a generator, so it’s been a bit of a pain. The XML file is simple enough, but most feed readers are very picky about how they fetch new posts.
At first, I started by using online readers, but I couldn’t find one that gave me enough control for testing. So, I looked around for an application I could download, and I found a good one.
RSS Guard has been a great tool for testing. It lets me purge a feed and re-fetch it, so I can see exactly how the changes I made will work on a fresh feed reader. I’m loving that it’s also open source and free. The UI looks dated, but it does its job well. I’ll be using RSS Guard to follow feeds from now on as well.
Adding a feed has been frustratingly fun, but I’m glad I did. So many people in the blogging community love feeds. I normally go straight to the blog I want to read, but I’m going to be trying out feeds for a while. To see if I like it with the new feed reader I found.