Whether you are a technical person or not, you always access certain information on the internet and sometimes this information is on a day-to-day basis like news headlines; blogs entries; podcasts; suppliers’ new products, prices; competitor’s new products, prices and so many others. Without web feeds, it is very tideous and tiresome to keep up to date with all these websites. You would have to open up each of these websites and then wait for them to load and then read whether you needed just a small or big part of it and then move to the next one till…

However, with web feeds, you are able to have a collection of your favorite website updates in one place normally known as an Aggregator. For now, you might be wondering what a web feed is? Well, a web feed is a data format which is used to frequently update users of new content over the web. The most common web feeds are Atom and RSS Really Simple Syndication (RSS). Web feeds help users to keep track of whats new on a certain website without actually having to go to that website and also your users dont have to remember your website URL to be able to get whats new on your website.

There are lots of other uses of web feeds however, I would like to concentrate on how you can create web feeds for your website in case of website developers with out using programming and also end users who would like to keep up to date with websites which are not providing web feeds.

First, lets look at how to create web feeds as an end user for probably a static website or a website without web feeds. There are several online tools and services available and some of the ones I have found include:

• feedWhip brings the web the way you want. Using feedwhip you are able to create RSS feeds and get email updates
  for your favorite web sites.
• Feed43 is an online service that converts any web page to an RSS feed on the fly. The original web page is clipped and then converted to RSS format that can be picked up by your favorite news aggregator.

Next, for website developers who would like creating web feeds without programming, there are still tools which can be downloaded or used online to create feeds for your websites and some of the ones I have found include:

• FeedForAll is a downloadable application which allows users to easily create, edit and publish RSS feeds. It has a free edition.
• FeedPublish.com allows you create and manage and update your feed online for anywhere. You can also track your statistics and view how many times your subscribers clicked on each channel. It is absolutely free though you are required to sign up.
• MySiteFeed.com allows you to create RSS feeds from your website whether it is built with static HTML or it is an eCommerce cart system that cannot create RSS Feeds of your newest products.

Of course, there are some many other tools which are available online for creating web feeds and please feel free to make additions through the comments below.