I am a fan of RSS feeds and recently started going back to using them as my information aggregator instead of relying on social media platforms. Currently, I am using Feedly (paid version) and have tried using Reeder5 (not free but inexpensive) but found it not to be as feature-rich — you get what you pay for. At work, I also use Outlook to aggregate our feeds into my inbox which is a great time saver for seeing recent updates across various topics.
So what does this have to do with Avada?
Honestly, very little other than to reinforce my shift away from Avada for posts. I ran a problem using the syntax highlighter element where the code does not show up in the feed whereas a Gutenberg block version works perfectly. Gutenberg is getting better and better with each update and I am hopeful that future releases of Avada will embrace the block even more.
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Pros and cons of RSS
The power of RSS lies in the fact that consumers can use a single app and visit hundreds of websites daily for their content. this can help news junkies, researchers, or just the average person that doesn’t have the time or inclination to make their way around the web on a daily basis. Before Twitter and other platforms, came on the scene, it was the way. For those too young to remember, think podcast listings on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, but just text.
The biggest downside of RSS is the inability to measure usage. In the old days, you could use Feedburner but that has since gone away. Tools like Feedly provide basic subscriber counts, but there is no way to measure actual engagement. So the tradeoff is either to set the feed to excerpt so that it forces the user to go to your site to get the full story (this is what Theme Fusion does) which may or may not drive traffic or provide the full story. I have opted for the latter because I am not worried about people stealing my content. As I begin to work on other news-centric sites this will be a further dilemma.
The future of RSS
I know RSS has fallen out of favor in recent years and in many cases seems archaic, but based on what I am seeing, it is starting to experience a bit of a rebound as people get more and more disillusioned with the current social media platforms. I predict (for what that is worth) that RSS usage will continue to grow, but as it does, new, more media-rich variations or technologies will be released.
If you are a user of RSS either as a consumer or as a publisher, leave a comment.
Originally published on July 9, 2022
