Recently I've had several people ask me how they can optimize their RSS feed for use with FeedDemon. Given that FeedDemon doesn't use any proprietary elements, my recommendations below will help optimize your feed for use with pretty much any RSS aggregator.
- Include each item's publication date, either with <pubDate> or with <dc:date>. A large number of feeds don't include the publication date of each news item, which means that FeedDemon can only show when an item was received (downloaded).
- Use a short, descriptive <title> for each news item. If you don't have useful titles, readers may not know whether they want to read what you have to say.
- Don't skip the <description>. Some feeds contain only titles, forcing people to visit their sites if they want to read an item. This also hampers offline reading, which is a major annoyance for some people.
- Avoid excessive HTML formatting in your descriptions. If you want people to see your design skills, point them to your site rather than unnecessarily bloating your RSS feed.