Normally, to access the RSS feed on WordPress, you simply have to append "/feed" at the end of a URL. It works like that most times. What about a website like Steemit that doesn't have RSS feeds?
In this article, I'll be reviewing a tool that provides RSS feeds for Steemit users. SteemRSS is a powerful tool that can help promote STEEM.
Repository
https://github.com/SteemRSS/SteemRSS
What is SteemRSS?
SteemRSS is a tool that creates RSS feeds from defined Steem urls. (RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication). If you are making use of Steemit, you can simply replace 'steemit' with 'steemrss' in a url, and see what SteemRSS displays. This website was specifically designed for Steemit. It was first created in mid 2017, since then there have been different managements.
• Homepage of SteemRSS
SteemRSS allows users and applications to access post updates on the STEEM blockchain. The website displays these updates in a computer-readable format called xml.
SteemRSS can be used primarily for two purposes: embedding steemit posts on a blog and sharing steemit posts to other social networks. It can also be used to send mails to blog subscribers.
Embedding Steemit Posts on a Blog
This is one way to promote the STEEM blockchain. If you have a website, or a blog, you can embed your steemit posts with the help of SteemRSS. The RSS feed SteemRSS displays allows Steemit users to automatically embed their Steemit posts on their blogs.
It's a really interesting feature, you can decide to display these blog posts on your website sidebar or footer. It would make an interested visitor click on any of the links. And that right there is a successful promotion. :)
We'd be discussing later the kind of feeds that are available on SteemRSS. For now, let's focus on embedding steemit posts on blogs.
If you have a WordPress blog, there are several plugins you can use to achieve this. Examples of these plugins include POWr RSS Feed, Embed RSS by Deanna Schneider & Jason Lemahieu and Feedzy plugin. Most of these plugins are free and open sourced. You can set a widget to display RSS feeds. Most times, all you have to do is to put the RSS feed url in the spaces provided, and it automatically displays the Steemit posts on the website.
Some of these plugins allow a user to decide how he or she wants the widget to display the posts. Users would have to write the RSS feed url (SteemRSS' url, not Steemit's) and the number of posts to display. They can also decide if they want to display the content, author or date for each of the Steemit posts.
If you want to aggressively promote Steemit on your blog, with SteemRSS feeds you can. You can simply display your steemit posts all over your blog, widget on the homepage, right and left sidebar, and on the footer on every page of your blog. I wouldn't advice that though, but it is totally up to you. :)
Sharing Steem Posts to other Social Networks
This is another feature, that still helps in promoting Steemit and the STEEM blockchain. With SteemRSS, you can easily share the title and content of your Steemit posts to social networks.
This is a feature I tried in the past. Around this time last year, I was busy sharing my Steemit posts to my Twitter account. As I know it's an effective way to actually get people to Steemit. It is often said on the Internet, that "content is king." When the contents on a website is attractive, it attracts new users.
Twitter is a place where you can share contents that are valuable. There are several tools that can help you share your Steemit posts to Twitter (while using SteemRSS feeds). You can make use of TwitterFeed, Zapier, Dlvr.it or IFTTT to post the RSS feed automatically. I've actually tried all four of them. TwitterFeed used to be my favourite of them all. It is the first RSS tool I connected to my Twitter around 2012.
The tweets automatically shared can be retweeted or favorited on Twitter, and that would lead to a wider audience. If you have so many followers on Twitter, you may consider sharing your Steemit posts, with the aid of SteemRSS feeds.
It feels cool to automatically share post after your writing them on Steemit. Nevertheless, you have to be cautious. As someone who's been sharing feeds on Twitter for many years, my advice is that you should limit the number of posts you automatically share daily. I've lost thousands of followers, because of feeds I was sharing at one time.
You can also set up SteemRSS to your Facebook account. Majority of the tools that automatically shares post to Twitter, also works for Facebook. I haven't been active on Facebook for a few years, but I once tried TwitterFeed on it. I heard Zapier, Dlvr.it and IFTTT also work with Facebook. Get the STEEM news out there, automatically share your posts!
Sending Mails to Subscribers
We don't actually have email subscribers on STEEM, but some steem enthusiasts own personal blogs. Tools like MailChimp can help send emails to your blog subscribers using SteemRSS. Once there is a new post on the SteemRSS feed, MailChimp sends a copy by email to a list of subscribers. I used MailChimp while I still had a personal blog, it's one of the most popular WordPress plugins.
Types of Feeds on SteemRSS
There are different kinds of feeds you'll find on SteemRSS. Here's a list in no particular order:
(i) Posts by Author
(ii) Comments by Author
(iii) User Feed
(iv) Posts by Category
In all four categories, you simply have to replace 'Steemit' URL with 'SteemRSS' URL.
(i) Posts by Author
This is where you'll see articles written or resteemed by a STEEM account. For example, to access my account feeds, here's a link steemrss.com/@jaff8. You can simply replace my username with yours. If I'm to share my posts to Twitter with that link, it'll include posts that I resteemed as well.
The screenshot above shows what is displayed when you visit steemrss.com/@jaff8/blog. It displays an XML file. There are elements under <channel>. These are required elements, and they include:
<title> - The title of the page (e.g. Posts from @jaff8's blog)
<link> - The hyperlink to the channel (e.g. https://steemit.com/@jaff8/blog)
<description> - Describes the channel (e.g. Posts from @jaff8's blog)
The <channel> element has several other <item> elements. Each <item> element is an article in the RSS feed.
For each <item> element, there is a <title> element, <description> element, <link> element, <category> element, <dc:creator> element and <pubDate> element. These elements under the <item> element defines the item element.
For my previous post, you'll see:
<title> - SteemAX - Exchange Your Votes With Other Steem Users.
<description> - The entire content of the article.
<link> - https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@jaff8/steemax---exchange-your-votes-with-other-steem-users
<category> - utopian-io (the first tag of the article)
<dc:creator> - jaff8 (author)
<pubDate> - Wed, 12 Dec 2018 20:47:54 GMT
The <dc:creator> element is what diffentiates between a user posts and resteemed posts.
(ii) Comments By Author
Comments are quite similar to posts on SteemRSS. Visiting steemrss.com/@jaff8/comments displays my Steemit comments. The elements found on a user page on SteemRSS is also similar to that on the Comments page.
(iii) User Feed
With Users Feed, you can get posts from your feeds or that of others. Here is a link that displays my feed steemrss.com/@jaff8/feed. To view yours, replace 'jaff8' with your username on steemrss.com/@jaff8/feed. So if your username is abcd, then your User feed would be streemrss.com/@abcd/feed.
If you are following users that post quality contents, sharing their posts to you social media accounts would be a good idea. If not, you'd probably be spamming. I only follow a handful of persons I know are creative with their posts. I'm thinking about trying this feature.
(iv) Posts by Category
You can also access feeds on different post categories on Steemit. Posts on new/hot/trending/promoted tags can also be displayed on SteemRSS feeds.
Here's a list as found on SteemRSS:
http://steemrss.com/new/tag or http://steemrss.com/created/tag
http://steemrss.com/hot/tag
http://steemrss.com/trending/tag
http://steemrss.com/promoted/tag
http://steemrss.com/votes/tag
(posts are sorted by number of votes, in a descending order)
http://steemrss.com/cashout/tag (posts are sorted by time remaining until payout, in a ascending order)
category or tag can be replaced with your favourite tag. For example, I want to see the feeds on latest Utopian posts, I'd simply replace tag with utopian-io in this link http://steemrss.com/created/tag. Here's what displays:
This is the link to the feeds http://steemrss.com/created/utopian-io
SteemRSS vs others
The RSS feature of SteemRSS was available on Streemian in the past. One difference is that Streemian had a limited number of feeds, whereas SteemRSS has a wider range. Feeds can be found on new, hot, trending and promoted section of tags on SteemRSS, which wasn't possible on Streemian. SteemRSS doesn't support replies feed, but Streemian did.
Streemian offered valuable service to the steem community, and would be long remembered for it. The codes are available on github, for any developer willing to bring it back. SteemRSS on the other hand is a very comprehensive RSS tool. I think, it's currently the only tool that makes it possible for people to share their posts automatically.
Conclusion
What I like most about SteemRSS is that you don't even have to sign up to use it. That's awesome. I'm really happy this website exists. Streemian used to have this RSS service, but it's no more. And hundreds of thousands of social network users need to hear about the STEEM blockchain. To achieve this, automatically sharing Steemit links is needed. Kudos SteemRSS. I'm glad the service is free of charge.
Official links
• SteemRSS
• SteemRSS on Github
Series Backlinks
This is the first post in the series.
Extra
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