I mean, kinda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was just asked this question the other day so I’m answering here because blogging is cool. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The point of an RSS feed is for people to read your content elsewhere (hence the last part of the acronym, Syndication<\/em>, as in, broadcasting elsewhere). Probably an RSS reader. But RSS is XML, so in a sense, it’s a limited API to your content as well, which people can use to do other programmatic things (e.g. show a list of recent posts on some other site). <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you hate the idea of people seeing your work outside of your website, then don’t have an RSS feed. It doesn’t prevent your site from being scraped (nothing really does), but it isn’t inviting people to your content the way RSS does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But…<\/p>\n\n\n\n Don’t you want<\/em> people to read your stuff? Having an RSS feed is saying, “I’m happy to meet you where you are<\/em>. If you like reading stuff over there, then great, read it over there. I just like it when you read my stuff.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s hard enough to get people to care about your work anyway<\/strong>. Being extra protective over it isn’t going to help that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Who’s comic book are you more likely to buy? The webcomic you read and laugh at every day because they make it so easy and free to read? Or the comic that you can’t see because you have to pay for to get a peek and have to roll the dice on whether you’re going to like it or not?<\/p>\n\n\n\n What consultant are you more likely to hire? The one that shares a ton of knowledge about their skills and has firmly established themselves as a publicly verifiable expert? Or a consultant with a homepage that’s just a pricing sheet and phone number?<\/p>\n\n\n\n What blog are you more likely to trust a recommendation from? One that you subscribe to on purpose because you like their content and writers? Or some site you randomly landed on? <\/p>\n\n\n\n What web do you want to exist? One with fun interoperable possibilities? Or walled gardens?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I mean, kinda. I was just asked this question the other day so I’m answering here because blogging is cool. The point of an RSS feed is for people to read your content elsewhere (hence the last part of the acronym, Syndication, as in, broadcasting elsewhere). Probably an RSS reader. But RSS is XML, so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":269686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"sig_custom_text":"","sig_image_type":"featured-image","sig_custom_image":0,"sig_is_disabled":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"c2c_always_allow_admin_comments":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/css-tricks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/rss-pattern.jpg?fit=1200%2C600&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":803,"url":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/forums-now-have-rss-feed\/","url_meta":{"origin":302113,"position":0},"title":"Forums Now Have RSS Feed","date":"June 21, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"It blows my mind that phpBB doesn't come with RSS feeds for forums. The new v3 is incredibly nice in so many other ways, it seems like it would have been a trivial addition for such a talented dev team. But what do I know. Fortunately, a kind forum reader\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":269678,"url":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/its-time-for-an-rss-revival\/","url_meta":{"origin":302113,"position":1},"title":"It’s Time for an RSS Revival","date":"April 12, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Brian Barrett: Tired of Twitter? Facebook fatigued? It's time to head back to RSS. I'm an RSS reader lover, so I hate to admit it, but RSS ain't going mainstream. It was too nerdy 20 years ago and it's too nerdy now. RSS is still incredibly useful technology, but I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Link"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/css-tricks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/rss-pattern.jpg?fit=1200%2C600&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":781,"url":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/create-a-slick-iphonemobile-interface-from-any-rss-feed\/","url_meta":{"origin":302113,"position":2},"title":"Create a Slick iPhone\/Mobile Interface from any RSS Feed","date":"June 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"We are going to create a web page that is formatted specifically for the iPhone (but would presumably be good for other mobile devices as well). This web page will dynamically fill itself with content from any RSS feed that you give it. The interface is going to be built\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/css-tricks.com\/wp-content\/csstricks-uploads\/intro-banner.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":20806,"url":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/lets-say-feedburner-shuts-down\/","url_meta":{"origin":302113,"position":3},"title":"Let’s Say FeedBurner Shuts Down…","date":"March 26, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"A lot of us around here have blogs and a lot of us use FeedBurner to \"host\" our RSS feeds. I thought it was worth talking about what might happen if we lose FeedBurner, which seems especially likely these days with the impending doom of Google Reader. Why did we\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4125,"url":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/new-snippets-feed-how-to\/","url_meta":{"origin":302113,"position":4},"title":"New Snippets Feed & How-To","date":"September 18, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"There is a new snippets-only feed! This will always remain it's own separate feed I think, and not be a part of the main feed. Mostly because I hope that the snippets will grow and grow and there will hopefully be a lot of entries and I think that would\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/css-tricks.com\/wp-content\/csstricks-uploads\/theplanrsssnippets.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":235444,"url":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/animating-your-brand\/","url_meta":{"origin":302113,"position":5},"title":"Animating Your Brand","date":"December 1, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Donovan Hutchinson kicks off this years 24 ways, the webnerd advent calendar which is always a great way to close off the year. They have an RSS feed, and since I know that 42% of you read this site with RSS that might be of interest. I've been enjoying Digg.com\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Link"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302113"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":302469,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302113\/revisions\/302469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}