RSS Feeds and Microsoft SharePoint Hosting Sites with WSS 3.0

RSS feeds in Microsoft SharePoint Hosting sites are automatically created for any SharePoint list. These enable all subscribers to keep themselves updated and track updates by subscribing to the RSS from the SharePoint hosting site. Any enabled RSS reader may be used in hosted SharePoint site, including Microsoft Internet Explorer and Outlook 2007.

RSS feeds within Microsoft SharePoint hosting sites are being widely used to include up-to-date news and headlines on intranets. As syndication technology (RSS or Really Simple Syndication) is becoming more popular, it allows publishers and consumers to exchange content and information published inside the SharePoint hosting site. At the core of it; RSS feeds are in a very simple format, basically an XML file following a specific scheme. SharePoint hosting with WSS 3.0 allows publishers to produce an RSS feed and make it available from a specific location, generally a “URL”.

The consumer (generally a computer program such as Microsoft SharePoint WSS) reads the feed from the internet and reformats this information for display. Hosted SharePoint WSS 3.0 recognizes XML and is ideal to use for processing RSS feeds from the internet.

Many major publishers make use of RSS feeds on the internet, for example CNN, the New York Times and USA Today. Primary web portals for these feeds are Google, Yahoo and MSN. The SharePoint 3.0 hosting community has created different RSS reading solutions, these solutions vary in features but many are simple to install and use. There are a great variety of readers available, and these leverage the built-in XML part of the RSS feed. Programs in both Mac and Windows consume RSS feeds, they are called “aggregators”, and these programs are presently being merged into new versions of browsers. In conclusion, hosted SharePoint solutions are enriched by the availability of RSS feed feature.

Adrian Gates (Adrian@apps4rent.com) is a Business Manager with Apps4Rent (http://www.apps4rent.com); which offers premium hosted Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint Hosting Services and Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services.