Converting RSS to HTML can be done through a script or manually. Manually creating an HTML file allows for complete control over formatting and adding multimedia content, but requires manual refreshing. Using a script keeps the page up-to-date but may not be seen by external programs. Careful design of the HTML template is necessary to ensure proper formatting.
There are several reasons why you might want to convert a Rich Site Summary (RSS) feed to a HyperText Markup Language (HTML) document. The process can be quite simple, considering that RSS mainly uses extensible markup language (XML) as a basis, but XML does not contain information about formatting and non-textual multimedia content. In most cases, the RSS to HTML conversion is done by a script, web-based application, or other computer program. This can be very simple, but can also be limiting at times, which is why you may need to do particularly complex RSS to HTML conversions manually to ensure that all content is placed accurately. The method of converting RSS to HTML can affect how the resulting HTML page is perceived by the viewer, the browser that loads it, and valuable automated systems on other servers.
A guaranteed way to convert RSS to HTML is to actually create the HTML file by hand. This can be as simple as pasting new text into an existing template or using a website editing program. The benefits of this method are complete control over how new RSS content is displayed and the ability to add new images and relevant links to a page. This also creates a static web page that is immediately available and not dynamically generated when viewed. The downsides are that manually refreshing an HTML page after updating an RSS feed defeats the simple philosophy of RSS once.
A popular and fairly simple way to convert RSS to HTML is to use a script embedded in a web page that points to the physical location of the RSS feed online. Using such a script can keep an HTML page up-to-date without the creator having to manually take any extra steps, and the page at can make new content available immediately. One complication that must be considered when using a conversion script embedded in a web page is that external programs looking for changed content or keywords in a site, such as the spiders used by search engines, will not see the new content and instead they will detect only static script code.
The actual design of any HTML template that will be used when converting RSS to HTML should be scrutinized carefully. The location where the RSS text will appear on the page should use fluid and dynamic formatting so that, regardless of the length or size of the content, it displays correctly on the web page. Some HTML elements, including tables, images within blocks, and even some cascading style sheet (CSS) split properties, can inadvertently cause unwanted formatting that makes the auto-generated HTML page unreadable to the user.
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