Effect of changing links in feed

[MoBarger]

We are retooling an RSS feed. I am wondering if the links to the items are changed, will they appear as new items to subscribers? If so is there a way to accommodate for that?

[bill]

I think it will depend on the feed reader application they are using. It's possible that some may see the changed links as new and mark them unread. However, I think that for most the <pubDate> will sufficient to indicate the date of the <item>.

I've never tested this. You may want to try a few of your visitors' top feed readers and test them out with sample feeds. I'd be interested to hear your results.

[oziman]

Depends - do the links also act as the <guid> item?

[MoBarger]

Not sure - we actually host this app and don't code it, and are trying to determine what will change when we migrate it.

I see 3 potential nodes in the tree that all provide the same URL. I am not entirely sure what gets served up as the link.
Using RSS2.0 they offer <guid>,<link>, and <enclosure>.

What are some good resources I can use to get up to speed on building RSS feeds?

Thanks.

[edited by: MoBarger at 9:36 am (utc) on May 8, 2007]

[bill]

If you're using RSS 2.0, then check out the offical spec [cyber.law.harvard.edu].