RSS feed with embedded URLs

How shoudl an embedded URL be encoded into an RSS item?

[chilliworld]

I have a discussion forum on a site with an RSS feed that is used to inform users of the latest messages posted. Each new message is an item in the file. This all works great until someone puts a URL into their message. The <HREF= tag then invalidates the RSS file. Is there a special way of coding this into the file?

Thanks. Robert.

[athinktank]

howdy chilliworld and welcome to WebmasterWorld.

The quick and dirty fix to this would be to wrap the text of the post in a CDATA [w3.org] seciton. This is because you have no control on what users will post... you will also have problems with things like random less than symbols.

[macrost]

If you are using a server side tech like ASP you can then URLEncode the URL's that will be in your RSS so that it conforms to standards.