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Kimberly868

: Can a website have multiple RSS feeds? How would the and elements look? If I wanted to, for example, create three RSS feeds on my site to better allow users to subscribe specifically to

@Kimberly868

Posted in: #Feeds #Rss #WebCrawlers

If I wanted to, for example, create three RSS feeds on my site to better allow users to subscribe specifically to the section in which they were interested, could I have three separate XML files at the server root?

If so, what are the mechanics of doing so? How do you use <link> meta tags on the home page? Would each feed have a <channel> element with the same properties, or different ones? What does a crawler see when it goes to fetch the content?

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@Sherry384

It’s perfectly fine to offer multiple feeds. You could even offer multiple feeds for the same items, e.g., one for the full content and one for excerpts.

There is nothing that would have to be changed in a feed just because there exist other feeds. So an RSS feed’s channel element would contain the same content as if the feed were the only one.

Linking multiple feeds in the head (example) works exactly like linking one feed in the head. Best practices when linking multiple feeds:


The first feed link should be the default feed, as this is the feed that will be used for autodiscovery. An example where this might be relevant: a feed reader that allows users to provide a webpage URL (instead of a feed URL) might add the default feed.

Liferea does this, for example.
Each feed should get a title, as this allows users to understand what the feeds contain. An example where this might be relevant: a client that lists the linked feeds might show their titles.

Firefox does this, for example:

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