How to <link> your Blog's Atom/RSS Feed from HTML Pages

by Christoph Schiessl

All websites that regularly publish new content should consider implementing an Atom or RSS feed as one communication channel to inform readers about new content. It doesn't matter which one you pick because both Atom and RSS have the same purpose; the only difference is their format. Anyways, once your feed is generated, you must add an appropriate <link> tag in the <head> of your HTML documents so clients can actually discover it ...

How to <link> Atom feeds

For instance, if the Atom feed of a website is located at https://example.com/atom-feed.xml, then you should add a <link> tag to your HTML pages as follows:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://example.com/atom-feed.xml" />

How to <link> RSS feeds

If you are using the RSS format, then you should also add a <link> tag, but use a different type attribute:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss" href="https://example.com/rss-feed.xml" />

Linking multiple feeds

Lastly, simultaneously having an Atom feed and an RSS feed is not required but totally valid. In this case, you are supposed to add two <link> tags — one for each type.

<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://example.com/atom-feed.xml" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href="https://example.com/rss-feed.xml" />

Thank you very much for reading! If you are interested in web development, please check out my other articles and subscribe to my mailing list (or Atom feed) to be notified when I publish new content.

Christoph Schiessl

Hi, I'm Christoph Schiessl.

I help you build robust and fast Web Applications.

I'm available for hire as a freelance web developer, so you can take advantage of my more than a decade of experience working on many projects across several industries. Most of my clients are building web-based SaaS applications in a B2B context and depend on my expertise in various capacities.

More often than not, my involvement includes hands-on development work using technologies like Python, JavaScript, and PostgreSQL. Furthermore, if you already have an established team, I can support you as a technical product manager with a passion for simplifying complex processes. Lastly, I'm an avid writer and educator who takes pride in breaking technical concepts down into the simplest possible terms.

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