- Feed address format
- Feed locations on a site
- Common patterns by platform
- A page is not a feed
- Sites without a feed
Feed address format
A feed address is an ordinary web address that answers with a feed document instead of a page: RSS or Atom, which are XML, or JSON Feed. Opened in a browser it shows raw markup or a plain list of posts, depending on the browser, and that is normal. A feed reader fetches that address on a schedule and shows the posts inside it.
Some examples of what feed addresses look like:
https://example.com/feed/
https://example.com/rss.xml
https://example.com/atom.xml
https://example.com/blog/feed.json
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC...The address of a page, such as https://example.com/blog/, is not a feed address, even when the page lists the same posts. A reader given a page address looks for the feed the page declares, which is how the next section works.
Feed locations on a site
Most sites name their feed in the page's head, in a link element that browsers and readers understand:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Example" href="https://example.com/feed/">A feed reader given the page address reads this element and subscribes to the feed it names. That is what Inoreader does when you paste a site address into the subscribe box, and what the RSS feed finder does when you give it a page: it fetches the page, reads every declared feed and checks that each one is a feed that works.
Sites that do not declare their feed usually still have one at a conventional address, which is the second thing the finder tries.
Common patterns by platform
The platform a site runs on decides where its feed is. These are the usual addresses:
| Platform | Feed address |
|---|---|
| WordPress | /feed/, and /category/<name>/feed/ for one category |
| Blogger | /feeds/posts/default |
| Medium | https://medium.com/feed/@<user> or https://medium.com/feed/<publication> |
| Substack | https://<name>.substack.com/feed |
| Ghost | /rss/ |
| Tumblr | /rss |
| YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<id> |
https://www.reddit.com/r/<subreddit>/.rss |
|
| GitHub | https://github.com/<user>/<repo>/releases.atom, /commits/<branch>.atom |
| Mastodon | https://<instance>/@<user>.rss |
| Squarespace | /?format=rss |
| Shopify | /collections/all.atom |
A podcast's feed is the address the podcast directories list, usually on the show's page under "RSS" or in the directory's own page for the show.
A page is not a feed
The most common mistake is to subscribe to a page address and expect posts. A reader given a page that declares no feed has nothing to read, and the validator reports it as "Web page instead of a feed". Some sites answer their old feed address with a page too, after a redesign, and readers that were subscribed stop updating without any error the publisher sees. The RSS feed validator tells the two apart, and for a page it lists the feeds the page declares.
Sites without a feed
Many sites have a feed and do not show it; the finder finds those. A site with no feed at all can still be followed in Inoreader with a web feed, which watches the page for new entries and turns them into a feed. The web feeds feature page explains how. Newsletters have their own way in: an Inoreader email address subscribed to the newsletter turns each issue into an item.