Please link to this service by using its Permanent URL.

Syndication Subscription Service

A general syndication subscription service for RSS content consumers, RSS content producers, and their middle agent: An aggregator.

For content consumers

Until everyone (?!?) is using this service, you might want to try out a little handy helper tool: The Syndication Subscription Redirector, a small redirecting webserver written in Perl.
Have this script running, and all XML pills, coffee mugs and the likes will redirect to the Syndication Subscription Service (except of course for the ones that match your own desktop aggregator).

If you see a green Subscription icon on a page, and you are using one of the aggregators listed below, simply click the icon, and you will be taken to a page that lets you choose the subscription link for your aggregator, thereby adding the linked RSS feed to your subscription list.

You can try it out via the feed Recent Features on Syndic8.com, or enter the URL to another feed in the RSS Feed field above.

You may also try selecting a feed from a subscription list such as Dave Winer's subscriptions or Bill Kearney's list of RSS Readers, or enter the URL to another subscription list in the Subscription List field above.

For content producers

Feel free to use your own icon or text to link to the Syndication Subscription Service or use one of the icons below.

You may already have a linked orange XML icon on your pages, maybe even a link for RSS auto-discovery. These links make it easier for users to find your feeds. Some also have an XML coffee mug or pill icon, that lets users with an aggregator such as Radio Userland and AmphetaDesk subscribe to the feeds with a single click. This is all great, but with more and more aggregators popping up, it would clutter the pages with icons, if one were to be added for each and everyone.

This is where the Syndication Subscription Service comes into play.

Simply add a Subscription icon to your pages (possibly replacing the existing aggregator icons), within a link that points to the PURL for subscribing to your feeds:
This could look like below:

<a href="http://purl.org/net/syndication/subscribe/?rss=http://example.com/index.rss">
	<img src="http://example.com/syn-sub.png" width="32" height="12" alt="[Subscribe]"/>
</a>

where http://example.com/index.rss is the URL to your feed, and http://example.com/syn-sub.png is the URL to a Subscription icon (saved as a copy on your own server, to lighten the bandwidth demand of the Syndication Subscription Service).
Also, you might consider adding a title to the link along the lines of <a href="..." title="Subscribe to this feed in your favorite aggregator!">.

You may also link to your subscription list (see supported formats below), to present users with a list of feeds to select between:

<a href="http://purl.org/net/syndication/subscribe/?list=http://example.com/mySubscriptions.opml">
	<img src="http://example.com/syn-sub.png" width="32" height="12" alt="[Subscribe]"/>
</a>

All users of the aggregators listed below will now be able to subscribe to your feeds with just a couple of clicks, instead of copying and pasting URLs.

For aggregator developers

If your aggregators supports some sort of simple subscription HTTP GET request, please send an RDF/XML fragment like the one below to mof-syn-sub (at) mfd-consult.dk:

<syn-sub:Aggregator rdf:about="http://127.0.0.1:8888/index.html?add_url=">
	<dc:title>AmphetaDesk</dc:title>
	<dc:description>Click on the XML pill to subscribe to this feed in a running AmphetaDesk.</dc:description>
	<dcterms:isPartOf rdf:resource="http://www.disobey.com/amphetadesk/"/>
	<dcterms:hasPart rdf:resource="xml_pill.png"/>
	<foaf:maker>
		<foaf:Person>
			<foaf:name>Morbus Iff</foaf:name>
			<foaf:mbox rdf:resource="mailto:morbus@disobey.com"/>
			<foaf:homepage rdf:resource="http://www.disobey.com/"/>
			<rdfs:seeAlso rdf:resource="http://example.com/disobey.rdf"/>
		</foaf:Person>
	</foaf:maker>
</syn-sub:Aggregator>

Please substitute foaf:Organization for foaf:Person if applicable (if it's not a personal project).

Known aggregators and services

Table layout lifted from the AmphetaDesk list of RSS providers.
Service	Icon	Description
AmphetaDesk		Click on the XML pill to subscribe to this feed in a running AmphetaDesk. maker: Morbus Iff Subscription URI: http://127.0.0.1:8888/index.html?add_url=
Awasu		Click on the XML icon to subscribe to this feed in Awasu. maker: Awasu Subscription URI: http://127.0.0.1:2604/subscribe?url=
Bloglines		Click on the icon to subscribe to this feed with Bloglines. maker: Bloglines Subscription URI: http://www.bloglines.com/sub/
Bot A Blog		Receive a simple text e-mail when this feed updates. maker: Xemion Web Design Subscription URI: http://www.botablog.com/botthisblog.php?blog=
BottomFeeder		Add this feed to a running copy of BottomFeeder. maker: James Robertson Subscription URI: http://127.0.0.1:8666/btf?rss=
Feed Validator		The Feed Validator will validate the feed according to the various standards. maker: Mark Pilgrim maker: Sam Ruby Subscription URI: http://feedvalidator.org/check?url=
fyuze		Click on the fuyze icon to add this feed to your personal fyuze page. maker: Justin Klubnik Subscription URI: http://fyuze.com/customize/clickthru.php?url=
Headline Viewer		Click icon to subscribe to this feed in Headline Viewer. maker: Vertex Development Subscription URI: http://127.0.0.1:8900/add_provider?url=
IzyNews		Click the IzyNews icon to subscribe to this feed. maker: IzySoft Subscription URI: http://izynews.com/qs.aspx?s=
mobilerss		Click on the XML icon to subscribe to this feed in mobilerss. maker: Sebastian Werner Subscription URI: http://www.mobilerss.net/fastfeed.php?url=
My Yahoo!		Add to My Yahoo! maker: Yahoo! Subscription URI: http://add.my.yahoo.com/rss?url=
NewsGator Online		Click on the button to subscribe in NewsGator Online maker: NewsGator Technologies, Inc. Subscription URI: http://www.newsgator.com/ngs/subscriber/subext.aspx?url=
NewsIsFree		Look up this feed at NewsIsFree. maker: Mike Krus Subscription URI: http://www.newsisfree.com/sources/info/?url=
nntp//rss		Click on the XML icon to subscribe to this feed in nntp//rss. maker: Jason Brome Subscription URI: http://127.0.0.1:7810/?action=addform&URL=
Radio Userland		Click on the XML coffee mug to subscribe to this feed in Radio UserLand. maker: Dave Winer Subscription URI: http://127.0.0.1:5335/system/pages/subscriptions?url=
Syndic8.com		Syndic8 offers more detailed feed information, and will let you add the feed to a personal subscription list. maker: Jeff Barr Subscription URI: http://www.syndic8.com/feedlist.php?ShowMatch=
The Free Dictionary		Subscribe to this feed on The Free Dictionary homepage. maker: Farlex Subscription URI: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/_/hp/AddRSS.aspx?
Wildgrape NewsDesk		Subscribe to this feed with Wildgrape NewsDesk. maker: David Peckham Subscription URI: http://127.0.0.1:8888/NewsDesk.html?add_url=
WinRSS		Click on the WinRSS/XML icon to subscribe to this feed in WinRSS. maker: Brindys Software Subscription URI: rss://addrss/

Permant aggregator selection

If you currently use only a single aggregator, and want to bypass the aggregator selection page when subscribing to feeds with a Syndication Subscription Service icon, you may choose an aggregator below.

If you are running a special aggregator, or maybe a well-known one on a non-standard port number, you may instead enter a custom subscription URL, to which the URL of the RSS feed will be appended.

Select permanent aggregator Aggregator: Custom URL: (You may need to reload after submitting, this section will be replaced with your selection when successful.)

Selecting a permanent aggregator will store a cookie on your computer, no information will be stored by the service itself. The cookie will expire one year from now.
Note: Opera users may find that the cookie doesn't seem to work - reloading the selection page seems to do the trick (sorry about this, apparently Opera doesn't send cookies on redirects).

You may at anytime remove the cookie by going to the home page of this service, and invoking the cookie-removal function.

Supported formats

In principle, all single channel syndication formats are supported, although some more than others. It is possible to use the Syndication Subscription Service to subscribe to all individual feed formats (that an aggregator supports, after all, it's just a redirection service), but all flavours of RSS (RSS 0.9, RSS 0.9x/2.0 and RSS 1.0) will additionally be presented with channel metadata, image and headlines on the agreggator selection page. Also, preliminary support for Atom has been added.

For subscription lists, the OPML 1.0/1.1/AmphetaDesk and OCS 0.4/0.5 formats are supported, other formats will throw an error, but please don't hesitate asking for additional list support.

Background, contribution and feedback

It started with a message on the syndication list, discussing how the subscription process should work, mostly in the context of scraping non-syndicated sites.

The result is this; a PURL-driven service, that attempts to get rid of the many different aggregator specific icons out there, and at the same time makes it easier to enter the aggregator market - just add the subscription here, and let all users enjoy!

Currently, the PURL is hosted by http://xml.mfd-consult.dk/syn-sub/, but if anyone with better bandwidth and an Apache/PHP/Sablotron server would like to contribute, moving the service should be as simple as copying a set of files, tweaking the RDF/XML and redirecting the PURL. In any case, rights are released per the GNU GPL License, and even though I'm currently the only maintainer of the /net/syndication/subscribe/ PURL, I will be happy to add anyone interested in becoming one.

Comments and suggestions are appreciated and should be sent to the syndication list (preferably as a follow-up to the announcement message), flames to /dev/null and aggregator additions to mof-syn-sub (at) mfd-consult.dk.

Privacy

The Syndication Subscription Service does not store information about its use, except for the usual Apache server access log. Also, because of the use of a PURL to reference the service, most of the usual referer information is not available, that is, it is not possible to see which page contains the PURL and a Subscription icon.

Even so, the few statistics that do accumulate will never be transfered to a third party, although an aggregation may at some point be made publically available.

Change log

2006-07-06

Added support for The Free Dictionary.

2005-01-23

Added support for the NewsGator Online aggregator.

2004-06-01

Added support for the IzyNews aggregator.

2003-12-25

Added preliminary support for the Atom syndication format.

2003-11-26

Added support for the Bot A Blog aggregator.

2003-09-11

Added support for the WinRSS aggregator.

2003-07-29

Added support for the mobilerss aggregator.

2003-07-25

Added support for the Bloglines aggregator.

2003-04-09

Added support for the Awasu aggregator.

2003-03-24

Added support for the NewsMonster aggregator and the NewsIsFree service.
Disabled the Snewp service.

2003-03-07

Added support for the nntp//rss news-bridge.

2003-01-22

Added support for the Wildgrape NewsDesk aggregator.

2003-01-03

Added support for AmphetaDesk OPML.

2002-10-26

Added more aggregators/services (Snewp, RSS Validator).
Reworked RDF.

2002-10-21

Added support for simple feed redirection.
Feeds in OPML subscription lists with a version attribute of "RSS2" are now recognized.

2002-10-20

Minor bugfix in Redirector Perl script (1.5).

2002-10-19

Added BottomFeeder support (Redirector 1.4).
Updated Redirector Perl script, now listens to all available "well-known" aggregator ports (1.2) and for Radio's RSS Explorer subscription lists (1.3).

2002-10-17

Added and updated Redirector Perl script.
Fixed error messages.

2002-10-14

Removed disclaimer - this is no longer a proposal, it's a service...
Added auto-discovery for RSS feed on selection page.
Added subscription lists (OPML/OCS).
Trimmed navigation bar on aggregator selection page.
Added cookie functionality.

2002-10-12

Changed navigation CSS from fixed to absolute.
Added RSS parsing, with channel metadata display and headline list.

2002-10-11

Initial proposal.

To do

Handle the scraper issue, as outlined in the original syndication message, possibly with a selection of scrapers?
Language dependent (by feed language) interface?
Use schema defined labels instead of element names.
Split XSLT (it's waaayyy to big).
Extended module support (by schema?).
External CSS instead of element bound.
WSDL instead of RDF?
Handle RSS 2.0 with default namespace (like http://bitworking.org/index.rss).
Anything else?