RSS Feeds :: How to Create the RSS Feed URL for Categories :: Create RSS Feeds from Category

If you landed on this article without reading RSS Feeds :: Creating the RSS Feed URL the I suggest you read that article first in order to get the basics. If you are experienced at creating RSS feed URL's then continue reading here.

The flexibility of Hubpages that you can utilise for your web content promotion extends beyond just being able to show your 'latest', 'best' or 'hot' hubs. When you create a hub you are given the opportunity to place the hub in a category. In fact you are encouraged to enter not only the category but also a sub-category and a sub-sub-category. When I first arrived at Hubpages and created a hub I did what was requested without really thinking much about how important this was. 

And it is important on a number of levels:

• So that people browsing can find your hub in a related topic category.
• So that your hub can be promoted by Hubpages when they promote a category.
• So that your hub can be included in Hubnuggets for a particular category.

And here are the additional important elements that must be considered as part of your RSS feed and web content promotional strategy:

• So that your hubs can be grouped by category to make an RSS feed.
• So that your category groups can be differentiated from each other when creating RSSfeeds for promotional purposes.

And please be aware that you do not have to use all three category / sub-category categorisations. It is often better to use a higher level categorisation if you want to have certain hubs included in a particular RSS feed or for that matter some left out of a particular feed.

Another thing that is worth considering is that the RSS feed URL that you create.will have the topic names included in the URL, as here (/home-and-family/children/):

http://hubpages.com/author/humagaia/topics/home-and-family/children/3117/hot

and we probably all know how important the contents of the URL are to search engine ranking for a particular search word or phrase. So think carefully about your whole promotional strategy before plumping for a category / sub-category combination. Think: Does the combination of categories enhance my promotional efforts with words that relate to the hubs that I will be creating for this feed?

We are at Tip 3 as the first two tips were in the introductory article.

Now, you might have noticed that the URL in the previous section was not a feed URL. The only thing that URL will do is point to the list of hubs that fall within the category / sub-category of /home-and-family/children/ for the author Humagaia. Now that is fine if that is all that you want. But this will not update dynamically on the basis of any changes you require of an RSS feed. It will not allow any "pushing" of content to the places you want to "push" it. In order to achieve a "push" you must change it into an RSS feed.

Yeah! How do I create an RSS feed from the list URL?

Well

http://hubpages.com/author/humagaia/topics/home-family-and-parenting/kids/3117/hot

can be converted into a dynamic RSS feed by adding just five characters /?rss as below:

http://hubpages.com/author/humagaia/topics/home-family-and-parenting/kids/3117/hot/?rss

You have already seen that this is the extension for your profile RSS feed and it is so for all Hubpage RSS feeds. This little piece of knowledge is your holy grail of RSS feed URL creation for your hub promotional efforts. If you go away from this hub learning anything it should be these five characters /?rss.

The content of this RSS feed can be seen to the below.

After you have created a significant number of hubs you will find that not all of them are listed in your "Some of [Author] Favourite Topics" section of your profile. When this happens (about the 40 mark to my understanding) it becomes a little more complex to find the appropriate URL to create your RSS feed.

You must do this as follows:

1. Go to [My Profile] - that is your profile.
2. Scroll to the bottom of your profile.
3. You will see "Some of [Author] Favorite Topics".
4. Select one of the hubs that falls within the topic for which you wish to make an RSS feed and go to that hub.
5. At the top of the page you will see a row of words that begins.[All Topics].
6. Next to this will be the category / sub-categories that you selected for this hub. Hopefully you grouped all of the hubs that you want in your RSS feed under this category / sub-category (I told you it was important to consider carefully how you categorised your hubs). If not, don't worry, a Tip further on in this hub will tell you how to get round this en passe. For instance:
7. All Topics
8. Knowledge & Education
9. History and Archaeology
10. Select and go to the final entry in the list for your example. In this case History and Archaeology
11. At the top of the page you will see the URL in the usual place. Copy and paste it somewhere. In this example: http://hubpages.com/topics/knowledge-and-education/history-and-archaeology/3652.
12. Now we have to manipulate the information we have to generate an RSS feed. This can be done by adjusting an RSS feed for a topic that we found by the easy method, example http://hubpages.com/author/humagaia/topics/home-and-family/children/3117/hot. Changing /home-and-family/children/3117/ to /knowledge-and-education/history-and-archaeology/3652/ and adding /hot/?rss to the end to give:http://hubpages.com/author/humagaia/topics/knowledge-and-education/history-and-archaeology/3652/hot/?rss OR
13. Just add /author/[Author Name / Alias] where in my case [Author Name / Alias] is humagaia. You will put your alias in place of humagaia. Then add /hot/?rss as per normal. So http://hubpages.com/topics/knowledge-and-education/history-and-archaeology/3652 becomeshttp://hubpages.com/author/humagaia/topics/knowledge-and-education/history-and-archaeology/3652/hot/?rss
14. Either way we end up with the same RSS feed URL. You can see it works by just looking to the right at the Hot Hubs by Humagaia in the History related RSS feed. Again I will state thate you can replace /hot/ with /latest/ or /best/ to give three separate RSS feed each of which can be used to the best advantage for your promotional needs.
15. This method can also be utilised to create bespoke feeds for other author's content if you wish to use that updated content in an RSS feed on any of your hubs.

Just as you were able to create variants of your personal profile RSS Feed you are availed the same opportunity for category-based RSS feeds.

Thus

http://hubpages.com/author/humagaia/topics/home-family-and-parenting/kids/3117/hot/?rss

can be adjusted to become:

http://hubpages.com/author/humagaia/topics/home-family-and-parenting/kids/3117/latest/?rss

and

http://hubpages.com/author/humagaia/topics/home-family-and-parenting/kids/3117/best/?rss

Any RSS feed that you generate can have the three insertions /latest/, /best/ or /hot/ replaced by any of the others to create separate feeds that dynamically "push" your web content but under a different criteria each time.

An example is as below.

So far I have demonstrated how you can develop a whole host of RSS Feeds that relate to your own personal content. Whilst I am on the subject of categories / topics I will introduce the concept of feeds for topic specific hubpages content. These will not contain your own personal hubs in the feed until one of them just so happens to fit the criteria that the feed is created upon.

To achieve an RSS feed for a particular topic all you need to do is as follows:

1. Select the [Topics] category at the top of the Hubpages page.you are currently browsing.
2. This will bring up the structure of all of the topics that are on HubpagesSelect the topic you are interested in creating an RSS feed for.
3. I am selecting "Antique Collecting" which resides in the category / sub-category group:
4. All Topics
5. Games, Toys, & Hobbies
6. Collecting and Collections
7. The URL for this topic is in the usual place. Copy and paste this somewhere. It looks like this: http://hubpages.com/topics/games-toys-and-hobbies/collecting-and-collections/antique-collecting/1818
8. All that needs to be done to create an RSS feed is to add the usual /hot/ or /latest/ or /best/ plus ?rss.
9. The rss feed is then be one of the three that follow: