Social and Cultural

A Feed is a mechanism for publishing your site content so that new posts can automatically be picked up by software programs. Many people use "feed reader" software to collect the latest posts from multiple sites that they enjoy reading so that they can read them all in one place and never miss an update, without needing to check each site every day or every hour. There are feed readers that can be installed on your local computer (many email programs include feed reading features), as well on online services like Google Reader. Like feed readers, Technorati's software uses your feed to read your blog.
The stndard icon for feeds looks like this:
Most blogging services & platforms create feeds for you automatically. You may even have a feed and not know it, but your browser can tell you. Go to your site's main page as a user would see it (not as the administrator) and check the following:

• if using Internet Explorer, look for the orange RSS icon in your toolbar, below the URL bar. Click on it to see the list off feeds available from your page
• If using Firefox, Safari, or another browser, the RSS icon will likely appear in the URL bar; it may be a different color. You can click on it for a list of available feeds.

Select one of the feeds to open it in your browser. You can then copy the URL to use when claiming your blog. (Note: many services offer a comments feed; we don't want that one.)
There are two main types of feeds: Atom and RSS. We prefer Atom, but can use either one. Wikipedia, among other places, has a more in-depth explanation of feeds.
Most blog hosting services make feeds auto-discoverable and even offer you a way to specify the feed URL(s). If you are managing your own site setup, you can enable auto-discovery of your feed(s) for your site by adding a line like this to the section of your HTML code:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" 
  title="{enter the title of your feed or page here}" 
  href="{enter the URL for your feed here}" />

It's also a good idea to have your feed refer back to your main page. Your feed should tell what page it belongs to -- the main where someone can go in a browser to see the content listed in the feed. Each feed item has a permalink to a page for that specific item, but the feed itself should also link to your main page. That way we know it's your feed, and not somebody else's.
This can be done in various ways, depending on your feed format. In RSS, there is a <link> element inside the <channel> element but not inside any <item> elements, like:

<link>{enter the URL for your main page here}</link>

For ATOM feeds, use a link similar to the auto-discovery link on the main page. This goes at the top level of the ATOM page:

<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" 
  href="{enter the URL for your main page here}" />