rss naming conventions

[VodkaFish]

I'm setting up a series of feeds for my sites.

At first I was going to have each one within each section.

Let's say:

mysite.com/news/rss.xml
mysite.com/articles/rss.xml

However, now I'm thinking I should have something more like:

mysite.com/rss/news.xml
mysite.com/rss/articles.xml

With the /rss index page listing how-tos, and all the feeds I have. I feel it would be better organized this way. Type of technology over type of content in a sense.

Another however - I'd like to be even neater about this: Similar to Yahoo:
http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/sports
http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/entertainment

Ahh, no file extensions. Me like. Should this be set up as different directories and index files, like any sort of web page? Would a news reader read that (as long as my server is set up to spit that back out)? I would think this would be easier to migrate from one extension to another later on, if needed (let's say .php to .aspx or .php to .xml or .rdf to .xml; you get the point).

Anyone have a good standard practice to use here?

[vgarcia]

I like approach #2 (the RSS directory with different xml files). As for the extensionless part, that can be done in Apache's .htaccess files or with mod_rewrite. Something like this should work:

#this should go into .htaccess in your root directory
RewriteRule rss/([^/]*)/?$ /rss/$1.xml

This will forward any extensionless requests in your /rss/ directory to the appropriate .xml file, so http://example.com/rss/news will be rewritten to http://example.com/rss/news.xml

[VodkaFish]

Good concept, but I'm not running Apache on any of my servers (yet).

As I'm reading more about Atom lately, I think I'm going to do this:

mysite.com/syndicate (page about all sorts of sydication)

mysite.com/syndicate/rss
mysite.com/syndicate/atom

And if I'm feeling silly:

mysite.com/syndicate/xml
mysite.com/syndicate/javascript

... and so on...

Although I may name it "feeds" instead of syndicate (since people spell/type horribly, sometimes you just have to "dumb it down", not that being shorter, even by a few characters is bad either), but I'm not sure - why is it the weirdest decisions seem to hold me back sometimes

[vgarcia]

You seem to have a good plan there, I say run with what you're thinking (the "feeds" directory is a good idea that I may have to steal myself ).

[VodkaFish]

Well, I'm trying to read up more and more on ISAPI Rewrite & the like and may be able to use a mod_rewrite-esque system.

I've decided on:
mysite.com/feeds/type_of_feed/category/feed

While it may seem a bit longer then what most have, I feel that things will not get "lost" as easily with this method; and whether or not I do all of it, I have the potential to release many feeds and this gives me room to grow and not have to move anything around later (which won't matter much with server redirects or mod_rewrite, but that's a little extra load I may not need if I plan it right the first time).

Wish I did all this when I first started the site (re-organzing, re-coding end of summer)