RSS Enable your Site

RSS Enable (i.e. Syndicate) your Drupal site

I said in "RSS Made Simple" to replace the word "syndicate" (or any variations of that root word) with "subscribe" (especially if you are an RSS user/reader and not a publisher) to get a quicker, better understanding of RSS. But here, you are in the role of a "publisher" - someone who has a Drupal site and would like visitors to subscribe to your site's contents via an RSS feed. This is generally referred to as "syndicating your site". In this instance, (I find) it is much easier to replace the word "syndicate" with "publish".

So to syndicate your site really means, to publish your Drupal site so that it can automatically produce an RSS version (produces XML formats that can be read by an RSS reader).

How to Syndicate your Drupal site

You will see that you have a block called "Syndicate". And that by default, it is Disabled. This block contains the RSS button that will allow your visitors to click and subscribe to your site.

It will behave like any other block:
* you can decide which region you want to place this block (in the header, footer, right column, left column, etc.)
* whether you want to give it a new header, no header, or accept the default header text (which is "Syndicate") * whether you want it to appear on all pages, some pages
* who can see the RSS button/block we are talking about(anyone?, only authenticated users?, only administrators?)
* and what each user type can do (with this block - in this case specifically, the RSS button/link)

Enable Syndicate block and place in Region

Let

The left image shows no RSS button, but where I want it to appear.
The right image shows the RSS button, after I have enabled the 'Syndicate' block and set it into the 'left sidebar' region.

So to put it in the left sidebar, from the dropdown menu next to the disabled Syndicate block > choose "Left Sidebar" > Save Block

Once you save the blocks, you will see the 'Syndicate' block under the 'left sidebar' region (while still in the Admin area). From here, you can:
* order it (move it up or down) > then Save Blocks
* next to 'Syndicate', there is a 'configure' hyperlink.
Clicking that will give you the option of having/not having a title for this block, who can see it, what pages it should be on, etc.

That's it. Now visitors can RSS subscribe to your site.

Additional Notes

• At the bottom of my Drupal site home page, I already had an RSS icon button before I syndicated my site as per above. I am sorry. I don't know if this is automatically there by default or I did something to put it there. But before syndication, it was only on the front page.
• After syndication, when you click on the RSS icon link, it goes to the XML page. Sorry, I don't know how to make that open in a new window or to make a pop-up window open with no code and just a one-click link to the reader of their choice. I am sure there is a contributed module in Drupal's module projects, but I personally like to install as little as I can to keep the admin of my sites down to bare essentials.
• If you want to know what your visitor will see when they click and what they/you need to do, see How to RSS Subscribe.
• While we are on the topic of RSS, if you would like to know how to get fresh content automatically to your site (e.g. from news sites, your favourite site(s), etc.), then you will need to enable your Aggregator module - which is pretty easy.