Why Every Website Should Have an RSS Feed

RSS feels like one of those web technologies that was supposed to disappear years ago.

It did not.

Blogs still use it. Podcasts depend on the same basic idea. News readers still support it. Static site generators can create it automatically.

And in 2026, I think RSS is still one of the nicest ways to follow a website.

No algorithm. No account. No notifications asking you to come back. No need to hope a social network decides to show you a new post.

You subscribe once and new entries appear in your reader.

What RSS does

A website publishes a small XML file containing recent content.

It may look roughly like this:

<item>
  <title>My new article</title>
  <link>https://example.com/blog/my-article/</link>
  <description>A short description.</description>
  <pubDate>Sat, 29 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0300</pubDate>
</item>

An RSS reader checks that file and shows new items.

The website does not need to know who subscribed.

No account needed

To follow a site through a social platform, you often need:

account
↓
login
↓
follow
↓
algorithm
↓
maybe see the post

With RSS:

feed URL
↓
subscribe
↓
new posts appear

That is much simpler.

No algorithm

If a site publishes a new article, the feed gets a new item.

The reader does not decide that another post has higher engagement or that you should see an ad first.

It is just a list of updates.

For blogs, that is exactly what I want.

No email address

Newsletters are useful, but they require the reader to give someone an email address.

RSS does not.

The publisher does not need a subscriber database.

The reader does not need to worry about unsubscribe links or promotional emails.

That makes RSS a nice privacy-friendly option.

It works well for personal websites

Personal sites are a perfect fit.

A person may publish:

RSS gives visitors a way to follow those updates without needing to follow the person on several platforms.

It also works for quiet sites

You do not need to publish every day.

Even if a site only gets one new article every few months, RSS is useful because the reader does not have to remember to check manually.

The feed does that.

Hugo already supports RSS

If you use Hugo, you may already have a feed.

Hugo can generate RSS output for home pages, sections, taxonomies, and other page kinds. The official Hugo RSS templates documentation explains how the output works.

A generated feed may appear at:

/index.xml

depending on your configuration.

That means adding RSS to a static site can be almost free.

Do not make people guess where it is.

In the HTML <head>:

<link
  rel="alternate"
  type="application/rss+xml"
  title="My website RSS feed"
  href="/index.xml"
>

And somewhere visible:

<a href="/index.xml">
  RSS
</a>

You can also add:

<p>
  Follow new articles with
  <a href="/index.xml">RSS</a>.
</p>

Feed only the blog section

If the main site contains projects, pages, and photos, you may prefer a blog-specific feed:

/blogs/index.xml

That lets people subscribe only to articles.

You could also offer more than one feed:

/blogs/index.xml
/photos/index.xml
/projects/index.xml

Whether that is useful depends on how often each section changes.

Full content or summary?

A feed can include only a short description:

<description>
  Learn how modern CSS...
</description>

Or the full article.

I like full-content feeds because the reader can read without opening another tab.

But publishers may prefer summaries if they want visitors to come to the site.

There is no single right answer.

RSS is useful for automation too

A feed can also be used to:

Because the format is open, many tools understand it.

A feed is portable

If a social network disappears, your follower list may disappear with it.

RSS subscriptions belong to the reader.

They can export them from one reader and import them into another.

That is a very web-like model.

It is boring technology

RSS is not exciting.

That is part of why I like it.

It has existed for a long time, uses a plain text format, and does one job.

It does not need a JavaScript SDK.

It does not need a social login.

It does not need a cookie banner.

It just tells another program:

Here are the latest things I published.

The discoverability problem

One reason RSS feels less common is that browsers no longer make feeds very visible.

Many people do not know a site has one.

That means site owners should link to it.

Something as small as:

<a href="/index.xml">RSS</a>

in the footer is enough.

RSS should be one option

RSS does not replace email or social media.

Different people prefer different ways to follow sites.

A good site might offer:

RSS
Email
Mastodon
Threads

The useful part is giving the visitor a choice.

Why I still like it

The modern web often tries to turn following something into a platform relationship.

RSS keeps it simpler.

A website publishes.

A reader subscribes.

That is it.

For blogs and personal sites, I think that is still worth supporting.

And if your static site generator can create the feed automatically, there is very little reason not to.