Can my site have an RSS feed?
If your site has a blog or news section, a feed gives everything you publish a second life: feed readers, podcast apps and newsletter tools can all subscribe to it, and your regulars see new posts without having to remember to check.
How it works
- Ask. Use the prompt below, or just say "add this post to my feed". If no feed exists yet, your AI creates one — titled and described from your site, correctly linked from your pages.
- The fiddly parts are automatic. Feed entries have strict date formats and ordering rules that are easy to get wrong by hand. bernard handles them in code: newest first, correct timestamps, safe punctuation, and no duplicate entries if you ask twice about the same post.
- You approve. The feed lands in a draft with a preview, like every bernard change (How do I approve or undo changes?). Once approved, it's live at yoursite.com/feed.xml.
Feeds, sitemaps and notifications — who does what
These three get confused, so: your sitemap is the table of contents search engines read (Does my site have a sitemap?); notifications tell engines the moment something changes (Tell search engines my site changed); your feed is for people and apps that subscribe to your posts. bernard maintains all three, and each lands as a draft you approve.
The prompt
“Add my latest post to the site's RSS feed — and if there isn't a feed yet, set one up first and show me the draft.”
The [bracketed] parts are yours to fill in. First time? Connect bernard to your AI over MCP — a one-time setup in bernard → your site → Use your own AI — then paste the prompt above.
Questions people ask
- What is an RSS feed and do I still need one?
- A feed is a machine-readable list of your latest posts (feed.xml) that people's feed readers — and some search and AI tools — subscribe to. It's quietly still everywhere: podcast apps run on it, newsletter tools can watch it, and readers who subscribe see every post without visiting. If you publish regularly, it's free reach.
- How do I add an RSS feed to my website?
- If your site is hosted with bernard, ask your AI to add your latest post to the feed. If no feed exists yet it creates one first — named and described from your site — then adds the entry. Everything lands in a draft you approve before it goes live.
- Do I have to update the feed every time I post?
- Ask your AI to do it as part of publishing a post — 'add this to the feed' — and it handles the fiddly parts (date formats, ordering, not duplicating entries) automatically. Re-running with the same post updates its entry rather than adding it twice.
- Will a feed help me get found?
- Indirectly — a feed is for your subscribers, while search engines rely on your sitemap and notifications. bernard handles all three; they work together rather than overlapping.