Novus Convert
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Data format

RSS converter

A .rss file is an RSS feed: an XML document listing a channel's recent items, each with a title, link, description and publication date, so that a reader can poll one URL instead of visiting a site. It is the format that made subscribing to a website a thing you could do.

Private for supported formats — processed in your browser

Convert supported files

Runs on your device

Drop RSS files here

Batch files can each use a different output. Nothing uploads for local conversions.

Working inputs include camera RAW, browser-local audio/video, PDF, CBZ/CBR comics, office documents, ebooks, markup, 3D models, structured text, images, and archives.

Where RSS comes from

RSS emerged from Netscape's 1999 RDF Site Summary, forked repeatedly through versions 0.9x, and settled at RSS 2.0 under Dave Winer in 2002, whereupon the specification was frozen and handed to Harvard. The freeze is why RSS 2.0 files from twenty years ago still parse today — and also why extension had to happen through namespaces, which is how podcasting arrived as an RSS extension rather than a new format.

How RSS works

  • A single <channel> holds metadata and a flat sequence of <item> elements — there is no nesting.
  • Dates use RFC 822, not ISO 8601, and readers commonly ignore a pubDate they cannot parse.
  • <guid> identifies an item across updates; isPermaLink declares whether it doubles as a URL.
  • Extension is by XML namespace, which is how iTunes podcast tags and Dublin Core metadata attach.
  • The specification is deliberately frozen, so all evolution happens outside the core vocabulary.

When to use RSS

  • Publishing a blog or news feed for subscribers
  • Distributing a podcast, which is RSS with enclosure elements
  • Aggregating several sources into one reading queue
  • Migrating a feed between formats during a platform change

Strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • The most widely supported syndication format by a wide margin
  • A frozen specification means decades-old files still work
  • Namespace extension has kept it useful without breaking it

Limitations

  • RFC 822 dates are an ongoing source of quiet parsing failures
  • No standard for full-content versus summary, so publishers differ
  • Namespace sprawl means two valid feeds can need very different handling

Compatibility

Read by every feed reader, every podcast client and most CMS platforms. Browsers dropped their built-in feed viewers years ago, so a feed opened directly usually shows raw XML. Novus Convert parses it locally and converts to Atom and JSON Feed.

Channel and item fields — title, link, description, publication date and guid — are preserved. Namespaced extensions such as podcast tags are not carried across.

Convert RSS to another format

Convert other formats to RSS