I'm implementing an RSS feed for a website and I don't understand certain things about the format/size/content of the XML file for the feed.
I'm initializing the site with the past data, which runs back to 1999 (there was no feed at any point before now), and only a couple hundred items will be added per year.
Is there some protocol for archiving, or can I just keep the one file and continue appending to it? I'd think that would be inefficient, as the aggregators have to download the whole thing (I assume).
So, what's the usual custom for this? Limit it to the last month? The current file with over 900 items is 1.5MB, and I'd expect 1 year's worth to be about 1/10th that in size or less.
Any pointers on this on what principles to use and how to implement it? I'm using PHP, but my data is complicated enough I rolled my own script to write the file (and it validates just fine), so I can't use a canned solution -- I need to understand what to implement in my own script.