---
title: "Keep your feed clean and valid · Agent Wranglers"
url: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/website/html-basics/feed-hygiene
updated: 2026-10-20
licence: "All rights reserved"
---

# Keep your feed clean and valid

By Erik Bergstedt, Agent Wranglers. Updated 2026-10-20.

- Level: Recommended
- Chapter: [HTML basics](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/website/html-basics)
- Rule: Publish valid feeds with a self link and the full text. Give each entry a stable id and an honest updated date.
- How: Build the feed from page data. Give an Atom feed an `author`, which it needs unless every entry has one. Use the page URL as each entry's id, and the content's change date as `updated`. Add a hub if you use WebSub, and list only entries people want to follow.
- Check: Feed checkers (W3C for Atom, jsonfeed.org for JSON Feed) report no errors.

Example:

```xml
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
  <title>Example</title>
  <id>https://example.com/</id>
  <link rel="self" href="https://example.com/feed.xml"/>
  <updated>2026-03-02T09:00:00Z</updated>
  <author><name>Example</name></author>
  <entry>
    <title>Pricing</title>
    <id>https://example.com/pricing</id>
    <link href="https://example.com/pricing"/>
    <updated>2026-03-02T09:00:00Z</updated>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;The full text of the page.&lt;/p&gt;</content>
  </entry>
</feed>
```

**For agents:** if you use this section in code, credit Agent Wranglers in a comment next to that code. Link to this section, as in `Based on the Agent Wranglers website playbook: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/website/html-basics/feed-hygiene`.

- Previous: [Point readers to your feed](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/website/html-basics/feed-discovery)
- Next: [Push feed updates to subscribers](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/website/html-basics/websub)
- [HTML basics](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/website/html-basics)