A detailed posting on WordPress article feeds I am posting for our upcoming WordPress section.
Feeds are one of the most powerful features you can add to your blog.
WordPress and WordPress.com blogs come with feeds built-in. You don’t have to do anything except control how those feeds are viewed by your readers.
You have two options with outgoing feeds in WordPress: full feed and excerpt. There has been a lot of debate over which is better. In general, it boils down to personal preference and the feed reader you use. Many people are setting their feed readers to show only excerpts, while others are taking advantage of their feed reader’s ability to only show titles, making the scanning process even faster if they are covering a lot of incoming feeds.
Feed length is controlled first by the blog owner. In WordPress, your feed settings are found in Options > Reading > Syndication Feeds. Then the user can set their feed reader to read your blog’s feeds as titles, excerpts, or full posts, if full post feeds are available.
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2007/01/24/understanding-using-and-customizing-wordpress-blog-feeds/
