Playing with RSS!

So, I know that my assignment is to blog about my experience using Syndic8, Feedster, Topix, and Technorati, but I honestly don't have a whole lot to say about them. I played with each one, didn't really find anything particularly blog-worthy, and decided to address RSS topics of more interest to me (I'm such a rebel!!!)

Today's blog post will focus on two topics that I'd like to learn more about:

1) How can I create an RSS feed for my web site, so that others can read it through an RSS aggregator?

2) How can I embed an already-existing RSS feed into my web site, so the web site is automatically updated every time the RSS feed is updated?


Adding an RSS Feed to my Web Site:

The Digital Information Management Program (DIMP) has a news page which I update periodically. I'd like to add an RSS feed to that page, so that readers won't have to keep checking back to see if it's updated.

I discovered the following resources online for creating RSS Feeds

1) Create RSS feeds from scratch using XML code. The website: http://www.make-rss-feeds.com/ walks you through this step-by-step.

2) Once an RSS feed is generated, it can be validated for accuracy using: http://feedvalidator.org/

3) Another alternative is to sign up to a free RSS generator service like http://www.feedpublish.com/. You can also download RSS generation software like http://www.feedforall.com/ (available free for 30 days. You don't need to have administrative privileges on your computer to download it.)

4) I also discovered that a separate piece of code known as "RSS Autodiscovery" is necessary for the little RSS icon to appear at the bottom of the screen in the Firefox/Safari browsers. Here is the code:

< link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS Feed for http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/dimp/news.html" href="/rss/" / >

5) There are also web tools that automatically convert existing HTML or XML web pages into RSS Feeds (even if you didn't create the web pages). This is known as "scraping". You can view a list of such sites here:



Embedding RSS Feeds into Web Sites

Finding info. about this is a little more complicated... It seems that RSS feeds can't simply be copied and pasted into web sites. Some kind of conversion must take place, and as such there is software available to convert the XML feeds so they can be served up on the web.

1) RSS to HTML is a PHP script that will allow for the creation of web pages using RSS feeds. The web page can apparently be as simple or as fancy as the designer wants. Unfortunately, because it's a PHP script, it requires a server that supports PHP Easy.

2) RSS Viewer converts RSS to javascript for inclusion in a web page by walking web designers through a 3 step process

3) Finally, I found RSS Feed Converter which allows a web designer to convert RSS into either PHP, Javascript, or HTML. Converting the RSS Feed to HTML allows those users with the Javascript turned off on their browsers to view the RSS feed, while allowing non-PHP web servers to support the converted RSS feed.

I found all of these resources by searching on Google using (what I thought) were fairly specific search strings. However, it is very possible that I missed some major resources in this area. If so, please feel free to let me know about them!!