Navigation
UP - Return to Table of Contents
BACK - Go to previous article
NEXT - Go to next article |
|
HOW TO CREATE AN RSS FEED
A Client Briefing Document
Date: May 3, 2005
Publishing RSS
There are a number of ways to generate a feed from your content. First of all, explore your content management system - it might already have an option to generate an RSS feed. If that option isn't available, you have a number of choices.
- Self-scraping - The easiest way to publish a feed from existing content. Scraping tools fetch your Web page and pull out the relevant parts for the feed, so that you don't have to change your publishing system. Some use regular expressions or XPath expressions, while others require you to mark up your page with minimal hints (usually using <div> or <span> tags) that help it decide what should be put into the feed.
- Feed integration - If your site is dynamically generated (using languages like Perl, Python or PHP), it may have a RSS library available, so that you can integrate the feed into your publishing process.
- Starting with the feed - Alternatively, you can manage the list-oriented parts of your content in the RSS feed itself, and generate your Web pages (as well as other content, like e-mail lists) from the feed. This has the advantage of always having the correct information in the feed, and tools like XSLT make this option easy, especially if you're starting from scratch.
- Third party scraping - If none of these options work for you, some people on the Web will scrape your site for you and make the feed available. Be warned, however, that this is never as reliable or accurate as doing it yourself, because they don't know the details of your content or your system. Also, using third parties introduces another point of failure in the delivery process; problems there (network, server or business) will cause your feed to be unavailable.
Taken from: http://www.mnot.net/rss/tutorial/
#Publishing
RSS Implementation/Use Someone Else’s Code
The easiest way to create an RSS file is to copy someone else's. You don't need to worry about this; you will be replacing all of their content, and the format of the file is freely licensed for use by anyone.
Quick RSS Feeds - Free online tool that allows you to simply enter the URL of the RSS feed, define the number of items you would like displayed, and the Java script will be automatically generated.
http://www.quickrssfeeds.com
Make RSS Feeds – www.feedforall.com
provides step by step instructional tutorial detailing how to manually create an RSS feed.
http://www.make-rss-feeds.com
Webmaster Choices: RSS Tools and Validators
Webmaster RSS Tools Based on Language
- xpath2rss - A tool for scraping Web sites using XPath expressions (a method of selecting parts of HTML and XML documents).
- RSS.py - A Python library for generating and parsing RSS.
- XML::RSS - A Perl module for generating and parsing RSS.
“RSS for Dummies” Choices: Third-Party RSS Feed Tools
A. www.tristana.org/writer
Free Trial or $25 for use of tool
B. www.Feedforall.com
$39.95 Each License
Advanced features enable you to create professional-looking RSS feeds quickly. Existing RSS feeds can be repaired and enhanced with FeedForAll. RSS feeds generated by other means can be automatically repaired, so that they conform to the RSS 2.0 specification.
Display on Your Website
http://www.rss2html.com/
RSS Syndication
After you have generated a feed, then you need to syndication it—submit it to news channels, such as bloglines. You can do this selectively or with tools.
Fee-based monthly service.
|
