Advantages of RSS Feeds

 

Author: Spencer J Casey


Fri, 01 May 2009 08:00:00 CST – In this day and age of information overload, a handy gadget to have on your computer or smart phone is an rss feed reader. Why? A large number of websites (news, sports, technology, hobbies, etc.) are starting to publish content using XML language. When you find a website you enjoy, you end up returning to that website time and time again for new updates and information. This is no longer necessary if the website maintains an rss feed. You can simply subscribe to the feed and set up a schedule to check the website for new content. If new information is published to the website your rss feed reader will automatically download the update to your computer or smart phone and notify you. This is an extremely useful tool for busy people. An rss feed reader allows you to stay current on relevant topics and eliminates the need to keep revisiting website for new information. Learn how this technology can benefit you…

To begin with, we want to focus on how a web user can take advantage of rss feeds. Go to www.google.com, and search for “rss feeds”. Your search results will most likely include website like NPR (http://www.npr.org/rss/) and Yahoo News (http://news.yahoo.com/rss). If you visit either of those pages you can simply click on the rss feed icon to subscribe to various feeds, such as top news stories, politics, technology, etc. In the case of sports, you can even find specific feeds for the NFL, MLB, or even a specific team. By clicking on the rss feed icon you subscribe to the feed. If you are using Internet Explorer 8, you can have the browser alert you when a new feed is discovered by playing a sound. After subscribing to a feed, simply open Internet Explorer, click on the tools menu, and internet options. Select the content tab, and then click on the settings button under the feeds and web slices sub-category. Check the box that say, “play a sound when a monitored feed or web slice is updated”. When the feed is updated, your web browser will notify you.

You now can enjoy rss content that is directly feed to your web browser. Once you learn how to subscribe and control a feed, you might be inclined to start searching for specific content. If you are interested in a particular hobby, company, or blog you can often subscribe to a feed relating to that subject.

Finally, an rss feed is relatively easy to setup on a website. Obviously you need content, (i.e.: news, information, podcast, videos, etc.). You will need to place those files of interest on your web server in a specific folder. Then setup a RSS feed using a formatted text file, (example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(protocol) ). Within the feed document list the item’s title, web link, and description of the content you have placed on your web server. Do this for all the content you want displayed in your feed. The RSS feed language and file format allows you to reference your content, and standardize the information so a RSS Reader can process the information. Once again, you will need to upload the newly populated feed file to your web server. The final step is to add an xls style sheet to display your xml feed content on your website. The xls style sheet is another formatted text file that helps determine how you want to display the data. For instance, on my page (www.caseydesigns.com/feeds.aspx) I elect to display the title, publication date, author, and then the article description. The xls style sheet defines the order and placement of the rss feed.

 

 

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