RSS Feeds


A valuable blog technology called RSS (Really Simple Syndication) enables you to receive on your blog fresh news items from other sites in real-time, all the time. If a site offers an RSS feed and you subscribe to it, headlines and news items that appear on the host site automatically appear on your site. You can subscribe to content from other sites and display it in a column or table on your blog (see Figure 13.13).

Figure 13.13. Add current news items to your blog free.


Just as you can subscribe to news from Yahoo! or BBC, your own blog can be "syndicated" so that other people can subscribe to it. Blogs and other sites available via RSS are syndicated sites.

Note

If you are completely clueless about the purpose of an RSS feed, step through the following section, and you will see what purpose they serve. Or just look at the pretty pictures!


Adding an RSS Feed

To spice up an existing blog, namely yours, let's walk through the process of subscribing to an RSS feed. You set up the RSS "feed" once and then it continues to deliver endlessly.

The diagram in Figure 13.14 shows the process.

Figure 13.14. How RSS feeds make it to your blog.


Fortunately several free websites make the process of adding RSS feeds to your blog easy.

FeedDigest

http://www.feeddigest.com

A simple way to add feeds to your blog or website. Registration is required, but everything is free.

CompleteRSS

http://www.completerss.com/

Subscribe to feeds through this service. Not as user friendly as FeedDigest but still helpful.

The following steps assume that you want to add a Yahoo! News feed to your Blogger.com blog. These steps assume that you're going to use FeedDigest to accomplish this. Even if you use another blog service, walk through the following steps so that you can see what is required:

1.

Find an RSS feed you like, such as BBC news, Yahoo! entertainment, or engadget.com. Thousands of RSS feeds are available. Pages that include an XML logo (see Figure 13.15) indicate that a feed is available.

Figure 13.15. The XML icon indicates that an RSS feed of this page (and others) is available.


2.

Click the XML icon and a page appears that includes the XHTML code. You don't need that for FeedDigest (fortunately). All you need is the URL (the address of the page). Highlight the URL and then click Edit, Copy (see Figure 13.16).

Figure 13.16. Highlight and then copy the URL of the XML page.


3.

Open a new browser window (or tab) and surf over to http://www.feeddigest.com/. Paste the URL into the Feed or Page Address field (see Figure 13.17).

Figure 13.17. Paste the URL in FeedDigest's text field; then click Next.


4.

You will have to register prior to being able to add the RSS feed to your page, but the process is painless. Good luck remembering yet another password.

5.

After you register, FeedDigest presents you with some options from the Control Panel page. Click Get Code (see Figure 13.18).

Figure 13.18. Click Get Code link from the Control Panel page.


6.

You will need to copy the JavaScript text on this page and then add it to your blog. First highlight the JavaScript code that appears on this page, and choose Edit, Copy (see Figure 13.19).

Figure 13.19. JavaScript courtesy of FeedDigest.


7.

Log in to your blog site (in this example, Blogger.com) and access the template for your blog. You need to paste the JavaScript text into your blog's template. Scroll down and look for the <body> tag, which indicates the beginning of the blog page. Scroll down farther and look for a tag that resembles the following:

<!-- Begin #main - Contains main-column blog content -->


8.

The wording may be different but should indicate where the blog posts begin. Paste the JavaScript immediately above the line (see Figure 13.20).

Figure 13.20. Access your blog's template and paste the JavaScript.


9.

If you can't find the template page for your blog, enter a search term such as "template" on the blog host's Support page or in Google.

10.

Preview the change by clicking Preview or saving the change and opening up your blog. The new RSS information appears at the top of your page (see Figure 13.21).

Figure 13.21. Yahoo! business news (an RSS feed) appears at the top of the blog.


An Alternative to RSS Feeds: RSS Aggregators

An RSS aggregator is a software program or web service that collects, organizes, and displays RSS feeds. Rather than have one RSS feed on your blog, why not collect dozens and then display them all in one program? This is the purpose of an aggregator.

The following RSS aggregators and web services will help you collect and manage RSS feeds:

Bloglines

http://www.bloglines.com/

A blog host that specializes as a web-based RSS aggregator. Registration is required, but you can get a free blog out of it (as if you didn't have enough blogs already).

SharpReader

http://www.sharpreader.net/

Windows-based aggregator software that runs on the .Net Framework. SharpReader displays a pop-up within Windows whenever new information appears from a feed.

Lektora

http://www.lektora.com/product_sheet.html

An aggregator that attaches itself to Internet Explorer and Firefox, enabling you to surf and read RSS feeds at the same time. Free for the ad-supported version; $29.95 for the ad-free version.

RSSReader

http://www.rssreader.com/

A popular freeware RSS aggregator for Windows.




Blogosphere(c) Best of Blogs
Blogosphere: Best of Blogs
ISBN: 0789735261
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 138

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net