RSS Confusion

Hi all -

I read a post a couple of days ago asking "What is RSS"?

I'd had that question myself and since then I've done alot of googling (thanks to repeatedly great advice from NikkiH :thumbsup: ) and searched for feeds and read tutorials on how to make a feed. What a great way for my website to display this information without having to have to retype it or having to do manual updates.

Now - before you say that this chicky is a complete dope - remember that someone else may have the same question...

I do a search for rss feeds for bowling and lo and behold I find some. I enter that site and click that handy dandy xml button and I get a page with code.

What do I do with that code? Place it in my site where I want those links to show?

I think I understand how to provide a feed and I'm going to practice with that tonight.

Any advice would be great...might even be worth a lunch! ;)

What do I do with that code? Place it in my site where I want those links to show?

... Basically, lol. This page has some useful information on display an RSS feed: http://www.rss-specifications.com/displaying-rss-feeds.htm

I'd recommend some sort of server-side solution; I haven't looked at any of the scripts that page links to but if you used a server-side solution you could cache the RSS/XML file from the site (assuming they don't already) so that you wouldn't have to pull it off their site on every page view and just have it pull a new copy if the existing one is like more than an hour old or whatever suits you.

And some programs have RSS support built into them like Firefox. In Firefox if you are on a page that has a RSS feed, there is a little square button in the lower right hand corner of the screen that lets you subscribe to it.

Additionally there are stand-alone RSS readers that you can use to pull the feeds from many different sites and read them.

Additionally there are stand-alone RSS readers that you can use to pull the feeds from many different sites and read them.

Yes, I've read about those as well. Any ones in particular? Or just another matter of preference? Adn do these readers automagically update the feeds or is that still something I have to do?

... Basically, lol.

Add the whole code or just the links within the code - I think I know the answer is probably the whole code :rolleyes: and then it displays using whatever style I choose in my css - like .rsschannel {background:blue;font-color:white} etc.?

Once again you've been most helpful and since you didn't laugh at me I'll take ya out to lunch ;)

Well as far as reading RSS feeds for yourself on your computer, I'd highly recommend FeedDemon for Windows or NetNewsWire for Mac OS X. Both cost a reasonable amount of money, but both are excellent applications. If you just want something simple and free, you could check out a service like Bloglines.com, among many others.

If you're wanting to add the content of RSS feeds to your own website, then I feel the need to pimp my own software, SimplePie (http://www.skyzyx.com/projects/simplepie/) - a RSS parser written in PHP. Another popular one is Magpie RSS (http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/).

Another feed reader I'd like to add to Ryan's list is NewsFire for OS X.