RSS

REVISED: Sunday, March 3, 2013

You will learn RSS.

I. RSS

RSS is being used by millions of web users around the world to keep track of their favorite websites. RSS replaces the old bookmark method. With RSS you do not have to return to your bookmarked favorite websites, they return automatically to you when the websites are updated.

Some browsers, such as the current versions of Firefox and Safari have built in RSS readers.

Once you know the URL of an RSS feed, you can provide that address to an RSS reader aggregator program and have the reader aggregator monitor the feed for you.

If you need a reader, Google Reader is free and easy to use, its a good place to start.

Once you have a reader, look for the RSS URL of a site you want to monitor. Copy and paste the RSS URL feed link that you want to subscribe to into the "Add New Channel" section of the reader. You can only enter one feed link at a time. After you enter each feed link click "Finish" to complete the RSS Feed Subscription.

It is normally as easy as that! Different readers will naturally have different names for "Add New Channel." They are almost all copy paste based and most follow the same generic subscription process.

More detailed RSS information is provided below.

A. Description

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a type of Extensible Markup Language (XML) document. RSS is used by news syndication services. Each news item consists of a Universal Resource Locator (URL), a title and a summary. A single RSS file is called an RSS channel and contains news from a single source.

An RSS channel consists of two major sets of elements:

Channel Properties: The channel properties are the name of the channel; a home URL; and an image for the channel.

Item Properties: Item properties are the separate news items listed in the channel.

B. Creating an RSS Channel

There is no official standard for RSS.

An RSS channel is an XML file and has a standard ID, Title, Link, Description format; therefore, it can be created using a plain text editor such as Notepad. When you create an RSS document, save it with an .xml extension.

The following is an example of an RSS document:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<rss version="2.0">

<channel>
<title>ELCRIC OTTO CIRCLE's HOME PAGE</title>
<link>http://goo.gl/Hm4Lb</link>
<description>Free Tutorials</description>

<item>
<title>Artificial Intelligence (AI)</title>
<link>http://goo.gl/Hm4Lb</link>
<description>Artificial Intelligence (AI)</description>
</item>

<item>
<title>C Computer Programing</title>
<link>http://goo.gl/Hm4Lb</link>
<description>C Computer Programing Tutorials</description>
</item>

<item>
<title>C++ Computer Programming</title>
<link>http://goo.gl/Hm4Lb</link>
<description>C++ Computer Programming Tutorials</description>
</item>

<item>
<title>DATABASES</title>
<link>http://goo.gl/Hm4Lb</link>
<description>DATABASE TUTORIALS</description>
</item>

<item>
<title>FLTK C++ Computer Programming</title>
<link>http://goo.gl/Hm4Lb</link>
<description>FLTK C++ Computer Programming Tutorials</description>
</item>

<item>
<title>Google AdSense + Google Blogger = Economic Recovery</title>
<link>http://goo.gl/Hm4Lb</link>
<description>Google AdSense and Google Blogger Tutorials</description>
</item>

<item>
<title>GOOGLE NEWS from the desk of Elcric Otto Circle</title>
<link>http://goo.gl/Hm4Lb</link>
<description>RSS Feed Tutorials</description>
</item>

<item>
<title>BUILDING YOUR BLOG WITH HTML5, CSS3 and AJAX</title>
<link>http://goo.gl/Hm4Lb</link>
<description>HTML5, CSS3 and AJAX TUTORIALS</description>
</item>

<item>
<title>Java Computer Programming</title>
<link>http://goo.gl/Hm4Lb</link>
<description>Java Computer Programming Tutorials</description>
</item>

<item>
<title>MACHINE LEARNING</title>
<link>http://goo.gl/Hm4Lb</link>
<description>MACHINE LEARNING Tutorials</description>
</item>

<item>
<title>OCTAVE</title>
<link>http://goo.gl/Hm4Lb</link>
<description>OCTAVE Tutorials</description>
</item>

</channel>

</rss>

The first line in the document - the XML declaration - defines the XML version and the character encoding used in the document. In this case the document conforms to the 1.0 specification of XML and uses the ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1/West European) character set.

The next line is the RSS declaration which identifies that this is an RSS document (in this case, RSS version 2.0).

The next line contains the <channel> element. This element is used to describe the RSS feed.

The <channel> element has three required child elements:
<title> - Defines the title of the channel (e.g. ELCRIC OTTO CIRCLE's HOME PAGE)
<link> - Defines the hyperlink to the channel (e.g. http://goo.gl/Hm4Lb)
<description> - Describes the channel (e.g. Free Tutorials)

Each <channel> element can have one or more <item> elements.

Each <item> element defines an article or "story" in the RSS feed.

The <item> element has three required child elements:
<title> - Defines the title of the item (e.g. Artificial Intelligence (AI))
<link> - Defines the hyperlink to the item (e.g. http://goo.gl/Hm4Lb)
<description> - Describes the item (e.g. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tutorials)

Finally, the two last lines close the <channel> and <rss> elements.

RSS is XML; therefore:
All elements must have a closing tag.
Elements are case sensitive.
Elements must be properly nested.
Attribute values must always be quoted.

C. HTML Scraping

Scraping is another way to create an RSS file. Scraping is extracting link titles and URLs from Web pages, Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) by writing and executing a script such as one written in Perl.

D. Aggregator

An RSS aggregator, metadata harvester, is a type of software that reads RSS files and indexes them for display or syndication.

A personal aggregator can run on your desktop and be used as a headline viewer, reader, to subscribe to RSS channels. However, keep in mind a web page listing many resources can take awhile to load.

E. Using PHP to Display RSS

If you have access to a server and PHP software you can display RSS which can be spidered and indexed by search engines. The PHP web page content is considered to be search engine spider and robot-friendly.

F. Using JavaScript to Display RSS

JavaScript is the easiest way to display RSS feeds on a website. There are a number of sites that will allow you to generate code that can be inserted into a website. The JavaScript will auto-update, showing the latest headlines as the feed is updated. Each time a visitor visits the website the JavaScript pulls the data from the feed. When JavaScript is used to display RSS feeds, search engines do not actually "see" the contents of the feed, meaning that the search engines will not index the contents of the feed within the website.

G. Using Google Feed API to Display RSS

First create a Google Account, if you do not already have one. Then Sign-Up For an API Key by entering your website URL and then clicking Generate API Key.

The Google Feed API is used with Java Script Object Notation (JSON) which is a text format that is completely language-independent and represents data structures.

H. How to Embed RSS Feeds Into an HTML Website

You can use any one of many free third party providers to embed RSS Feeds into your HTML website.

For example, http://www.feedroll.com/rssviewer/index.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amnh.org%2Fscience%2Fpapers%2Frss.xml&generate=Generate+JavaScript&chan=n&num=0&desc=1&au=n&html=n&date=n&tz=feed&targ=n&utf=y&pc=y&rss_box_id= .

Feedroll is an excellent provider. Feedroll talks you through the process step by step, allows you to preview what will appear on your website and provides you with the JavaScript for you to copy and past onto your website.

You have learned RSS, enjoy!

Elcric Otto Circle

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How to Link to My Home Page

It will appear on your website as:

"Link to: ELCRIC OTTO CIRCLE's Home Page"

Friday, October 21, 2011

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How to Link to My Home Page