Website RSS feed

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Snderfox
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Sep 27, 2007 5:50 pm

Website RSS feed

Post by Snderfox »

Hi,
First of all, I want to thank you for this great website. I visit it on a daily basis and it's one of the few who really stays up-to-date. For me as an archaeology student this site is essential. Please keep at it!

I have one question though. Would it be possible to add RSS functionality to this website? I would like to read news in my RSS reader and this is one of the only news sites I visit that hasn't got this functionality. I tried an external RSS feed creator and although it works, it isn't perfect. Just a suggestion.

Best regards,
Sander
Minimalist
Forum Moderator
Posts: 16025
Joined: Mon Sep 26, 2005 1:09 pm
Location: Arizona

Post by Minimalist »

We'll have our geeks look into it.

I, for one, haven't got a clue.

:D
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.

-- George Carlin
Snderfox
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Sep 27, 2007 5:50 pm

Post by Snderfox »

I may have found a way. Just for testing purposes I made a copy of your news page (I really hope you don't mind) and tried to keep it the same as much as possible, while implementing RSS functionality.
You can see the result here:
http://sanderfox.nl/rss/index.php

Looks almost the same, except for the distance between the last item of a day and the date of the previous day. The way I did it, it's not possible to change that distance without changing the distance between the items as well. The other difference, although not visible for visitors, is that it will take a little more effort to add items. Not that much though. Perhaps 15 seconds longer per item than usual.

What I did:
  • I downloaded the rss2html script (you can find it with Google).
  • I made a copy of the news page
  • I made the news page a bit more suitable for testing.
  • I wrote a feed.xml file.
  • I created a template based on the news page, but with added RSS functionality.
  • Uploaded it all to my web space and started testing.
That's about it. I tested the feed in my RSS reader and it worked.
It's quite easy to "install". I can send you everything you need if you want to. You can then just upload it and it'll work.

Of course there are also other ways of creating RSS feeds for your website. There are multiple websites that offer to create one for you (paid and free), but the free ones have the catch that they only refresh every 6 hours or more, so it's possible to get the news hours after it being posted.

Best regards,
Sander
Snderfox
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Sep 27, 2007 5:50 pm

Post by Snderfox »

Update:
I wrote 2 explanatory texts and added them to the package. If you PM me an email address, I will send the zip file, so you (or someone else) can play around with this. It won't overwrite any of the current files on the website.
If you have any questions, you can ask me any time.

Best regards,
Sander
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