RSS basics for a lost newbie

[Michael Weir]

Hey guys what's up?

My boss wants to get more into the RSS scene with his business. I told him I'd like to spearhead the project so I can expand on my SEO knowledge. Basically he wants me to build an info portal with articles about our industry. These articles are of course going to be RSS generated, and taken from other sites. Basically he wants this page to be a center for e-marketing info to be updated with the biggest industry stories.

I've build the template around which the RSS feed will reside, etc. He's given me several feeds already that he wants me to put in the page.

I just don't know what to do with this info. I've searched around a bit but I tend to get lost in the terminology. Do I need an RSS aggregator/client to translate the code into something that's readable on a web page?

What are the best free programs to download?

Do I neeed to save my file as .asp / .xml / .php?

Etc...all teh basic stuff.

Thanks in advance, and sorry if this has been covered. I didn't have much time to search around today.

Michael Weir

[eurotrash]

I suggest you read the following tutorial:

[rssgov.com...]

It is well laid out and very good at explaining most aspects of RSS.

Good Luck.

[Michael Weir]

Thank you! I'll take a look. Any more hints or suggestions from anybody would be greatly appreciated!

MW

[ebound]

If all you are doing is displaying feeds, search google for "consume rss feed asp" "consume rss feed php" etc.

There are many free scripts for consuming and displaying feeds.

[Michael Weir]

Yes, all I want to do is display feeds. Is it possible to do something like this without heavy programming?

It seems to me that to set up a site, have it automatically display new articles, etc. would require some heavy scripting and programming, am I wrong?

Right now I have an RSS reader subscribed to a couple RSS feeds so I have some articles coming in to read every day. Copying and pasting the article in to our website is one thing, having the website going out and fetching newly published web articles all by itself is another.

I was hired to do SEO and "basic" design - I'm not a programmer. :(

On top of that, we outsource our hosting / database work to a company in india - I don't even have access to our hosting environment! Should I just tell my boss he's insane? :)

[ebound]

On top of that, we outsource our hosting / database work to a company in india - I don't even have access to our hosting environment!"

Yikes! Hard to customize a site when you "don't have access to your hosting environment".

Option 1
Step 1 - Ctrl C
Step 2 - Ctrl V

Option 2
Get better control of your hosting / database environment and move foward from there.

:)

[Michael Weir]

The hosting setup is a joke right now. Basically for the couple sites I'm doing SEO for, I upload updated files into a storage folder for them, email them about it, and once they get my email they "officially" upload it so that it's live. So the delay between me updating files, and them posting it is hours and hours. Not cool. >(

roger that on the copy and paste. I'll probably have to do that for now. And yes, trying to communicate with the indians is a pain in the *ss despite the fact that their english is pretty good, mainly because of the time zone differences, etc. We really need to get our own hosting server.

For now I'll just have to subscribe to feeds so that I can republish them via copying and pasting.

btw - are you the same ebound from a certain online honda forum?

[ebound]

btw - are you the same ebound from a certain online honda forum?

Don't know anything about honda's.

What was the reason for hosting in India in the first place?

[Michael Weir]

oh okay. I know somebody on a differet forum with the name of ebound.

Anyways, It wasn't my decision to host in india, but I believe it's super cheap to outsource there. I think they only charge like $10 an hour. It's a serious pain in the @ss though.

So I found some sites that allow you to paste in the URL of an RSS article and it converts it java. After pasting in the javascript the RSS items dynmically appear on the page. However, when you view the source code all you see is the javascript, obviously, and none of the content from the feed.

Will the spiders pick up on any of this content or will they only see javascript? We obviously want a lot of content on our site, thus one of the reasons for doing this in the first place.

[ebound]

Unlesss something has changed recently I'm about 99% sure that the SE's are not going to pick up this content when indexing your page.

Another thing to remember is that alot of people browse the web with javascript turned off.

[ebound]

One other idea is to start a new blog using a blog service and promote it from within your site. It may take a while to index but its better than using js that will never index.

[Michael Weir]

Yeah I figured. I mean the spiders crawl the source code, and not what you actually see on the screen.

I thought about going the blogger route and just copying and pasting snippets from the articles and linking to the full length articles. They won't update dynamically but until my boss wants to realize that I'm not a coder or a programmer, this will have to do.

[Reid]

Anyways, It wasn't my decision to host in india, but I believe it's super cheap to outsource there. I think they only charge like $10 an hour. It's a serious pain in the @ss though.

That sounds completely insane. Esp when you have to e-mail the files to be updated.
You can get a good virtual host in USA for $10 a month with FTP CGI PSP ASP the works.