How do I use RSS?

...and what is it?

[kodaks]

Greetings,
I posted this yesterday:
[webmasterworld.com...]
But encyclo told me to post my questions in this forum.

I am wondering:
a)What exactly is RSS?
b)I would like to put YAHOO!'s and The NY Time's RSS Feeds on my site, and I am wondering how to go about doing this.

Thanks!

[claus]

RSS is...well, a loong story...The DMOZ RSS Category [dmoz.org] has quite a lot of links on the subject, both information and tools.

Essentially, it's a format for data exchange, sort of like a database-in-a-textfile. Within the textfile there are fields that look much like HTML tags, and within these fields (ie. between the tags) are the data.

To put a RSS feed on your site, you'll need a tool that will convert the feed to HTML and display it on your site.

For tools, it all depends what you have available. There's tools that use Perl, Python, PHP, ASP, .NET, and so on (although i have no experience with the latter two, i'm sure there are tools for them). There's also a few websites around that can convert the RSS feed to a javascript snippet that you can put on your page, if you don't have access to Perl, python, etc.

Related thread: RSS Introduction Web Sites anybody? [webmasterworld.com]

[kodaks]

Thanks for the help!

For tools, it all depends what you have available. There's tools that use Perl, Python, PHP, ASP, .NET, and so on (although i have no experience with the latter two, i'm sure there are tools for them). There's also a few websites around that can convert the RSS feed to a javascript snippet that you can put on your page, if you don't have access to Perl, python, etc.

Can anyone recommend a PHP tool that converts RSS to HTML?

[NeedScripts]

Check out www.geckotribe.com/rss/ they have freeware and paid scripts that should solve your needs.

Vishal

[winsonlu]

By definition, RSS is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing things like news headlines and other web page content. But the bottom line is, RSS is simply a popular and convenient method of sharing content between websites.