RSS basics

An idiot's guide would be helpful

[Patrick Taylor]

Having recently discovered what an RSS feed is and roughly how they work, I added a feed from a major news site to my homepage. In a PHP on-page script I have a link something like:

ht*p://ww*.domain.com/syndication/feeds/rss001.xml

I also found a web-based parser which I downloaded and installed on my web server. To my amazement, the newsfeed actually works - I just uploaded the parser straight out of the box plus some simple PHP on my page - but I would like to know more, and I'm not a programmer so it needs to begin fairly basic.

In particular, what are the main technical issues a webmaster should be concerned about when adding a feed to a normal page? The server-located parser I've used seems to be fine but there must be others - where would I find out? (I've spent some time researching but found much more advice on creating feeds than deploying them.)

Basically I'm saying I've got something to work (I think) but now I need to backtrack and make myself aware of how and why etc. Could anyone post or sticky me the signpost to the beginning of the road? A number of Google searches didn't get me much further.

Many thanks,

Patrick

[Patrick Taylor]

Since my previous post I found another simple-to-install PHP RSS feed parser which works very well, and very easy to add the feed to a normal PHP web page too - if anyone's interested.

[AmeriClicks]

Patrick

You're doing the right thing with using the server side parsing and it is generally the prefered and recommended method to include RSS output on a webpage.

Why not share what' you've found

[willybfriendly]

Yes Patrick, do share.

I would like to find a primer for RSS. I can think of several uses for some of my stuff.

WBF

[Patrick Taylor]

I'd be glad to, but is it allowed here? It's a commercial site with a free download.

[willybfriendly]

You can sticky mail us :)

WBF

[Patrick Taylor]

Okay... I did!

[john_k]

In particular, what are the main technical issues a webmaster should be concerned about when adding a feed to a normal page?

One thing you should be doing is cacheing the feed so that you are only hitting the provider's server on a periodic basis. Hopefully the parser you found provides this functionality? The cache refresh rate will of course depend upon how often the feed is updated.