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Please DO Feed the Sites: Creating Outgoing Feeds December 3, 2006

 Please DO Feed the Sites: Creating Outgoing Feeds [13:18m]: | Download (4089)

Are you tired of all the geek bullies kicking virtual sand in your face, flexing their apps, and getting all the URLs? Have you ever looked at your site on the monitor and wished that you too could bulk up like the big geeks? Well, now you can.

Presenting Outgoing RSS Feeds:

• They're quick.
• They're easy.
• They keep working even while you sleep.
• No special diet.
• No exercise.

Whatever your coding preference, we've got the plan for you. Whether you'd rather pop it right out of the bottle or create beautifully hand-crafted feeds we've got you covered. Order now, supplies are limited (only by your imagination.)

Sorry, folks, I just couldn't resist that.

Let's jump right into creating feeds for your site, but keep in mind that we aren't going to get into the actual coding of a hand-created feed until part five of this series. (This is part three in case you lost track.)

Converting HTML to RSS

Basically, the fastest way to begin putting an RSS feed out from a standard website is to convert already existing HTML pages to RSS XML. This works especially well if you're already separating content like event announcements and program highlights into separate files and using SSIs to plug them into your page templates. However, some of the available tools will parse sections out of larger pages.

A good, free tool for this is the RSSxl Generator from WotZWot. This is a (seemingly permanent) beta application, so you might have to double-check the resulting XML. However, it does let you specify strings in your document that identify where the feed content starts and where individual RSS items and item descriptions are located.

XML:Wrench is another free tool. It's a fairly decent (if simple) XML editor that will convert HTML to XML. Even if you limit the source HTML document to nothing but the basic feed content, you'll still have to go through the code itself in the editor and do some cleanup.

The RSS Wizard is a fairly cheap solution from Extralabs Software that generates "the RSS feed out of virtually any web page without having to edit it first." That's the claim anyway. I say you're better off checking code out for yourself, but, then, I'm known to be somewhat anal about these things.

Fill-In-the-Blanks RSS Creation

A fill-in-the-blanks form solution for the quick creation of RSS feeds is a distinct possibility to get you started. This is a good interim option until you have something better in place. This type of tool is available as a stand-alone desktop application or through web applications on other sites.

FeedForAll has one of the best known tools for the dynamic creation of RSS feeds, and the software, although powerful, is very cheap. Another paid option is PRESSfeed which actively promotes the use of RSS feeds for press releases and other forms of marketing and includes social bookmarking aspects and a number of other services.
Go there for Sally Falkow’s blog on How to use RSS feeds in enterprise marketing and promotions if for no other reason.

The main fill-in-the-blanks solution I want to draw your attention to is a special resource created by the web team at ONIX specifically for the creation of station feeds. It seems that the folks at Newshour would like to see more stations syndicating their news content so that more local news can be picked up by the national Newshour site–especially local election coverage. Pretty smart of them, huh? The thing to remember about this web application from Newshour is that it will work for the creation of any RSS feed irregardless of its "newsworthiness." You simply enter the content directly into form fields, and it does the rest.

There are a couple quick caveats worth noting with this service. First of all, there's a separate form to use if your feed will include podcasts. Podcasts require their own special code enclosures to be part of the feed, and, even though nearly any type of content can be syndicated by RSS, they've limited the content type to MP3s for this tool. Also, there's currently a bug that leaves empty image enclosures if you don't happen to include an image in your feed. This will probably be fixed at some point very soon.

Database-Driven Dynamic Feeds

The problem with all these non-database-driven methods is that the content is not truly dynamic. You'll have to add to, delete, or replace content in the feed file yourself item by item in order to keep it up to date. If it's also being used as site-based content like program highlights or events, then you'll end up having to create the content twice, once in HTML for your site and once in XML for your feed. You lose the power of a database to parse the same content into multiple formats and put it where it belongs on its own.

The best method for feed generation is the adaptation of an open-source CMS tool like Drupal or Joomla to do the job for you. RSS feed syndication is built in. This will allow for the running of the site along with simultaneous feed management. Some have even had success with adapting blogging tools like Movable Type and WordPress for use as a CMS.

Ang Zhuu Ming over at blogHelper has written a pretty comprehensive guide to the ins and outs of using WordPress as a CMS if you're thinking along those lines. Also, Ross Johnson over at 3.7 Designs has recommended five plugins that will help to turn WordPress into a CMS. [Just a sidenote while you’re there, check out Ross’s feed promotion at the top of his blog. Now that’s a clear call to action.]

A good station example of using Movable Type as a station CMS can be seen at WTIU's website, though I'm surprised to see that they still aren't making use of the inherent RSS capabilities. You might want to check out my previous article, Movable Type: An Interview with Angela Jordan of WTIU, for more information about how to get that set up.

Leveraging Your Feed

It's all well and good that we're offering our station website content for syndication, but don't miss the opportunity to push your membership/support reminders. As far as I'm concerned, the station membership page should never be more than one click away from anything related to a station's website–including the RSS feed. By subscribing to your feed, users are showing that they appreciate your efforts to keep them informed of site updates and station news. There's absolutely nothing wrong with politely reminding them that this too takes time and money and is publicly supported.

Another thing to keep in mind is good titling and content. Make sure that you pick some kind of title (preferably a catchy one) for each item in your feed. That can get tricky sometimes, but it's worth it to the end user who's feed reader is limited to just titles. Catchy content description is worth some effort here too since the idea is to engage the user quickly and make them want to see more.

Playing Nice With RSS

Before I go any further in this, let me clarify something right quick. Although RSS tends to be pretty "stretchable" and certain de facto standards and practices have successfully crept into common usage, the actual specification doesn't allow for much of what is being done with it. That is changing though.

The usage of HTML within an RSS feed must be limited to what is absolutely necessary. That does not include any kind of formatting. Even the kind of CDATA embedded hyperlink that I'll be getting to in Part 5 as we "hand-code" an actual feed is only necessary until some kind of source-type sub-element of the description element is added to the specification. [NOTE: I am aware that entity-encoded HTML is allowable in the description, but I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible here.]

Nothing but plain-text is allowable in the title. It cannot include a hyperlink because it is, in and of itself, a hyperlink back to the source page. Also, keep in mind that RSS feeds are designed to be read outside of your site, so relative URLs may not work; every link should be a complete, direct URL address.

One other thing here is the question of how to handle multiple feeds such as station news, program highlights, and community events. The very simple answer is to create multiple feed files. Each can have a separate name with either an RSS or XML extension (though I recommend the latter.) You can place them all in your root directory, in a "feed" subdirectory (and this is my recommendation,) or in a subdirectory related to the content. Choose names with some semantic meaning to make them somewhat human-readable.

Putting the Feed Out

Strangely enough, this is the point in the discussion where I will probably begin breaking some new ground for even seasoned RSS users. I say that because there are quite a few stations (and even PBS itself) that are clearly getting the necessity of creating RSS feeds and have, in some form or another, done all the steps I've listed up to this point and then just stopped there as if they were done. There's more to it then just putting an RSS link icon or text in the body of your pages to notify users that you have RSS feeds. They're failing to make use of RSS auto-discovery, and they don't actively promote their feeds.

RSS Auto-Discovery

RSS auto-discovery is not a new feature of RSS. (In fact, it's not even limited to RSS.) Yet it's a very widely ignored resource. This is one of the more powerful aspects of RSS that's helping to bring it into the mainstream. Not only are many feed aggregators, news readers, and search engines actively hunting this for content, but it's what makes the feed icon in Firefox and IE7 and other browsers that support it pop into life and draw users into subscribing right through their browser.

Trust me when I say, "You definitely want this on your site."

Once you have your RSS file created, you then place an auto-discovery LINK tag for each of your feeds in the head section of your site pages. It looks like the code below, only edited for the correct path and title of your content:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="A Title of Your Choice" href="http://www.station.org/url/to/rss/file">

RSS Promotion

Placing a visible link to your RSS feeds on your pages will get you subscribers–and it is vitally important that you have this displayed prominently–but feed syndication doesn't end there any more than television syndication ends in the producer's office. You gotta get the word out. You have to notify the various feed directories like syndic8 that you have a feed. You need to promote the use of your feed not only as a convenience but as content for other sites.

One of the more interesting aspects of RSS syndication is that your content can be included in other sites complete with your links back to your site. This is good to encourage among school and community event sites in your viewing area (and almost any other site that you can talk into doing this) as it spreads not only your station's brand, identity, content, and events to a wider audience, it also spreads your membership/support reminders.

Another good free tool to help in the management, promotion, and monetization of your feed is FeedBurner. This will give you numerous tools to monitor and accessorize your feed.

Some Final Words

If it seems to you that I've been harping on the station membership/support aspects of this, then maybe you're actually getting the point I'm trying to make here. Web content syndication should be an important part of not only your station's web presence, but its online membership recruitment and marketing. Nonprofit does not mean that you should ignore potential revenue sources. If anything, it means that you should jump at all of them–especially the ones that have been made so incredibly easy for you.

Let me run through it again here because it's so vitally important:

• Syndicate your content with RSS web feeds.
• Leverage your feeds with station membership/support reminders.
• Promote your feeds.

Say that over and over again, make it your mantra, and get to work.

Thank you all, code well, and good night.

The Illusion of Accelerated Dialup September 22, 2006

 The Illusion of Accelerated Dialup [4:32m]: | Download (1746)

BEWARE: Web developer letting off steam. Read at your own risk.

Okay, I've had it. I'm tired of telling people that what they're seeing on their screen isn't really what my site looks like. I'm tired of explaining to site users that I did not populate my site with sucky graphics. In point of fact, I'm sick and tired of the entire concept of "Accelerated Dialup" that ISPs have been selling for years. It's a myth, an illusion people; it doesn't exist. Now, I realize, of course, that my audience here is primarily web developers and that this isn't anything they don't already know, but I just can't stand it anymore. I'm sure you understand my need for a rant here.

Here's the scenario:

I'm over at a friend's house or a get-together or something. Someone walks up to me and says something like, "I just heard that you handle such-and-such website." I straighten up and get prepared to receive the unsolicited commendations I'm sure are forthcoming. The next thing I hear is something like, "You'd think they could afford some decent graphics." or, "Why does it look all crappy like that?" Then I have to spend the rest of my time there trying to save what's left of my deflated ego and explain how they've been duped by their ISP.

ISPs routinely sell the concept of "Accelerated Dialup" with ridiculous phrases promising "DSL-like speed from your dialup connection." They'll even explain how it works right on their homepages while knowing full well that the majority of their users don't read anything past the lurid sales bullets and the stated price.

The way it works is to remove some of the quality from all of the graphics they display so that the page loads faster. Is it just me or does this strike you as the web equivalent of the potato-chip bag disclaimers that say, "Some settling may occur," as if that explains why the bag is more than half empty when you open it?

The problem here is that within a week or two of signing on, most users have forgotten (if they ever noticed in the first place) this aspect of their ISP's behavior, and they begin to think that what they're seeing is just the way the web looks. If you're like me and you've taken the time to optimize your graphics as far as possible to achieve the fastest possible downloads for your users, then the extra filtering of "Accelerated Dialup" will result in graphics that look like they were created by a third-grader with a water-color set. The alternative is using higher-quality, slower-loading graphics to compensate.

Here's how the ISP's should explain it:

We know that your 56k-modem won't go any faster than 56k, but, in order to get you to give us your money, we will gladly give you the illusion of faster web surfing by stripping 20% to 50% of the quality from even the most carefully crafted and optimized graphics before you view them.

To be slightly fair in my rant, "Accelerated Dialup" does have it's place. There are times when a dialup user will want to surf the web faster without being that particular about graphics. However, this should be done knowingly.

Why can't the ISPs, since they're already processing the graphic anyway, brand it somehow to remind users that they've tampered with it and it's not the original? I would offer some constructive ideas along these lines, but, in the mood I'm in right now, all I can picture is a toilet-seat cover and the words, "Optimized for your deception."

I really can't believe that I'm the only person bothered by this. Anyway, I appreciate the chance to get that off my chest.

Thank you all, code well, and good night.

Norton's Ad Hoc Ad Blocking March 19, 2006

 Norton's Ad Hoc Ad Blocking [4:05m]: | Download (1238)

One of the major battles I've been involved with over the course of the last year is trying to get important station site content past Norton Internet Security. It seems that the default settings for Norton (which covers about 99% of its users) include the automatic blocking of various page elements that it considers advertising or ad-like or has the potential to be used as ads or perhaps in the presence of a full moon might become an ad. I don't know. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't have to. They're Norton.

Norton's answer to ad blocking is to make sure it never even reaches your browser. Brilliant, right? The problem is that they went for the easiest solution at the expense of blocking loads of valid content. They block images of specific ad-like or banner-like sizes (thus killing various logos and program highlights) or with certain keywords like "ad" or "sponsor." (I had to change the name of one of my image subfolders from "/sponsors/" to "/underwriters/".) These problems were fairly easy to bypass and work around, but that's not the worst of it…

Norton blocks document writes from outside sources.

You're probably wondering why I wrote that last sentence as if it should be accompanied by ominous background music. The answer is that PBS uses just such outside document writes to provide some very important content to station websites. The program search function that allows users to search through the upcoming program schedules by keyword, title, or subject as well as the TeacherSource Activity Search function that allows teachers to search for lesson plans, classroom activities, and games tied to local programming are both blocked by Norton. Again, that's not the worst of it…

The worst problem with Norton Internet Security is that it expunges the content directly from the source code before it ever reaches a user's browser. [That's MY code. I'm an anal coder. Don't ever do that.] That means that users with this software installed see my pages with no content, missing content, or outright holes in the pages as if I had no idea what I was doing in creating that page. Norton leaves it that way, too. They don't take credit for helping to save that user from my horrible attempt to educate them. Heck no, they like to hide out in the system tray all unobtrusive as if they were just minding their own business and had no clue what was going on.

If this were some low-end, hardly used software with a handful of users, I wouldn't care. But this is Norton, and, depending on whose statistics you believe, it's currently shipping preinstalled with all it preset defaults on something between 50% and 80% of all new store-bought computers. That's a major chunk of my current and future users. How many schools does that include?

The most important content, the one thing that I believe transforms a local public television station website from a glorified brochure into a major educational resource is the ability to deliver already finished, professionally-developed lesson plans and classroom activities to the busy local teachers and homeschoolers who need them most. That's what Norton's ad hoc approach to ad blocking is preventing, not advertising, just valid content. I can slip an advertisement through Norton without any problem.

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