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

Posted by ptvGuy. Comments: 5 comments
icon for podpress  Please DO Feed the Sites: Creating Outgoing Feeds [13:18m]: | Download (3999)

…limited only by your imagination…

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:

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

…convert already existing HTML pages to RSS XML…

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

…an RSS creation form is a good interim option…

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.

…Newshour resource for the creation of station feeds…

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.

…podcasts require special code enclosures to be part of the feed…

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 power of a database to parse the same content into multiple formats…

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.

…a guide to using WordPress 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

…don't miss the opportunity to push your membership reminders…

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

…usage of HTML within an RSS feed must be limited…

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.]

…only plain-text is allowable in the title…

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.

…relative URLs may not work…

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

…breaking some new ground for even seasoned RSS users…

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 a very widely ignored resource…

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

…you need to promote the use of your feed…

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

…content syndication should be an important part of online membership recruitment…

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:

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

Thank you all, code well, and good night.