TribalPages has added several Web Feeds to our site, taking our first steps into the RSS syndication space. Given how well our initial testing is going, we'll probably introduce additional RSS feeds in the future, so we thought a brief introductions was in order.
First, here's a run down of our current RSS feeds:
News - the most recent items in our News Section.- Genealogy Feed - the recent items in our Genealogy Forum
- Technology Feed - the recent items in our Technology Forum
- Combined Forum Feed - All of the recent items from both forums combined into one convenient feed
Here's what they're good for...
Many of you will (no doubt) have no idea what to do with these links: if you click on them in many browsers, you'll just get a page full of nasty XML code that looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0" xml:base="http://www.tribalpages.com/portal" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
<channel>
<title>TribalPages Combined Forum Posts</title>
<link>http://www.tribalpages.com/tpBoards.html</link>
<description>Recent Posts from TribalPages Forum</description>
<language>en</language>
That's not very useful to anybody! However, it's not meant to be: RSS is meant to provide machine-readable summaries of changes to websites, posts to message-boards, etc. so that other software display the information the way the user wants.
For some, that will mean showing the headlines on their My Yahoo! page, for others, it will read the articles to them over their cellphones. By providing only the data, RSS leaves the control of how to present the information up to the user.
Let's get started
Since there are so many ways to use RSS Feeds, let's just focus on the few that are easiest to get started with.
The first way that users are likely to use Feeds is to add them to an aggregator or portal. Portals are sites that display lots of information from various sources to the user at one time. The two most popular portals right now are probably My Yahoo! and the Google Homepage.
Both of these sites allow you to directly add any Feeds directly to your page by pasting the URL (starting with http://) of the feed into the "Add Content' form. However, they both also have shortcut icons for publishers, so TribalPages will help you get started. All you need to do is click on the icon for the feed you want to add:
Let's Get Fancy!
Those sites are great, but there are hundreds of ways to use RSS feeds. If you doubt us, take a look at this site, which lists the things the author's been able to do.
Rather than go through them all, we'll show you two RSS tools that we find very handy. For more ideas, ask in the Technology Forum.
First, let's look at Thunderbird, our favorite Email client. It's free, open source, fast, safe, generally good stuff. It also supports RSS feeds. Here's how we add them:
First, we click on the "News and Blogs" folder. That brings up the News & Blogs summary page. We choose "Manage Subscriptions" and then enter our RSS Feed URL:
When we're done, we'll see the new folder with a list of recent forum articles. Note that Thunderbird embeds the actual web page right inside your email client! It also gives you the normal notifications when there's new comments just like when you get new email.
Here's a picture of the end result (blurred out of overabundant caution)
Using your Browser
Finally, one more thing to do with RSS: add a "Live Bookmark" to your browser.
Both Firefox (1.5 & 2.0) and Internet Explorer 7.0 have the ability to add an RSS Feed to your bookmarks (or favorites) list. When you do, the browser will create a little folder with the name of the feed and individual entries will be listed underneath. The browser will update the list in the background (about every 1/2 hour) and you'll always have a list of the latest news items at your fingertips!
I won't walk through how to create these lists, but here's a screenshot of the current Technology Forum Feed:
If you'd like to add these Live Bookmarks, here are some links to help:
- Adding Live Bookmarks in Firefox 1.x
- A Microsoft Page on Using RSS in Internet Explorer 7
- Using RSS on Firefox 2.0
If we can help you with using any of these feeds, please let us know in the Technology Forum
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