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  • What is RSS?

    ...and how does it work? I kinda know it has something to do with enhancing the browsing experience. But when I click on the RSS link like in the Seeking thread I just get a bunch of HTML code. Thanks.


  • #2
    Re: What is RSS?

    Here's a summary. I find it a little confusing myself.

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    • #3
      Re: What is RSS?

      RSS makes it convenient for users to subscribe to specific types of content of their own choosing by subscribing to feeds. For example you could subscribe to the RSS feed in this topic alone through special RSS software you run on your computer or built in capabilities of some browsers, like Firefox and Safari. One of the nice things about RSS is that you can also publish feeds of your choosing on your own website.
      I'm still here. Are you?

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      • #4
        Re: What is RSS?

        Originally posted by mel
        One of the nice things about RSS is that you can also publish feeds of your choosing on your own website.
        Right. If you go to my blog and look at the left hand sidebar about halfway down you'll see five New York Times headlines and brief summaries of the stories those headlines refer to. That's an RSS feed from the NYT.
        http://www.linkmeister.com/wordpress/

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        • #5
          Re: What is RSS?

          Originally posted by Linkmeister
          If you go to my blog and look at the left hand sidebar about halfway down you'll see five New York Times headlines and brief summaries of the stories those headlines refer to. That's an RSS feed from the NYT.
          With an RSS news aggregator (don't let the jargon scare you off), you can do what Linkmeister does, and get summaries from one source, or you can get them from various sources on specific subjects, even. If you look at this site in the middle column, you'll see that RSS at work, pulling in Harry Potter news from different Harry Potter websites.

          If there are sites you visit all the time, you can subscribe to the RSS "feeds" in one place, and then whenever you're online, you can get a glimpse of all those sites in one place, to see which sites have updated since your last login. The Harry Potter site above is a good example of that.

          If you type "news aggregator" in a search engine, you'll find several places that let you do this for free. Since I haven't used any of them, I can't recommend any, but I know that they are very popular.

          If it's still unclear, ask again. It's a simple concept that for some reason is difficult to explain.
          But I'm disturbed! I'm depressed! I'm inadequate! I GOT IT ALL! (George Costanza)
          GrouchyTeacher.com

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          • #6
            Re: What is RSS?

            I began using bloglines as an aggregator (I'm using Windows, but it may work for Macs. There are others that specifically aim at Macs, I think, although it may not matter). It works fine and the proprietors continue to improve it. I'm still old-school enough to click sites themselves, because I don't get to everyone on the list everyday and thus need to catch up several posts at a time, but the aggregators are quick-and-dirty.
            http://www.linkmeister.com/wordpress/

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            • #7
              Re: What is RSS?

              For some reason I can't pull up the site that scrivener posted (I get this: AVADA KEDAVRA!! Lord Voldemort has performed a 404 on this page and it cannot be found)...Linkmeister's RSS stuff shows up as well as the RSS icon in the status bar.

              How can I use the RSS feature here on HT? Shouldn't there be an RSS icon in the status bar too? When I click on the RSS next to the topic title I just get the source code.

              Not a life or death thing...just something I'm curious about. Thanks.

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              • #8
                Re: What is RSS?

                Not all sites with RSS feeds will prompt the icon in the status bar in Firefox and other enlightened browsers. For those to appear, the pages need to have a specific tag embedded in the page header, and at present those aren't in place at HawaiiThreads, in part because our RSS implementation isn't altogether that good. But if you see "RSS" or "XML" somewhere on the page, that's all you need.

                You can grab the "[RSS]" link for the individual forum you want to watch and use it in your aggregator. For example, the "RSS" link for "Front Desk" is:

                http://www.hawaiithreads.com/externa...ss&forumids=26

                While you might see a bunch of code and tags, an RSS aggregator like Newsgator, Bloglines and the like will make it look all pretty.

                By the way, in case you're wondering... How do you track more than one forum here at HawaiiThreads? Just add to the list of "forumids" in the RSS URL. So, to track all the subforums in the Na Mea Ho`ohau`oli section -- music, movies, television, celebrities, etc. -- you'd use a URL like this:

                http://www.hawaiithreads.com/externa...19,20,21,22,24

                I made one that tracks all the sub-forum areas, and it's a very long URL, as you might imagine.

                FWIW, our sister site, HawaiiStories, has lots of member sites, almost every one of which generates an RSS feed to allow you to track updates. With those, you're able to see collected on the main HawaiiStories page a list of the most recent updates across the entire `ohana of sites.

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                • #9
                  Re: What is RSS?

                  Since someone asked, here's the klunky URL to a dynamically generated RSS feed that tracks all new posts in all the subfora in HawaiiThreads. (This one works for only the Hawaii Media area.) Put that into your aggregator (NewsGator, Bloglines, Safari), and easily see when new posts are made.

                  Hopefully the forum software will be upgraded so this is a bit more elegant and uses the 2.0 version of RSS... but for now, it's still snazzy enough for me.

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