How to (NOT) create an RSS feed

cel4145 | Wed, 07/30/2003 - 14:20
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Ed Tech Dev writes

Stephen Downes has a post
on how to create an RSS feed using a text editor. Here's a question- why would anyone in their right mind want to create an RSS feed from scratch? There's not even any reason specified for doing this. At least use a tool like this one which makes it easier.

I was kind of wondering that myself, but for a different reason. After all, RSS feeds are most useful for sites which are generally not static. Who would want to constantly have to edit a static RSS feed page whenever new content was posted to a site? Not very practical. This situation is a good reason for using a content management system to provide automatic updates for an RSS feed page.

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Maybe Not

Posted by Anonymous on Thu, 07/31/2003 - 08:26

Stephen wrote in an email reply (and also I believe added comments to his own post) that this was a case where the updates were infrequent, maybe once a month and certainly feasilble if one were just adding a new item now and then. There are going to be many sites where content is produced not by a CMS (e.g. some online journals) so there is nothing wrong with a handspun feed if one is willing to bear coding XML and validating it.

There is nothing to say the RSS is only for "new content" that is just how it is used most often. Some feeds pull random items from collections (to highlight content), others might be tied to various sub categories of a selection.

Also, the tool you suggested consisently crashes IE/MacOSX, so not so easy.

re: Maybe Not

Posted by cel4145 on Thu, 07/31/2003 - 09:48

Sure. Nothing wrong with coding it by hand. And it's a good exercise for learning about RSS/xml. But if the content is more frequent, most administrators, platform and hosting permitted, would probably benefit from investing the time in installing a CMS.

"Also, the tool you suggested consisently crashes IE/MacOSX, so not so easy."

Actually, that was Ed Tech Dev's suggestion.

RSSFeed

Posted by Anonymous on Wed, 10/08/2003 - 08:19

Hey, that is exactlly what I need! I have one page on a static site that I update weekly, already handcode page plus send it out as text only newsletter, one more format easily implemented scares me a lot less than installing a whole CMS.
I am thinking of trying this:
http://www.webreference.com/cgi-bin/perl/rssedit.pl
Karen