Adding news feeds to website?

[edthomas]

I'm considering adding a news feed to my (static HTML) website. Can anyone recommend a program or script that they've used to pull stories in XML format from the major wire services and news sites?

Any thoughts/advice/feedback would be great. Ideally, I'd like to be able to customize my search parameters, so that the script only pulls stories to my site that are germane to my content. It's my understanding that this can be done for free.... thoughts/recs/horror stories? ---Ed

[bhartzer]

One of the benefits of adding a feed to your site is that it's updated on a regular basis (sometimes hourly or daily) and Google, in particular, loves that.

There are many different types of feeds and there are many sites that will provide it. If you can make RSS work for you, then I would do that. I know people who have had problems implementing an RSS feed on their sites, and they just gave up.

I actually prefer to use a PHP feed, and there are only a few out there that work well.

The key is to find a feed that updates the content on your page (javascript will not work because although it updates for the human it doesn't update for the search engine robots--see the source code once the page is up and running). The other thing to look for is content that is appropriate for your site, something that your website visitors would be interested in.

[sijpie]

It's called 'syndication'. If you do a search on "Syndication tools" you will find a few tools to help you.

[steve0]

If you have some understanding of php and html,
check out http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/

You can customize the output of the incoming feed to better match you site.. which is very useful..

[mikmik]

That gecko looks good.
Here is a pretty good list of articles for using and making different kinds of feeds. http://webdesign.about.com/od/rsstools/

K. I installed the gecko, it toook well over 45 seconds LOL.
Demo: http://factor1.net/demo/demorss.php

One of the easiest third party installs of a php script I've seen. It is getting pretty good these days, though.

Lot's of good help here, thanks everyone. I will be around more. Good to see you sijpie!

[mikmik]

edthomas wrote

I'm considering adding a news feed to my (static HTML) website. Can anyone recommend a program or script that they've used to pull stories in XML format from the major wire services and news sites?

As far as I know, feeds are available ONLY as XML and javascript.
This is what the 'raw' feeds look like for the gecko I've tested:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>Mouken, L.C. Press Releases</title>
<link>http://www.mouken.com/press/releases/</link>
<description>Press releases from Mouken, L.C.</description>
<item>
<title>CaRP Evolution 3.5 (RSS parser) enables complex filtering, mySQL storage</title>
<link>http://www.mouken.com/press/releases/-/11/</link>
<pubDate>Mon, 12 Jan 2004 18:01:13 -0700</pubDate>
<description>CaRP Evolution 3.5, released today, adds features enabling websites to perform complex filtering of RSS newsfeeds, and to store RSS newsfeeds in a mySQL database.</description>
</item>
<item>
<title>CaRP Evolution adds plugin support to RSS newsfeed parser</title>
<link>http://www.mouken.com/press/releases/-/10/</link>
<pubDate>Tue, 11 Nov 2003 18:20:29 -0700</pubDate>
<description>A new version of CaRP (Caching RSS Parser), CaRP Evolution, adds support for third-party plugins to this popular tool for importing RSS newsfeeds into websites.</description>
</item></channel>
</rss>

Depending on the feed source, there are many...or few "items", but they are added after the first one shown above, many times over in repetitions of the "<item>[title link etc]</item>" element. That's all :O)

[mikmik]

edthomas, between my last post, and this - we went here

http://www.syndic8.com/
Welcome to Syndic8.com. This is the place to come to find RSS and Atom news feeds on a wide variety of topics. There is a lot here; be sure to explore all of the tabs at the top of the page.

Looked around, typed "horror" and selected 'english', clicked on the orange 'xml' button...
cut'n'pasted this

<blockquote>
<?php
require_once "d:\\\\html\\\\users\\\\factor1net\\\\html\\\\carp \\\\carp/carp.php";
CarpCacheShow('http://rss.topix.net/rss/movies/horror.xml');
?></blockquote>

Into a project page (it is bad...sshhhhhhh!)..and this resulted:
http://factor1.net/mike/mik/subdirectory1/uno.php

This is easy, I am new - it is the first feed I have installed :O)
I have seen other, more powerful scripts, and it looks very easy to build one in xml if you are up to it.
I have some tutorial links, and the benefit of that is - free, therefore no links to the script authors sites, and mostly...KNOWLEDGE haha.

[paulhiles]

Originally Posted by edthomas

I'm considering adding a news feed to my (static HTML) website. Can anyone recommend a program or script that they've used to pull stories in XML format from the major wire services and news sites?

Do you have any access to server side scripting Ed? The reason I ask is, whilst the solutions offered so far are all excellent, they do rely on you having PHP or some other server side scripting enabled.

If the answer is No.. don't despair, you can still display news feeds on your site, however they would be reliant on JavaScript... and some sort of alternate text would need to be provided for visitors with JavaScript disabled.

If you are familiar with PHP / ASP and can run scripts locally on your home PC, then of course you may want to create your own news feed, generate a JavaScript version and upload it to your static HTML site... bit of a convoluted process, but it's another option if you have the facility.

Hope that helps, and you're not too confused by all the suggestions!! :o)

Paul

[paulhiles]

To anyone who may be interested...
here are a couple of great pages from the LockerGnome site for further information on RSS.
RSS QuickStart Guide
RSS & Atom Resources - Lockergnome

[edthomas]

just checking out the gecko tools now, and it looks deceptively straight forward. looks like i've got something new to play with now too... let me see if i can get some test pages up and working tonight---i'm new at this, so i'll be sure to scream if i get lost.

thanks again for the recommendations! --Ed

[mikmik]

Every single rdf, rss, xml, etc has worked flawlessly with that gecko:
http://davezilla.com/b2rss2.php
http://randomwalks.com/index-rss2-xml.php
http://www.kottke.org/index.xml
http://www.lockergnome.com/rss/web.p...1247ca2d60c271
http://www.scripting.com/rss.xml
http://www.volubis.com/blog/index.rdf

<?php
require_once "d:\\\\html\\\\users\\\\factor1net\\\\html\\\\carp \\\\carp/carp.php";
CarpCacheShow('http://feeds.feedburner.com/WebStrac...evelopmentNews');
?>

Just copy'n'paste any URL for a feed, i haven't seen one not work yet.

It is, however, a little slow to load sometimes, like about a 3 to 5 second delay extra.

I couldn't tell you if my server load was extreme then, though.

[steve0]

Regarding the slow loading, check your cache settings. After initial retrieval, the feed updates based on your preference.. otherwise it is as fast as opening a local file.

And definitely check out the default formatting capabilities in carp.php.. override them before you call the xml in CarpCacheShow().
e.g.
Open in a new window
CarpConf('linktarget','1');
As well as the link formatting abilities.

[cgadmin]

I built a feed aggregator for CHAITGEAR around the turn of the year, based off a sample I had seen (that wasn't working too well). The result is CG-Feedread.

It's not perfect, but is pretty darn simple, and quite lightweight. And, the more people who use it, the better it gets! While most of its use has been WordPress folks, it has no particular requirements aside from PHP for the scripting. Handles all the basics of RDF, RSS1+2, and Atom, and can be modded to support new feed formats or fields easily.

If people try it and find it lacking, or looking for certain features, let me know -- further development at this point is extremely user-request focused, so I'm always looking for more ideas of what people might want.

-d

[Stevie4CB]

I use CARP, but I want to make the actual feed look better on my site. Can someone dumb down how to do so, I read the carpconfig thingy but the light has not gone off in my head yet.

For instance I want it to open in new window (how do I control what the window looks like)

I want black headers and white font and bolder font.

Any help?