[Web4lib] IT-free RSS-based What's New page solutions

[Michael McCulley]

Good one, Karen.. and we'll be wanting "more" of this as a) RSS feeds
propogate and b) we want to "display" those feeds onto Web content sites and
pages.

I've experimented with just two (2) for this so far, and assuming you can
use Javascript (I know some schools of thought recommend against it; hi
Thomas), you can often transform this with online tools and/or local code,
and provide a JS solution.

1) On my blog, I use a feed via Javascript to provide some ALA Library
Journal feeds in the sidebar. It's mostly a test of how-to-do-it, and I'm
not sure I'll leave it there long-term. The code is pretty simple:

Online feed from <i>American Libraries</i>
<script language="JavaScript"
src="http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/feed2js.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fww
w.ala.org%2Fcfapps%2Fxml%2Falonline.xml&chan=y&date=y&targ=y&html=a"
type="text/javascript"></script>
<noscript>
<a
href="http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/feed2js.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fw
ww.ala.org%2Fcfapps%2Fxml%2Falonline.xml&chan=y&date=y&targ=y&html=y">View
RSS feed</a>
</noscript>

See the secret sauce here.. http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/
It works well, and would love to see wider solutions like this, hosted and
operable so we'd have a number of choices for this type of translation.

2) Less successful was an attempt (so far) to get some Google News RSS
customized search feeds onto my blog sidebar; in addition to the different
coding solution I found, it was also formatting strangely, not wrapping,
etc.

The site I used was Feedsplitter, see http://chxo.com/feedsplitter/

Good luck with the project. I agree, we should have a small mini-program on
this at the next LITA or ALA meeting, if we can.

Best,
Michael

-- 
P. Michael McCulley aka DrWeb
mailto:drweb at san.rr.com
San Diego, CA 
http://drweb.typepad.com/

Quote of the Moment:
 -I can tell you're lying. Your lips are moving.
Friday, August 12, 2005 6:07:49 PM 

>-----Original Message-----
>From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org 
>[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of K.G. Schneider
>Sent: Friday, August 12, 2005 1:04 PM
>To: web4lib at webjunction.org; lita-bigwig at ala.org
>Subject: [Web4lib] IT-free RSS-based What's New page solutions
>
>I did a talk to librarians this morning about blogs, and once 
>again got a
>question I hear a lot. The question is how to include a 
>feed-based What's
>New section on a webpage when the webpage is not delivered 
>with a content
>management system that can handle this inherently and the 
>person maintaining
>the page can't run scripts, write code, etc. I'm not talking 
>about a link to
>a separate webpage--I'm talking about actually displaying the 
>feed content
>on the page. You can see several examples from my "virtual handout":
>
>http://freerangelibrarian.com/archives/081205/presentation_to_carl.php
>
>These are all coded by people with server access, though. 
>
>I'm assuming the answer runs like this: You need something, 
>anything, that
>will produce a feed, and then you need a way to paste code on 
>your page that
>displays the feed entries. 
>
>I've seen products such as http://www.feedforall.com/ (to 
>produce the feed)
>and also the script they offer,
>http://www.feedforall.com/free-php-script.htm (to display the 
>feed). Does
>anyone have other solutions? 
>
>I hear this so often it would make a great program somewhere, 
>sometime. Or
>perhaps the LITA blogging crowd could talk about it informally 
>this fall at
>LITA Forum...
>
>Karen G. Schneider
>kgs at bluehighways.com