RSS Live Feeds now available!! Read this to find out more...

[Cebby]

RSS is a live feed of information via the web. What does it do for you? Well, it allows you to have "live bookmarks" or the ability to port the information to your own web site.

Here's a quick and dirty explanation of RSS from "http://www.rssfeeds.com/".

What is RSS?
RSS is a mechanism used to distribute news content without depending on the browser or email client. Not everyone agrees precisely what RSS stands for, but “Really Simple Syndication” is a popular choice.

What are the advantages of RSS?
In general it means time savings because, thanks to RSS, you stay ahead of what’s new without having to browse every site you normaly visit. An RSS reader aggregates the content for you to view in one place, this saves time and brings you the content like when you're reading a newspaper with the advantage to view only headlines. You're in control of which articles you want to read.

RSS enabled sites
The following type of sites are typically now RSS-enabled;
- News services
- Databases
- many web logs (commonly called "blogs")

More info on RSS feeds here:

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(protocol)

PGHOFFROAD.com now has this feature available. What you'll need is a compatible browser or a RSS reader. IE6 doesn't know what to do with this info, so your choices are Firefox, or one of the readers mentioned. OK - for Firefox users only at this point, there is an icon for the live feed in the URL address bar. (Orange square with white lines at the right side) By clicking this in Firefox, the users get the option of adding a live bookmark. When you click a live bookmark, it drops down a list in your bookmarks of the recent threads.

Again, IE folks won't see anything in the URL until version 7.0 comes out.

To add a live bookmark by hand in FF, do this:

* Go to Bookmarks | Manage bookmarks
* In the left pane, single click on the folder you want the bookmark to show up in ("Bookmarks Toolbar Folder" will put it on the toolbar)
* In the Right pane, single click on the bookmark you want the live feed to be ABOVE
* From the top menu, click "File | New Live Bookmark"
* Fill in the Name, then for feed, enter (copy/paste without the "") - "http://www.pgh-offroad.com/forum/external.php?type=rss2" (use this string of info for stand alone readers also)
* Click OK
* Close the bookmark manager

In Firefox, you should now see the bookmark as an "RSS" symbol (the orange box) where you placed it.

A free reader is available here: http://www.feedreader.com/ I haven't tried this reader, but it is supposed to be a good one.

I'm working on adding a RSS icon somewhere on the mainpage to make this easier to setup for the stand alone readers..

EDIT: Link Fixed

[LordAthens]

You know you just totally confused 3\4 of our group, right?

There are things that only you, Matt and I should talk about. RSS is one of them

[notmYJ]

Great....I've gone cross eyed.

[Cebby]

You know you just totally confused 3\4 of our group, right?

There are things that only you, Matt and I should talk about. RSS is one of them

Naw, once the concept is grasped, it's easy (and a nice addition). I think the only downside is that most folks still use IE. IE won't handle the feeds until IE7 comes out. The guy I know from MSFT says it comes out soon...

Here's a bookmark screenshot that might shed some light on it:

I guess I should probably try out one of the readers so I can put instructions in here about that.

[LordAthens]

Seems to be a dead link..

[Cebby]

Seems to be a dead link..

Fixed. That's what I get for copy/pasting...

[LordAthens]

Well... Yup, I definately have a RSS feed for PGH Off Road updating on my PPC phone every 30 minutes now...



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