Adding a custom RSS feed to your website

[mymcreative]

Just was wondering if anyone had a quick 'how to' on adding an RSS feed to a website.

I understand that styling ti can do done via css, but actually generating the code is something that has got be stumped. I have trawled the web and found various services (including Google Reader) that will create a feed for you, but do they let you customise it?

Any help would be great :)

Many thanks,

Mark

[djb]

Have you come across this site: Dynamic Drive DHTML(dynamic html) & JavaScript code library

If you do a search on there for RSS Feed it will come up with a few scripts to do it (and style them with CSS like you said).

I can't give you a How To as its been a while since I did it but from what I remember it's pretty straightforward. Grab a coffee (or four) and try some of them out and I'm sure you'll find what you want.

[craftygeek]

I built a custom RSS feed a few weeks back for the first time.

It is straight forward to do assuming that you have some PHP knowledge.
There are a couple of approaches - I opted for a method whereby my CMS creates an actual xml file when ever a new file is saved, or an existing one is edited.
Alternatively, you can use php to create it on demand (see link below).

The method that you choose is up to really depending on what the feed comes from & how you want it to work.

Have a look at this tutorial to get an idea of how easy it actually is:
create an rss feed with php/

If you wanted to save it as an xml as I did, you just need to save the xml data into a text file rather than echoing it out.

[mymcreative]

Thanks CraftyGeek, PHP isn't my strongest skill to be honest, but I will have a look through it.

Is there a slightly simpler method? :)

Thanks,

Mark

[craftygeek]

if you want it as simple as it can get....you can do it manually - create an xml file & add new articles as you create them....this would get tedious very quickly though.

You don't state what you want the RSS feed to run from...I presume that you have some form of CMS that is having new content added? - without knowing more I don't think anyone can be of much help.

[creatabledesign]

Thanks for the link to the Tutorial CraftyGeek, I am a designer slowly learning development and need to create an xml feed for a news system that I am working on.

Thanks again :)

[AMI Creative]

If you're creating a feed for say a news area remeber to include the link rel alternative in your header tag,as some browsers show a feed icon in the address bar when this is present:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.yoursite.co.uk/rss/news" title="feed/http://www.yoursite.co.uk/rss/news" >

Amy

[creatabledesign]

Cool, thanks for the quick tip Amy :)