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How to Use RSS Feeds On Your Site
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Using RSS feeds for your existing site can be a very good strategic tool you can use to bring fresh content throughout your site. With RSS feeds, you can bring in fresh content from other websites such as news and entertainment sites. Free scripts like Drupal allow you to create forums, blogs and more with a ready made RSS feeds that you can use yourself for your other existing pages, and hopefully other webmasters will use your RSS feed on their site which will bring more links and visitors to your site.

First if you are new to RSS feeds, you might be asking how do I use it, or what is it? If you've done a search in the news sections of Yahoo or MSN you will see on the right of the page in Yahoo a small orange box that says XML, or at the bottom of a MSN news search you'll see a orange box that says RSS. The MSN box leads to a page with an address you can copy and paste into a RSS reader. The Yahoo box goes straight to the XML feed. The address at the top of the browser would be the equivalent of the address MSN asks you to paste in your RSS reader. 

Whenever you use an XML feed for your site make sure you check for their usage policy. Major sites or news organizations may object to their feed being used for commercial reasons. Most of your average sized sites will appreciate your using their RSS feeds as it gives their site free links.

The Process of Using RSS for Free Content
Entertainment TV and Movie sites are great for getting free content through their RSS feeds. We'll use the TVcrazy.net feed for an example from one of my sites.  Go the TVcrazy.net entertainment blog section http://www.tvcrazy.net/messageboard/ . Once there you'll see the orange XML box at the bottom of the page. Pick it and right click on it and click copy shortcut. For now paste the address in notepad for later use.

Now that you've got the address, you'll need a script that will read the feed and have it somewhere on your site. There is more than one script available that would do the job, but let's use Carp at www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/. Click on the download link at the top. Even though there is a paid version the free version is completely adequate for our purposes. 

It comes with a read me file that explains the installation, which you should read, but we'll go over the basics here. Here's another page that might prove helpful as well http://www.tvcrazy.net/tvclassics/articles/rss_feed.htm

Once you've installed Carp you are ready to get some updating content for your site. During installation, the carpsetup.php page should have created some code for you like this  

<?php
require_once '/home/subscrib/public_html/yoursitename/carp/carp.php';
CarpCacheShow('http://example/xml_feed_address');    

?>

This of course is php code. Change this line "CarpCacheShow('http://example/xml_feed_address'); " to show the XML address you acquired from TVcrazy.net or from any feed address you prefer. If your site is written with php code just plug the code created by your Carp installation into wherever you want it on your php page and ftp it to your server.  You should have a news feed coming through your website. You can add lines like this " CarpConf('maxitems',5); " to control the number of links shown at one time. Go to www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/ for more settings.

Now, what if your page is html, as most likely will be? What I do is create a php page with the above code, then I use a SSI Include to insert the newsfeed into wherever I want it.
Carp also creates javascript for inserting code into a web page. There are more tips here www.geckotribe.com/help/carp/ . Here is a page detailing the use of SSI include 

Movie-Poster.ws also has an XML feed in the blog section.

 

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