Twf Rss?

What is RSS?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

Its basically a means of announcing that updates, news, etc has occured using an XML text file. So ABC news has an RSS feed. Fox News has an RSS feed. Etc Etc. You can "subscribe" (a fancy word for link) to these feeds and then whenever that feed is updated you will get a notice. Many blogs have feeds so that users don't have to constantly check for new posts.

-dk

Ok, I'm getting the hang of placing our sunday church services online. I remembered this thing about RSS.

I am wondering if this would be something worth doing with the weekly services. Normally I will have the audio on our site by sunday evening, but would like it so people could just subscribe.

Any good tutorials for this would be appriciated. I'm not sure what all it uses so here is the complete specs:

Server- FreeBSD using Apache, PHP, mySQL, I maintain the site in Dreamweaver MX 2004. I use Audacity to record the services off of MiniDisc (or in the case of this past sunday we were out of discs, I just recorded live from the sound board). I export them out at 192k (for compiling onto CD) 32k for faster connections and 16 for dial up connections. I offer a link to both a .m3u file for streaming or directly to the .mp3 so they can download it and listen to it later.

I'm now also playing with splitting up the mp3 into 5 minute chunks for both CD and online, so people can easily skip to where they left off. But I think this will mainly be used for CD's.

(If you want more info on how I did all of this, or would like the link to our site to listen to them, PM me.)

Thank you in advance for any links you could provide on setting up the feed.

-Greg

Why not make a news letter service for your congregation instead Greg, they could subscribe to it too and can show a preview for the actual contents of the site, this is good way of advertising too...
Also if you want an RSS with less hassle, try putting up a blog via blogger and remote it to your own domain so it belongs to you(theres an option for this) then automaticall these postings are automatically RSS ready...

See this Sample: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
to get the idea

Well yeah, that would be cool. It's certainly a thought I've had before as well... If Megan approves we can certainly add this to the list of things to do. Although do bear in mind that the list is already a very long one

As for setting-up your RSS feed Greg: I'm not sure. If you do everything manually it might be a case of editing the XML directly, otherwise you'll have to create/use some form of CMS.

There are vBulletin plugins for RSS which would make it pretty easy to implement. Lets add that to the "to do" list

I'm getting to be an RSS junkie too. A lot of the articles I've posted recently came from the CNET feed. Of course, it helps that the functionality is built right in to Opera

Greg - I don't know, RSS is still such a "techie" thing. Are regular people really onto it yet? Maybe news junkies or people who spend a lot of time online, but the regular church goer? Maybe a newsletter would be more appropriate there.

I say put an RSS in its the way of the future i heard IE7 will be focusing on rss a lot more.

yes definetly RSS

Well that RSS requirement has been added to the official to-do list now... Watch this space and all that

Me likie RSS too!! I suscribed to the msdn RSS feed.... it hasnt been updated in months....
Thats how I keep up with my gf's blog. I check my e-mail and I read it just like a html e-mail.

Cheers extrmbob - what would we do without you?

Ho humm, Megan? Whaddya reckon?

I looked for it yesterday but couldn't find it! No problem to turn it on once I can figure out where it is

Okay, it's on now. Here's the URL to use:

http://www.webmaster-forums.net/external.php?type=rss

(not quite sure if it's working right, getting lots of really old messages coming up)

Yeah, something's bugged in there, I'm not getting anything past 1999. Wonder if there's anything else that needs to be done to get it working properly?

Trying another link:

http://www.webmaster-forums.net/external.php?type=rss2

Nevermind, doesn't work. Will try to find out..

Quote: see thus is why I write all my own scripts...

LOL, but then you have to debug them all yourself instead of shouting at someone else to do it

I'm certain we can fix this when the server gets under our control. Thanks for the assistance bob, I can see where you're coming from with the date problem.

What do you reckon Megan? Get the server under our control, hack the dates, then try again?

It sounds like once we reinstall everything it shouldn't be a problem If it's a bug maybe it's fixed now.

Oh, I'm not too worried about it. There are a lot of things I'd like to do around here but we need to wait until certain other things get sorted out

Is it true that the mods have their own secret forum hidden in the depths of twf?

Yeppers. I might have something to tell you soon, I just have to clear it with the man in charge

wow i didn't think any1 noticed me in this forum.

well ive been here longer than u and hvent posted nerly as much.

Thanks i drew my avitar to see the full version check my profile photo or my deviant art profile in my signigture

You have some cool artwork there... Im trying be a digital artist as well...
"sorry if this was off-topic, ill stop now"