As I was redesigning our website a few months ago, I wanted to include the most current news stories on marketing. I also wanted the ability to provide up to the minute news for World, National, Sports, Medicine, Alternative Medicine, Technology, Travel… you get the picture. I basically wanted to provide all types of news as it happens. Oh, by the way – it also had to be FREE.
I had previously read something about RSS and thought it might be worth taking a look at. So, I spent about 8 hours surfing the web for anything related to RSS. Unfortunately, when I was finished, I was more confused then when I had begun.
With my tail between my legs, I then turned to my best resource – my 16 year old son. I gave him some background and asked him if he could find something that made some sense. He told me that he was very busy but might have a few minutes to check it out. About 15 minutes later he came back with the solution and I’m still amazed it is so simple.
All of the news services you see on the right column of this newsletter publish what’s called an XML file. Every time new articles are published, this XML file is updated. You can find many XML news feeds here, http://www.w3os.nl/logos/links/rss/.
There are companies that have written programs that read these feeds and render them in such a way that you can just cut and paste the html code (actually javascript) wherever you would like it displayed. The company that we use provides this service for free is http://www.feedroll.com/rssviewer/.
In order to build all of these RSS Feeds on the right, I found my RSS feed from the link above then pasted it into feedroll. Feedrool then had an option to “update” the code and produced a few lines of html code that I was able to paste in to the right column. If you simply visit the Feedroll site, you will find several feeds already setup. You can simply select them from the pull down menu, press update, and paste the resulting code into your web page.
With these few simple steps above, you can bring your website to life and add relevant, up to the minute content. Adding more reasons for visitors to come back again and again to your website.
Neal Lebar has been building and managing Internet campaigns since 1996. He has proven that Internet marketing absolutely works and can generate returns far greater than traditional media. Visit – www.innovate-inc.com, www.extenderware.com or nlebar@innovate-inc.com.
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