RSS and News Readers

What are News Feeds?
News feeds allow you to see when websites have added new content. You can get the latest headlines and video in one place, as soon as its published, without having to visit the websites you have taken the feed from.

Feeds are also known as RSS. RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication'.

The CBA feed is at: http://centralba.org.uk/rss.xml

How do I start using feeds?
In general, the first thing you need is something called a news reader. This is a piece of software that checks the feeds and lets you read any new articles that have been added.

Once you have chosen a news reader, all you have to do is to decide what content you want it to receive. For example, if you would like the latest BBC News Entertainment stories, simply visit the Entertainment section and you will notice an orange button on the left hand side.

If you click on the button you can subscribe to the feed in various ways, including by dragging the URL of the feed into your news reader or by cutting and pasting the same URL into a new feed in your news reader. Most sites that offer feeds use a similar orange button, but some may just have a normal web link.

Some browsers, including Firefox, Opera and Safari, automatically check for feeds for you when you visit a website, and display an icon when they find one. This can make subscribing to feeds much easier. For more details on these, please check their websites.

How do I get a news reader?
You can use the built-in facility in Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 2, addons to Outlook and Thunderbird email clients, online versions such as Google Reader or a standalone version like iTunes, Juice, Doppler or FireANT.

Different news readers work on Windows or Mac computers, so you will need to choose one that will work with your one operating system.

How can I include the CBA News feed in our church website?
Webmasters should be able to easily include an RSS feed into their website - showing the latest information automatically.  It depends on the kind of site you use.  So, for example, an asp site can use this code:

<% sub GetRssFeed (strFeedUrl)
response.ContentType="text/html"
dim objxml, objxsl
set objxml=server.CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
set objxsl=server.CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
objxml.async=False
objxsl.async=False
objxml.setProperty "ServerHTTPRequest",true
objxml.load strFeedUrl
objxsl.load Server.MapPath("rssStyle.xslt")
if len(objxml.transformNode(objxsl))<15 then
response.write "Sorry, at present there seems to be an error in the feed from centralba.org.uk"
else
response.write objxml.transformNode(objxsl)
end if

end sub

GetRssFeed "http://centralba.org.uk/rss.xml"%>

Php users should find a suitable script by Google thier specific needs

The easiest way is to include the following javascript file in the page:

<script language="JavaScript" src="http://itde.vccs.edu/rss2js/feed2js.php?src=http%3A%2F%
2Fcentralba.org.uk%2Frss.xml&chan=y&num=0&desc=0&date=y&targ=y" type="text/javascript"></script>

<noscript>
<a href="http://itde.vccs.edu/rss2js/feed2js.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fcentralba.org.uk%
2Frss.xml&chan=y&num=0&desc=0&date=y&targ=y&html=y">View RSS feed</a>
</noscript>
 

That's how the feed below is displayed (in a shtml page)! Visit the excellent http://itde.vccs.edu/rss2js/build.php? to change the layout and values by building your own script. Note: don't allow the script lines to break up. Insert as plain text in a single phrase! Any problems email the webmaster for help.