How To: Manual Feeds:
Basic Text Feed
The feed you're going to build is a promotional feed for this set of tutorials.
This will be a Manually edited RSS text feed that you will use the Basic interface
to build.
Of course, you will begin by creating a new feed. Press the New Feed button
in the toolbar of the RSS DreamFeeder floating panel. (If RSS DreamFeeder isn't
open you can access it through the Window menu.)
The first step in the basic interface is to select the type of feed (RSS Text
Feed) and to provide the Title and Description of the feed. After entering
that content you click the next button to proceed to the next panel.
The second step is to provide additional descriptive content about the feed.
You can provide as much or as little of this information as you like, but the
more you fill in the easier it will be for aggregators and search engines to
find and organize the content.
The third step is to provide the domain name of the website. This is so the
links can be built properly as full urls so they will work on no mater where
your content is republished. If you provided this information when setting
up the website in Dreamweaver's site management tool it will be copied here.
The fourth step is to decide how you want the content for this feed to be
built. A Manual feed is appropriate for this case. You'll be managing the content
yourself, adding or deleting feed entries, typing or copying/pasting the text.
Now that these configuration issues have been completed you can edit the content
of the new feed in the Content tab. You can either press the Edit Feed Content
button or simply click on the Content tab.
In the Content tab you can manage the feed's entries yourself and build as
many as you like. To add an entry we click the plus button at the top of the
Feed Entries list. Now you simply edit the fields to contain the content you
want, with a headline, story, author and a link to the tutorial's page.
Fill in the content for the first feed entry:
For the Headline use: "Tutorial 1: Manual Feeds: Basic Text Feed"
For the Story use: "In this tutorial Ron shares how to create a basic
manual text feed with RSS DreamFeeder."
For the Author use: "Ron Northrip" (or your own name, whatever makes
you happy)
For the Link you'll need to select the file you want to link to. Click the
folder icon to the right of the Link field and then simply select the file
to link to. Use tutorial1.html from within the content folder.
When you make this selection you may be prompted (depending on your Dreamweaver
preferences) with a dialog explaining that links to files are full URLs until
the file you are editing is saved. That's OK, there's nothing to worry about
here, you just need to confirm it and proceed.
The story might be simple to begin with, but as the icon to the left of the
field indicates, it can contain HTML (looks like little HTML brackets) so you
can type in HTML. But honestly, typing in HTML isn't very satisfying. After
all isn't that what Dreamweaver is supposed to do for you. So to help you leverage
all that Dreamweaver has to offer with your own little story you will use the
Story Edit button to the left of the field (it looks like a pencil). Press
that button and the content of the story field will be used to create an HTML
document that you can edit just like any other document in Dreamweaver (it's
OK to say wow, I still say wow when I use that feature and I invented it).
Make the text "RSS DreamFeeder" bold and italic.
Now when you're editing you should see the RSS DreamFeeder floating panel
telling you that it is in Edit Entry mode and that you are editing the Story
field. When you're done editing you need to press the done button.
The Done button returns us to the Edit dialog and captures the HTML code from
the web page you edited to use in the story field.
Finally you can save your feed within the website. Call it tutorials.rss and
save it in the root of the website. Its OK that it only has one entry for now.
You'll add more entries later.
When saved the RSS feed will now be listed in the RSS DreamFeeder files list
in the floating panel. The panel also displays the date the feed was last modified
on and that it is a manual feed (or the number of files that need to be checked
for automated feeds).
Now you should try it out in an RSS reader like Safari. I like to use Safari
for testing because I can just drag the file I created into the window.
You
will probably notice that the link is pointing off to whatever website you
configured earlier and not to the local file. This is the way an RSS feed is
supposed to be. Your RSS content will be repeated on other websites so it has
to have an absolute URL for every link. But if you don't keep that in mind
it can be startling to see the link not work (at least not locally). I want
to assure you that you did it right.
If you happen to have a web server on your computer like I do on mine and
if you provide the right site URL you can make the links work. This sort of
setup is how most web developers work now anyhow, especially anyone doing server-side
coding (like asp/php/etc...). The relationship between absolute URLs and relative/local
URLs is one of the stickiest bits of work, but once configured, RSS DreamFeeder
handles it for you.
Congratulations -- You have created your first RSS feed.
An RSS feed is not really ever a finished document. It is a reflection of
ongoing activity within your website. The tutorials.rss feed isn't just another
list of tutorial files in the site, it is an ongoing list of new tutorials
as we add them to the website. It is this living nature that is reflected in
the feed's entry order, with the most recent content at the top of the list
(reverse chronological order). So as you add new entries to the feed they will
get added at the top.
So if you wanted to add two more tutorials to the feed you would follow these
instructions:
First, open the text.html file from the root of the website. This contains
the text so you can copy/paste.
Next, select the Tutorials feed from the list in the RSS DreamFeeder floating
panel and press the edit button (looks like a little pencil). Because this
is a Manual feed and because all the configuration information is already entered
the dialog will open directly to the Content tab so you can add new content.
Press the plus button to add another feed entry. Then press the Story Edit
button to hide the dialog.
This will open a blank document that is supposed
to have the story, but since there isn't one yet you can just close it.Now
select the headline text for the second tutorial and copy it.
Press the done
button in the RSS DreamFeeder floating panel to return to the Edit dialog
Now
paste the text into the Headline field.
Repeat this process for the story or vary it slightly by pasting into the
blank story document, it works both ways.
Enter an author and select the file to link to -- use tutorial2.html in the
content folder.
Add another feed entry and do it all again for tutorial3. The more times you
practice it the easier it will become.
Lastly save the feed and test it in your RSS reader.
Excellent. You have updated your first RSS feed.
You may proceed with one of the other Manual Feed tutorials
How To: Manual Feeds: Basic Podcast
How To: Manual Feeds: Basic Photocast
You have now had your first taste of the ongoing maintenance required to keep
an RSS text feed up to date. You probably can see the value in automating this
process, especially for large websites. If you do then you'll want to get the
next set of files and try out one of our tutorials for Automated feeds.
How To: Automated Feeds: Files and First Steps
How To: Automated Feeds: Basic Text Feed from a Single Page
Of course, you have to wonder how people will find your RSS feed. You can
link to it from any page you like, but in this case you might try it with the
text.html page. Read our note on linking to learn how.
More with This Tutorial
A little automation can be dragged into maintaining a manual feed like this
one by using the import feature of our editor. Edit the feed again. As before,
the feed is opened in the Content tab automatically. At the top right of the
Content tab you will see the Import button. This button launches the Import
dialog box which will extract content from whatever file you specify.
Click the folder icon to the right of the Source File field and use tutorial4.html
as the source for this import.
The tutorial4.html file will be opened and the Content Sampler will be launched
so that you can identify what content to extract from the file. If you had
imported stuff before then you could optionally use your previous element identifications,
but since this is the first time you'll have to do the hard work of selecting
text and clicking a button.
The Content Sampler lists the Content elements your feed is defined to use
and identifies if a match (or Sample) has been defined for that Content. Samples
identify the tag, id, class or template region for that item. Samples with
a dash "-" have not been defined yet (in the current instance, all
of them).
Sample the content for the Headline by selecting Headline from the Content
list in the floating panel, then highlight the text that is the headline (the
big text at the top of the page) and then press the sample button (looks like
an eye-dropper). Notice the sample tells you that you choose an H1 (that's
the HTML tag it is sampling).Do the same for the Author (Ron Northrip) and
the Story (the last paragraph). Notice that it is sampling the HTML tags with
classes attached (style sheet identifiers).
If the Content Sampler has samples defined for the content entries when you
click on an entry the corresponding text within the document will be highlighted.
Once you've sampled what you want press the Done button and the page will
be processed, the content extracted, and data placed into the appropriate fields
in the feed entry. They'll need a little cleanup, for example the Author field
should just be "Ron Northrip" without the "by", but its
much faster and easier than copying/pasting piece by piece.
Building a manual feed and using Import is a valid approach to maintaining
your RSS feed. Lots of people I've spoken to that use RSS DreamFeeder this
way say it gives them a nice balance between control over their RSS feed's
content (especially which files to include) and the power of automation.
|
