RSS feeds

vortexonline · #21 02-25-2005, 06:36 AM

You could also try this link:

http://www.bigbold.com/rssdigest/index.html

Using the link of the feed, you can create the necessary link to display the feed.

Ana · #22 02-25-2005, 09:11 AM

Thanks vortex.

That is a nice way to put a limited amount of posts on a page. Now finding relevant blogs/rss to our content is going to be the challenge.

We'd like to incorporate an internal blog/forum. Not sure if anybody has done this in X-Cart though.

My next project.

Regards,

Ana

sabrina · #23 02-27-2005, 08:45 AM

It's working but on top of page i got this:

Page not found!
The requested page does not exist or you are not allowed to access it!

http://www.indyplaza.com/buy/rss.php

offline · #24 05-09-2005, 10:46 AM

How would I integrate this script into my main home page? Thanks for any tips.

redace · #25 05-17-2005, 09:40 AM

The previous entries seem to be focused on reading and displaying RSS feeds from other sources.

I'm contemplating on generating feed info based on internal x-cart newsletter items.
It shouldn't be too difficult to have a PHP script make a query from the database, and write out an XML file.

Anyone thinking trying this idea out? It would be a great addition to those X-cart users that have events, new products, sales etc. that they would want folks to know about. Now users can only subscribe to e-mail, which can easily get lost in the deluge of SPAM we all face these days. This could be a viable alternative.

I'll start investigating what it would entail to add a PHP script to generate a feed. Any one want to help, feel free to jump aboard

jdiehl · #26 05-17-2005, 10:02 AM

I was playing with the idea of creating my own RSS feed also with information that I find on others RSS feeds (with the proper links in place) Plus Information from my own store, i.e. specials, new products.

I am playing with RSS 2.0 for PHP http://www.2rss.com/ for taking information from a database and writing an XML RSS Feed.

And I am playing with RSS2HTML from Feed For All at http://www.feedforall.com/download.htm for displaying that feed I generated myself. Both are free scripts

I've successfully integrated it into XCart no problem I just didn't finalize how it would look, and put it to the side because of other projects. All you have to do is call the RSS2HTML script from your xcart template and make sure that you've set it up to look the way you want. There is probably an easier way. I want to look at BOOMER's code for displaying in X-Cart, but I'll still use RSS 2.0 of PHP to create my own Feed.

One thing that you guys should keep in mind is, that if you are including any links from the RSS feeds you should use a little JavaScript to supply the link so that Search Engines will ignore the external links. External links will just be giving away Page Rank.

B00MER · #27 05-17-2005, 11:47 AM

Why waste the time with re-inventing the wheel, Just create a blog on www.blogger.com along with www.feedburner.com and you've got a solid way to keep customers informed while boosting incoming links for SEO as well as you've got a free easy way to offer a RSS feed of your blog.

This is what I did this little mod for so I could post my blog links as well as offer other external sources to get relative news. I tweaked it some and put the first 3 entries from my blog on my front page as well.

jdiehl · #28 05-17-2005, 01:10 PM

I agree with that why spend the time when there are already free services out there? It's much easier to do it that way. I just have a personal preference to not rely on other people websites for content on my own website. For example I can set up a blogger on blogger.com and create a live feed from it and display that on my website, but then what happens if they go down for a day or worse get hacked? Or even decide to change their policies to charge for it, or include advertisements?

Personally if it's my website and my content then I want to rely on my own server. it'll take me a little longer to get it all squared away, but then if it goes down, my whole website is probably going down. And I'll never change my policy, and start charging myself. Haha.

Anyway it's all up to personal preference, and since I have my own server I am going to use it to it's full potential.

Thanks Boomer, the most important part of these forums is the ability to see everything from everyone's perspective and I appreciate your input. I might not go that route but it's something I wasn't aware of.

redace · #29 05-17-2005, 01:43 PM

My goal would be for the x-cart to update the rss.xml file everytime you use the newsletter module, and make changes to the the postings. I have no interest in bringing other external feeds for display.

It could be as simple as adding in a function call within the newsletter code, that wrote out the XML file. No display of the feed content anywhere, except possibly a button on the side menu that links to the XML file for users to subscribe with.

I liken this ability to the way X-cart has been updated with the ability to create and send Froogle updates automatically.

Like jdiehl says, I don't want to rely on external services like the blogger.coms to do the work, I guess I'm picky that way.

Still, you can use the aggro sites to send your feed on for more folks to see. No harm in that.

Ana · #30 05-17-2005, 05:53 PM

Agree with Boomer. We've incorporated our own news on a blog seperately from the store site. It is working wonders for traffic as well as sales. The internal RSS that Boomer was so gracious to share (thanks again, Boomer) feeds in external news to store site while our external news site and RSS is posted by our clients and staff.

It interacts nicely and as Boomer said, it helps with inbound links, especially when other sites start linking in to your rss feed. The possibilities are endless.

Ana