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Web Feed Generator

Create low-maintentance news feeds for your next Web project.

Advanced features

This screen is part of a Web Feed Reference section for the Web Feed Generator. Please ask us if you cannot find the answer to your question.

Q:How can I improve my news feed?

A: The Web Feed Generator is designed to work well with the basic information found in most Web pages, but you can enhance your feeds by adding more detailed metadata, fragment anchors and hyperlinks.

Web pages should contain a title element that shows the title at the top of a Web browser window, and in Bookmark or Favorites lists. These titles are also used by many Internet search engines to index Web pages, which is why Web designers sometimes make them very wordy. By putting important words in the page title, you can get better search engine ranking for your site.

Metadata titles

The Web Feed Generator uses the main page title to name your news feed, unless more specific title information is available. If you add a less wordy title to the metadata for your page, the system will use this instead. 

<meta name="DC.Title"
 content="Snappy page titles for human consumption"/>

Metadata description

If your Web page has not been optimised for the Web Feed Generator, it may have been optimised for search engine ranking and is likely to include a description that is used to give a summary of your page on search result pages. In this case the Web Feed Generator uses the same description for your news feed summary too. 

<meta
  name="description"
  content="A general description"/>

To make a more specific news feed summary, you can use the Dublin Core metadata scheme to mark a preferred description, as below. If this type of description is present in addition to a general description, the Web Feed Generator uses the Dublin Core version for your news feed. 

<meta
  name="DC.Description"
  content="A preferred description"/>

Fragment mode

Many Web pages also contain fragment anchors to mark important headings in the document, which work like a table of contents. You might have heard fragment anchors called accelerators, ID links or jump points. Fragment anchors let you use hyperlinks to jump down the page to specific points.

The Web Feed Generator will generate additional news items for each fragment identifier it finds in your Web page, and use the text that follows as the summary text for the item. So, if you have a series of important headings, they automatically become part of your news feed. 

<h2>
  <a id="products" name="products">
    Product support information</a>
</h2>
<p>
  Owners of Acme widgets will receive free upgrades ...
</p>
<h2>
  <a id="conference" name="conference">
    Conference preview</a>
</h2>
<p>
  The eminent Jane Raine will be giving the keynote speech at ...
</p>

TOC format

The Web Feed Generator can also process specially formatted link lists as news feeds, with links to each item. This is known as TOC mode, for "Table Of Contents", but could list any items. The link text will be used as the item titles and the definition descriptions as the item summary. 

<dl class="TOC">
  <dt>
    <a href="../e-procurement.html">E-procurement forum</a>
  </dt>
  <dd>
    Public service purchasers applaud new system ...
  </dd>
  <dt>
    <a href="../minister-appt.html">Ministerial appointment</a>
  </dt>
  <dd>
    Local councillors today welcomed the appointment of ...
  </dd>
</dl>

There are many more ways to improve your news feed with further metadata, but the most important thing is to keep your Web page updated as often as possible with current information. Do not update for the sake of it, because frequent trivial changes may become annoying to your readers. Consider what your readers would really want to hear about.

See also:

Q:What is a Javascript include?

A: Metacentric calls this format "Simple Syndication" because it allows other Web sites to include your news feed on their Web pages with just a single line of HTML. If your Web site carries news that other sites want to share, our Simple Syndication format will do the job in an instant and is part of our standard service package.

Javascript is a technology that can be used to make Web pages interactive and is built in to most Web browsers. The Simple Syndication link below uses a feed URL as the src attribute of a script element. The Web Feed Generator will create this code for you to copy and paste. 

<script type="text/javascript"
  src="http://www.metacentric.net/JS?siteID=1234&url=/example.htm">
  </script>

See also:

Q:Why does my feed have session IDs in it?

A: This is because your Web page uses a scripting language that generates a session for all requests. This is not necessarily a problem for your news feed, but you can disable this feature if you prefer.

If you use Java Server Pages, use this directive only to maintain existing sessions: 

<%@ page session="false" %>
Q:How do I set the expiry date of my Web page?

A: Methods vary according to the server software you use and you should ask whoever manages your Web server to check the manual and make these changes for you. Guidance for the two most popular servers is listed below.

Normally, you can set your page to expire a number of minutes, hours or days after someone first requests it. The interval you choose is a balance between how often you update your page and how quickly you would like people to know there is something new.

Q:Which browsers has Simple Syndication been tested with?

A: Our Simple Syndication script is written in a way that should not cause errors in any Web browser. For very old browsers, or those that have scripting turned off, no news will be displayed. All other browsers should display the news feed as intended and this has been tested in the following browsers:

  • Internet Explorer 5.5, 6.0
  • Mozilla Firefox 1.0
  • Opera 7.5
  • Netscape 7.0
Q:Where do I download my log files?

A: After you have published your first feed, a Manage feeds link will appear on the Service settings menu. Choose this option to list all the sites in your service profile and choose the Download logs option for the relevant site. This page lists daily log files for the site you selected.

To download a log for a particular day, select the relevant dated link. The log file is in plain text format and will normally open directly in your Web browser. To save the log, go to your browser's File menu and choose Save as... For very large log files, you may prefer to use the right-click (Windows) or click-and-hold (Mac) option to download the log to a specific location. Look for the option labelled Save link as... or Save target as....

To download logs for a different site, go back to the Manage feeds page and choose again.

Q:How can I analyse my log file?

A: There are many Web server log analysis programs available and it is likely the package you currently use for your Web site will do the job. The Analog package is very popular, flexible, fast and free. The notes below are intended to produce a basic report using Analog, but there are many other options you can use to tailor reports to your requirements.

The Metacentric Web server uses what is known as the "combined" log file format, which is standard for Analog but needs to be added to the configuration file analog.cfg before your log file reference: 

LOGFORMAT COMBINED

LOGFILE FeedRequests.log

In this example, your log file has been saved into the Analog installation directory and named FeedRequests.log.

After you have configured these two lines, run Analog by double clicking on the program icon. On Windows systems, Analog will momentarily open a command window and close it again when the analysis is complete. If you leave all other configuration options with their default values, your log report will be output to a file called Report.html in the Analog directory. Check for errors in the errors.txt file.

Q:How can I stop further service charges?

A: The only way to stop further service charges is to cancel your Web Feed Generator service. Log in and choose the Change service status page from the Service settings menu. Check the option to cancel your service and submit.

When you cancel the Web Feed Generator service, all your feeds will be stopped and your account will switch to the zero rate service band. You will remain on the zero rate band indefinitely or until you activate your account again.

If you cancel your service account, your current invoice will fall due as normal, but you should receive no further invoices so long as it remains inactive.

Q:How do I format my Simple Syndication feed?

A: Our Simple Syndication format creates news feeds in HTML definition list markup with class attributes that can be used to show the feed in a distinctive style using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). 

<dl class="rss-channel">
  <dt class="rss-title">
    <a class="rss-link"
      href="http://www.yoursite.example/example.htm#item1">
      First headline</a>
  </dt>
  <dd class="rss-description">
    First news summary text ...
  </dd>
  <dt class="rss-title">
    <a class="rss-link"
      href="http://www.yoursite.example/example.htm#item2">
      Second headline</a>
  </dt>
  <dd class="rss-description">
    Second news summary text ...
  </dd>
  ...
</dl>

To show the feed in a style that matches your Web site, add a Cascading Style Sheet to your site by pasting the link element below into the head section of your Web page. 

<link rel="stylesheet"
  type="text/css"
  href="http://www.metacentric.net/styles/SimpleSyndication.css" />

You are welcome to use or adapt the Metacentric Simple Syndication style sheet at http://www.metacentric.net/styles/SimpleSyndication.css. This extract shows how to make a small, narrow panel that floats to the right of the page. 

.rss-channel {
  float:            right;
  clear:            both;
  width:            25%;
  font-family:      sans-serif;
  font-size:        smaller;
  border:           solid 1px #999;
  padding:          0.5em;
  background:       #F6E5A2;
  color:            #333;
}
.rss-title {
  margin-top:       0.5em;
  font-weight:      bold;
}
.rss-description {
  margin-left:      0;
}
a:link.rss-link {
  color:            #0000CC;
  background:       transparent;
}
a:visited.rss-link {
  color:            #990066;
  background:       transparent;
}
a:hover.rss-link {
  color:            #CC0000;
  background:       transparent;
}
Q:How do I change the number of items in my feed?

A: To reduce the number of items in your feed, add a limit parameter to your feed URL. Precede the limit parameter with an ampersand entity, &amp;, as below. In this example, only the first 5 items will be used. 

http://www.metacentric.net/RSS?siteID=1234&amp;url=/news/index.htm&amp;limit=5

Simple Syndication feeds normally show a maximum of 10 items, but the limit parameter can be used to reduce or increase this number too. Use the same syntax as above.

Q:How do I claim my feed?

A: To claim a feed that someone else has created from a page on your site, you must create a plain text service token file and add it to the relevant directory of your Web site. Then go to the Claim a feed screen in the Web Feed Generator login area to register that service token.

Your service token file should contain an 8 character code of letters and numbers that proves you own the site. This code is displayed on the Claim a feed page.

When your service token is verified, the feed directory will be transferred to your account.

See also:

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