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How can I add the Ask Dave Taylor RSS feed on my Web site?

I hate to sound like a groupie or something, but I love your site, Dave, and I'd love to be able to include a little box somewhere on my own site that featured your latest entries! Is this doable, and if so, how do I do it?


Dave's Answer:

Gosh, thanks. Just don't hang out in my neighborhood with super-long telephoto cameras, okay? :-)

It turns out that I was visiting my pals at NewsGator and they showed me an incredibly slick way that we can use their online RSS aggregation services - for free - to accomplish exactly what you ask.

Let me step through how I set this up, then show you the one line of code you need to add to your site to get exactly what you seek, a displayable version of my RSS feed, updated automatically every time I post something new here on Ask Dave Taylor!

First off, I logged in to my NewsGator Online service and clicked on the "newsgator manager" tab, then on "Edit Locations":

Newsgator Online: Tab Bar navigation to 'Edit Locations'

To accomplish my custom RSS feed info, I need to skip past the existing locations (which let Newsgator automatically keep my feeds in sync, whether I'm checking via mobile phone, within MS Outlook, or through Newsgator Online, but that's another story) and create a new location, conveniently labeled "Create location".

I'm going to call the new location "ADT RSS Feed", and press submit:

Newsgator Online: Create New Location

Now I have a new "Location" that's ready to be customized:

Newsgator Online: Ask Dave Taylor RSS feed

First off, I really do not want my new RSS subscriptions to suddenly show up on your site's mirror of my content, so I'll change that option by choosing "Click to change".

Next, I click on "feeds" and get this:

Newsgator Online: Edit Location Feeds

Since I want the resultant feed to be just Ask Dave Taylor, I'll click on "uncheck all", then scroll down and just select Ask Dave Taylor (yes, I subscribe to my own weblog. Doesn't everyone? :-)

I check the box adjacent to my site, scroll to the bottom, click "update" and I'm back at the main Edit Locations window again. This time I'll click on "headlines" since that's what I want featured in the feed. It shows me:

Newsgator Online: Edit Headlines

That's just a single box to check, once. The fun part's a bit lower on the page:

Newsgator Online: Edit Headlines 2

If you have even the slightest geeky tendencies you should be looking at this and saying "ooohhhhh cooooool!" because, as you can see, it's incredibly easy to tweak the feed info to be exactly what you want. Since I'm only including data from one feed source, for example, I'll lose the $feedname$ and the date of the posting, and instead slip in some CSS classes so that people who want to fine-tune the results for their own design templates can do so. Here's my template text:

<div class="adt_feeds"><a href="$link$" target="blank" 
  class="adt_feed_link">$title$</a>
  <div class="adt_feed_desc">$description$</div></div>

Notice also that I can decide how many entries to include from the RSS feed and whether to show full-feed or partial feed info regardless of whether the feed itself is a so-called "full feed" or not. I'll stick with the defaults for now, and here's the result:

I've dropped it into a CSS box so it stands out from the surrounding text on the page. You can do that too by wrapping the entire div in a "<div style="border:1px solid black;padding;3px">" or similar, or just definite that attribute for the class "adt_feeds' in your CSS style sheet!

That's right, to get that slick box showing up on your site, featuring the ever-changing world of Ask Dave Taylor on your own weblog or home page, simply cut and paste the following one line of code:

<script src="http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/headlines.aspx?uid=5079&mid=5">
</script>

That's astonishingly simple both for me to configure and, most importantly, you to include my feed info on your own Web site. Kudos to Newsgator for yet another way cool hidden feature. And it's free! What's not to love about it?

For the rest of you reading this, you're also welcome to paste the above line of code into your own site: the more, the merrier.


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Categorized: Blogs and Blogging , HTML, JavaScript and Web Site Programming   (Article 5846, Written by )
Tagged: blogging, newsgator, rss feeds
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Reader Comments To Date: 18

Stuart said, on January 20, 2006 11:48 PM:

Thanks for taking the time to produce that post Dave - I tried it and it worked like a charm :)

Udayan said, on February 1, 2006 4:47 AM:

Dear Dave!

I finally found the solution for what i'd been referring to a BIG PROBLEM for a month now. And I made it work for me too.

Thank you very much!

Jonathan Kraft said, on March 8, 2006 11:21 PM:

Things have been super-busy... BUT, wanted to drop you a line and say thank-you for this awesome tutorial! Your help continues to be much appreciated!

Thanks Dave!
Jonathan Kraft

Gary said, on April 13, 2006 12:48 PM:

Thanks Dave! That was extremely helpful!

Dave said, on September 29, 2006 4:07 AM:

Dave, it's Dave here. I'm trying to get RSS on to my pages so that they're search engine friendly. I've tried the rss2html script (php) but can't get it to work on my IIS6 server. Is the method you demonstrate here friendly to the search engine spiders or not, like a Java script for example. I really need to get rss transformed into html for my pages. Thanks Dave, from Dave.

Christer Osterling said, on November 2, 2006 12:38 PM:

Dave

As with one of the other recent posters, you just helped me figure out a few weeks worth of researching how to do this. My only issue is that I have a calendar being imported and the dates are being listed with the upcoming stuff being listed last. Any idea how to fix it?

ali said, on April 27, 2007 1:20 AM:

عكس-جوك-وغيره

Wilbert Richardson said, on July 5, 2007 10:52 PM:

is it possible for me to put a rss feed on my site i am basically new to online business thing and seeking all the advice i can. help!

Mss.Praveen said, on December 3, 2007 9:56 PM:

Hi Dave,
My site is developed using AdobeFlexbuilder.
where should i include the oneline of code in the
tag.Thanks for your support.

RASH said, on December 4, 2007 12:02 AM:

DOES A RSSFEED READER IS TO BE SET FOR MY SITE TO READ THE FEED, THAT I GET FROM YOUR SITE

Alex said, on July 15, 2008 4:35 AM:

Legend! I am very geekily excited that my site can now churn out all the rss feeds I could want. Thanks a lot!

Von said, on September 30, 2008 10:55 AM:

Great Tutorial, but I'm not sure how to use this to add make the reader show MY blog on MY site. I went to Newsgator and added my blog, but when I pasted the script into my site, nothing...nada

I'm not sure how that script is suppose to point to my account at newsgator

Dave Taylor said, on September 30, 2008 10:15 PM:

Thanks, Von, but it's not supposed to point to your account on Newsgator, but to make it easy for other people who use Newsgator to easily subscribe to your weblog.

Von said, on October 2, 2008 10:32 AM:

Ohhhh

what I'm looking for is a way to have, let's say the last five headlines from my blog appear on the home page of my site.

is that even possible?

Calvin said, on November 13, 2008 2:54 PM:

Dave,

Once again I found a beneficial tutorial from you! I think newsgator changed up their design a bit, but I was able to figure it out. My feed will be on my new site design in a few weeks!

Thanks again!

Calvin Hanson
Photo Graphics
Logo Designer

Ed said, on June 9, 2009 12:31 PM:

Wow. I just implemented it for my website and I have to say it was a breeze to set up! Thank you for this amazing article. REALLY helpful!!

Ciaran said, on July 30, 2009 8:46 AM:

Hey Dave,
Great tutorial, i just have one problem. I added my blog to Newsgator and set the rss feed to appear in the 'Blog' section of my website, this worked fine. All the posts appeared. Then, when i edited older posts or added any new ones, none of the changes appeared in the rss feed, either on my website or in newsgator....does it take a while for these to update? I only changed them about an hour ago but its kinda worrying me. I also noticed that the Newsgator website is only copyrighted from 2003 to 2008. Is everything ok with Newsgator. Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Sanjay said, on September 13, 2009 12:14 AM:

I want to know, how can i add contact us form to my website which will automatically mailed to me & send auto respond mail to the person who has filled that form.

Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!











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