I just spent the past two days fully engaged on the task of importing RSS feeds into this site. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, depending on where one looks or whom one consults. This site has an RSS feed auto-generated by the pMachine blogware. See the sidebar, then click on XML to view Burnin’s rich site summary.
Fundamentally, RSS is a two way street. Other sites can absorb my content, and I can absorb theirs. See the left sidebar once more, then click on “Boing Boing” or “The Daily Report” under RSS Feeds. The resulting outputs are the result of much learning on the subject, at least for me, a non-geek fast on the way to geekdom.
The breakthrough came when I found Magpie RSS, a free RSS parser that works like a charm. Even then, I still spent several hours configuring the setup. The one thing missing from Magpie’s otherwise flawless manual is the step where one must create a new php file and place it in the Magpie directory for it all to work. They do provide the code, but it took some doing to know where and how to successfully place it.
Bottom line, I’m extremely pleased to clear this high hurdle and excited by what it means. Importing RSS adds more than headlines to a site, it adds value.