How To Events-Add RSS feed to your homepage

How to:Add an RSS Feed to your library's homepage

There are several ways to add dynamic content to your homepage. One of the simplest is to use an RSS Feed Reader that is pulling data from your Event Calendar or Room Reserve system. Below is a description of the process.

What is an RSS Feed?

An RSS feed is simply a dynamic list of data. In the case of your Event Calendar it is a list of events. The most obvious reason for using an RSS feed is that it will provide dynamic content without the need to changing the link periodically. So the link:

• http://host.evanced.info/lib/eventsxml.asp?dm=rss2
  

will always give you today's training sessions no matter what day it is when you click on it.

How do I use an RSS Feed?

There are several ways to make use of the data that is obtained from an RSS feed. Advanced web programmers may want to obtain the data and then manipulate it in lots of crazy ways (an XML feed would be best for this since it is just the raw data and it is generated by a similar link), but most of us just want it to display on our homepage. So how do we do that?

RSS Feed Readers

An RSS Feed Reader is a piece of code that can be included on your site that will pull an RSS feed (the data from it) and display it in a coherent fashion. A feed reader can be created (by an advanced programmer) or obtained from one of many free resources. To find a feed reader you can do a web search for "RSS to HTML conversion". Here is a link that lists many feed reader sites and their costs (many are free!): RSS Feed Reader Sites You may have to register on their site to use their code and there are some paid services with many more features but even the free ones work well in most cases.

There are 2 methods of generating the feed reader code most of these sites.

• Method 1: You use their site to configure the feed reader and they generate the source code that you copy and paste to your homepage. In this case your site contains all of the code necessary to display the RSS feed.
• Method 2: You use their site to configure the feed reader and they generate the widget code that you copy and paste to your homepage. In this case their site is still doing some of the work and your site is using a smaller piece of code (like a JavaScript function) to pull what it needs from their site.

In either case the RSS feed is displayed on your homepage with very little code work needed by you.