Traders from around the globe come to
http://www.import-export-guide.com/trade to post trade leads -
their requirements for products they want to buy and details of
the products they have to sell. New trade leads are added all
the time and it's important that traders can easily and quickly
find out what new requirements and product offers are posted.
Most traders are busy people with lots to do. Not really wanting
to add to their burden of websites to visit, we decided it would
be best to find a simple method of alerting our members about
the latest trade leads.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) was the perfect solution.
RSS
RSS is an XML format originally developed by Netscape as a way
of aggregating or combining the headlines of various news-type
sites for display on a portal site. It has been through a few
versions, the most current being RSS 2.0 which we used on this
project.
As well as being used by many news sites, the format is popular
among the blogging community as it allows them to easily
distribute the content of their blogs.
The advantages of using an RSS feed include:
· It is simple to implement
· The feed can be easily added to desktop or web-based readers
· It displays the latest content from your site
· It includes links back to your site
· It helps drive targeted visitors to your site
Creating The XML File
The format of an RSS file is very simple.
At its most basic it contains (within the main tags) a ,
a and a tag followed by a series of
tags.
Each tag, representing a unique news or data article,
contains at least 3 other tags - one each for the article's
title, a link to the article and a description of the article.
Here's the template we use for our RSS feed:
Import-Export-Guide.com/trade - Latest Buy and Sell
Leads
International Trade Leads for import-export
traders.
Trade Lead Title
Trade Lead Link
Trade Lead Description
]]>
...
...
...
...
Generating the RSS file is simply a case of extracting the
relevant data from the database, building it up to match the
template above and saving the resulting file on the server. Any
of the popular scripting languages can be used for this process.
You can't comfortably read the contents of a feed by looking at
the raw file in a browser. To do that you need a news aggregator
program.
Aggregators let you include all your favourite feeds so that you
end up with a page containing only content that interests you -
headlines, quote of the day, weather, stocks, interest rates -
you name it.
Popular aggregators include FeedDemon (a desktop application)
and Bloglines (web-based). My MSN, My Yahoo! and Google accounts
all come with news aggregation facilities.
Alternatively, if you are a website owner and want to include
the feed contents on one of your site's pages you can either
parse the file using a ASP, PHP or similar or there are
JavaScript programs that can do this for you.
Conclusion
Our main reason for building the feed was to benefit our current
members. But by syndicating the feed on the many RSS syndication
sites we will be able attract many other visitors who would not
otherwise have known about our site.
Any content which is frequently updated and which can be
packaged into separate items is suitable for creating an RSS
feed. Hopefully this article will give other webmasters ideas
for feeds to benefit their users and the wider Internet
community.
About the author:
R.Henderson, Import-Export-Guide.com
Import-Export-Guide.com is an independent company that provides
information and solutions for importers, exporters, trading
companies, trading consultants and others involved in
international trade. For more information and to register on the
trade portal visit www.import-export-guide.com/trade.
