Taking advantage of your ComicGen RSS Feed
Updated 12/22/05: Updated to reflex a change in the Firefox browser, and well correcting a minor mistake in an example code given below.
This tutorial will help let you take advantage of the RSS feed built into every webcomic on Comic Genesis (Formerly Keenspace. ComicGen for short). But before that, perhaps I should briefly explain what an RSS feed is, and what it does (For a more detailed explaination, check out this page):
RSS feeds are simple "XML" documents, usually generated by the server, that were originally intented to syndicate news (in its entirety, or just as a headline), though they quickly become the medium for many sites to inform regular visitors of updates. In the case of the ComicGen RSS feeds, they let your readers know when you've posted a new comic (with a slight delay).
To read a RSS feed, you'll need a program called a feed/news reader(or aggregator):
(This feed aggregator, Feedreader, uses an interface reminiscent of outlook. It also displays a message on my taskbar when it receives a new feed)
Okay, you understand the basics of RSS, so how do you let visitors know about this feed so they may take advantage of it? Well, there are quite a few ways... but these are the two most common methods:
(note: For the purpose of this tutorial, I've assumed that you, the reader, may only a very limited understanding of HTML.)
The first thing you can do is add this line of code somewhere in between your <head>. . .</head> tags of your indextemplate:
<link rel="alternate" title="***comic_name***" href="/rss.xml" type="application/rss+xml">This'll cause a "live bookmark" or "add feed" button to appear in the address bar of the Firefox 1.5+* or Opera browser, respectively, while viewing your index (home) page. Unfortunately, it doesn't do a thing in any other major browsers (for the moment at least). Still, it's a start.
*(In versions of Firefox prior to 1.5, the Live Bookmark function was located in the bottom-right of the browser window)
The other way to make your visitors aware of the feed is simple enough: Display a link to it.
Either in text form ( RSS ) :
<a href="/rss.xml" title="Click for the rss feed to this site">RSS</a>Or as a button (
) :
<a href="/rss.xml"><img src="/images/rss.gif" border="0" alt="RSS feed" title="Click for the rss feed to this site" /></a>In this case, be sure to download the RSS image above, and reupload it into your image directory
[ /workspace/images/ ]Put either of these codes somewhere in the body (<body>. . .</body>) of your code.
Oh, and if you're the visitor, and wish to keep up with your favorite ComicGen comics, its easy!
Every RSS file on 'Space is called the same thing (i.e. rss.xml ),
and is always located in the top directory. Eg.:
http://shifters.comicgenesis.com/rss.xml
http://foxfire.comicgenesis.com/rss.xml
http://www.nyuterra.com/rss.xml
~ Dávid
If you are having trouble with OR have a question about any part of this tutorial, feel free to contact me at nyuterra AT yahoo DOT com . Be sure to include "RSS feed" in the Subject.
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