Thursday, February 03, 2005

Put News Headlines On Your Site or Blog

The world is starting to love RSS. If I had my way, my toaster would serve up RSS feeds. Actually that's not a bad idea, hmm. Anyway, people love a site that serves up relevant news feeds. It's sticky and it's about as low maintenance as you can get. But how do you do it on the cheap? Or better, for free? It's easy thanks to a site called RSS Digest.

Step 1: Go find an RSS feed you want to put on your site. I use Newsisfree.com, but there are many out there, including: Syndic8, 2RSS, Feedster Feedfinder, Moreover.com, etc.

Step 2: Go to RSS Digest and paste the URL for the newsfeed (e.g., http://xml.newsisfree.com/feeds/83/11083.xml) into the first field.

Step 3: Click the "Create the Code" button and follow the onscreen prompts for setting up your feed. When you're done you'll have a snippet of code that you can paste into your blog or web page that will wow your site visitors and make you look really smart.

I use RSS Digest on this very blog in fact. You'll see the headlines on the lower right side of the screen there. It took me all of 15 minutes to add them. Which gives me plenty of time to go work on that toaster...

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