This EducationXchange page is a brief overview of RSS Technology and provides an example of an RSS Feed from Golden West College Athletics.

RSS Feeds

Think about all of the information that you access on the Web on a day-to-day basis; news headlines, search results, etc. A large amount of this content can be thought of as a list; although it probably isn't in HTML <li> elements, the information is list-oriented.

Most people need to track a number of these lists, but it becomes difficult once there are more than a handful of sources. This is because they have to go to each page, load it, and possibly find where they last left off in the list.

RSS is an XML-based format that allows the syndication of lists of hyperlinks, along with other information, or metadata, that helps viewers decide whether they want to follow the link.

RSS allows an individual' computers to fetch and understand the information, so that all of the lists they're interested in can be tracked and personalized for them. It is a format that's intended for use by computers on behalf of people, rather than being directly presented to them (like HTML).

To enable this, a Web site will make an RSS feed, or channel, available, just like any other file or resource on the server. Once a feed is available, computers can regularly fetch the file to get the most recent items on the list. Most often, people will do this with an aggregator, a program that manages a number of lists and presents them in a single interface.

RSS can also be used for other kinds of list-oriented information, such as syndicating the content itself (often weblogs) along with the links.

example: [currently active, this pulls only the "writeups" from multiple webpages of pre-selected team coverage. The result is a listing of page links to these selected pages.] The example below will use the athletic game writeups from the gwc athletic team webpages. These pages change daily, so they are a good representation of how GWC might use RSS. The rss feeds can be from any site that provides information in the correct format. A "smart browser" or Reader application is required. I suggest a free desktop application such as FeedReader to start exploring RSS Feeds. Please contact websupport if you have questions or need assistance. The icons below may look familiar as you view more news related pages on the web. They identify that content is available as an RSS Feed. Clicking on one will not get you the expected results you may have wished for, however, using the Reader and the GWC Sportswire link at: http://www.gwc.info/athletics/sportswire.xml [source link to pull feed from] you'll begin to see the benefits of this technology. Again, the sportswire is selected as an example - this page is named EducationXchange with the future goal of developing and receiving feeds in areas other than just sports.

| | Golden West College Sportswire