Creating RSS feeds

[HodgeHi]

Hello all,

 

I'm looking into creating an RSS feed for staff information to be passed through to staff that have subscribed to the feed.

 

I have created a widget in dashcode and have set up a .rss page that users can subscribe to but the problem i have is when the rss feed is updated with new items the widget or the clients are not updated with the new items.

 

Am i missing something that makes the clients update their subscriptions?

 

Or am i doing it wrong?

 

I am updating the .rss page directly. There are no dates on each item. I have tried it with dates but it is still the same.

 

Thanks in advance for any help.

Edited February 5, 2008 by plexer

[Jona]

Depending on the type of feed protocol you are using have you updated the publish date?

 

This might show you want your doing wrong: http://feedvalidator.org/

[HodgeHi]

This is the first RSS feed i have created and so don't know much about the process.

 

I tried the link and it came back as a valid feed. I have tried publish dates on each new item but it still doesn't update the client's feed straight away.

 

It seems to need action before it goes down to the clients reader.

 

Is this normal?

 

I am after an automated system so information can be sent out and seen.

 

Feed protocol? what are the options and i may be able to tell which one i have opted for (copied from a site really ;-) )

 

I was looking into wallsaver.app on OS X so i could have the RSS screensaver as their wallpaper with the updated news feeds as they happen.

 

Hopefully you get the idea behind what i want to accomplish. If there is an easier way then please let me know.

 

PS thanks for the link. I did resolve a few items to do with the image although it wasn't essential for validation.

[Jona]

We use an atom feed here and a publication date:

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:00:00 GMT

on each item.

You might also need a unique GID.

 

Apart from that I'd suggest go back to basics try setting the source to be the bbc rss feeds and see if they update or use a feed client like thunderbird to see if they are successfully pulling down your feed.

 

Cheers

Jona

[HodgeHi]

Thanks for your reply.

 

I have since moved to RSS 2.0. The example i tried was using RSS 0.9 something or other.

 

I have created my .RSS with the option for atom in the file.

 

I have also added GUIDs into the file and Pub dates. I have a lastbuilddate tag just before the first item starts and also have a pubdate tag after the description in each item.

 

It seems to update sometimes but not all the time. I have set a ttl tag of 1 minute but it does not seem to matter. I don't know whether it's just the readers and the way i want it to work which is the problem though.

 

I don't want to have to refresh manually. I want the news to be added. If you have seen the RSS screen saver in os x then you will know what i mean. I want the new ones to automatically appear after it has cycled through the old ones when the ttl time has told them to check the source or whichever is sooner.

[HodgeHi]

I found the reason why it was not updating.

 

The app wallsaver was stopping the screensaver from actually updating itself. My widget is updating itself and so is the screensaver but the mail rss reader is not. A few users have experienced this though so i will put this down to an issue with mail that i will ned to sort out.

 

Thanks for the help though.