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Arts: Fine Art, Art Gallery, Digital Art

The use of RSS Feed in Fine Arts and Artists web sites

I decided to use the RSS (real simple syndication) Feed to promote and divulge my Fine Arts and Antiques articles from my site: Fine Arts and Antiques San Cristobal http://www.vialin.com/ like a source medium. Anyone can read my news or plug the .xml source file into their pages, and every time that I update “the source” their pages become updated without intervention. In this guide you will find how to do it. 

In the counterpart you can plug the RSS Feed from different sources to your page if you only want to “read” for yourself (usually using a reader plug in software) or to make it available to your audience (using a code generator to plug it into your page). That depends on the flavor or the way you want to kill the “fleas”.

RSS feed is a syndicated file, usually free, you can include news, articles, sports, and weather into your site, and it will update automatically.  Because RSS is relatively new on the Net, not all sites syndicate their content today. However, many notable sites already do offer RSS, and every day the RSS offering grows.

Using examples will more easy to understand it, I confess that after 20 years of programming experience, I was confused about the use of RSS Feed, everybody talks about it and believe me: my grandmother’s name is very easy but if you do not know it… (Hilda by the way).

RSS Feed  is still not crowded arena. Yahoo recently launched the RSS Headlines (BETA), and your published RSS Feed can be available to the Yahoo audience and the Yahoo Directory for free in term of minutes. Few weeks ago, I had a problem with my Yahoo RSS Feed (I’m not a paying customer) I posted a request for help, Yahoo solved the problem in 24 hours and they email about the quality of the service. It means how Yahoo is putting attention to the RSS technology. 

I cannot estimate how my RSS had helped my site’s popularity, I’m just crossing my fingers that my feed will help my targeted traffic and spread my “knowledge”.

Do not worry; it is not rocket science, brain surgery, or even tax return level code. The technical folks already solved the problems; I took the hard way, however, for you the path is clear now.

Topic 1. Personal reading others people RSS feeds.

To read the RSS feeds from others use a “Feeds Reader Software” or “a browser Plug in” available free. I think My-Yahoo has a nice user,  interface.

To add any RSS Feed to My Yahoo, under the first section of the options for "My Front Page", under "My Yahoo! Essentials", (bottom right of My Yahoo page) was "RSS Headlines”, you can do search or input the URL of the .xml page.

You can use mine J to test the feature:

Place this address on the option: Yahoo Choose your RSS sources http://www.vialin.com/rss.xml

Or just click on this link now:

http://add.my.yahoo.com/rss?url=http://www.vialin.com/rss.xml

Using third party sites. Another option is to visit specialized blogs sites and to subscribe it; they have available their indexes or you may suggest a site that is not listed:  http://www.2rss.com/readers.php or http://www.bloglines.com

To test this service again use my favorite feed

http://www.2rss.com/index.php?rss=7295

Topic 2. Plug in others people RSS feeds into your own web page.

First, I have multiple feeds into one single page, to make it more attractive for visitors. To have an idea visit my Fine Arts and Society News here: http://www.vialin.com/artnews/

There is a piece of code that makes feeds available at your wish, every time that the feed updates, your page does, so you have now dynamic page. Do not worry about how google treats dynamic generated pages, google likes fresh content. I had conducted multiple tests and my front page  http://www.vialin.com/  is well ranked and daily visited by the google spiders

a. To generate the piece of code to paste into your site

            http://www.2rss.com/index.php?rss=7295 or select your

            favorite feed.

            Select option “Add to my site” to generate the piece of code.

  b. This option is for technically experienced people; it comes 

  from the folks of

Maricopa Community Colleges, I did it with earlier version of the actual script and I spent my weekend making it works.

http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/

Topic 3. Creating your own RSS feeds.

I’m not going to bore you, but after reading many tutorials, I did a copy from any .xml file, and I edit the file manually with notepad. I validate the .xml file with a tool to be sure that it does not have any errors. Remember the trick is that your own feed should be updated on a regularly basis. Nobody likes old news…

Check my feed with .xml extension page: http://www.vialin.com/rss.xml

Use this tool to validate your feed:

http://www.feedvalidator.org/

Step 1. First you must add it to your own My-Yahoo, it will be available to the Yahoo Directory (strange coming from the guys that makes your life impossible when talking about the Yahoo Directory inclusion)

Again, to add your RSS Feed to My Yahoo, under the first section of the options for "My Front Page", under "My Yahoo! Essentials", (bottom right of My Yahoo page) was "RSS Headlines”, you can do search or input the URL of the .xml page.

Step 2. Soon as you feed is validated, submit it to all directories you can.

Here are some few:

http://www.syndic8.com

http://www.2rss.com/

http://www.bloglines.com/

Finally, I had collected some very useful links around the web, to make the life easiest:

Resource about using RSS and Atom, from a non-technical standpoint:

http://www.faganfinder.com/search/rss.shtml

Good resource for your overall RSS experience

http://www.kriyayoga.com/how_to/how_to_rss.html

My final words from Bugs Bunny famous voice: Mel Blanc (He hated carrots) That's all Folks!

Author: Sergio Vargas

San Cristobal Antiques and Fine Arts

http://www.vialin.com/

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