Using Feeds
This Page...
- What are RSS feeds and how do I use them?
- What feeds does Window on Woking provide?
- Why am I asked for my username and password when I subscribe to the What's New feed for my organisation?
- What do I have to do to provide feeds for my organisation's pages and events?
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What are RSS feeds and how do I use them?
We've introduced a range of RSS ("Really Simple Syndication") feeds to Window on Woking. This means that people will be able to use the feed to automatically keep track of new organisations, events and pages.
RSS is a format for publishing regularly-updated lists of content, such as news headlines, new articles or events. It's growing in popularity, and thousands of feeds are available from publishers like BBC News, Amazon and individual web logs.
Look out for the RSS symbol indicating where feeds are available.
To use a feed, you need to have either a "feed reader" application such as FeedDemon or NetNewsWire, or to sign up to one of a variety of online services such as My Yahoo! or Rojo. These applications and services regularly download all of your feed subscriptions automatically, collecting them together into one constantly-updated list of new content. Web-based readers (including My Yahoo! and Rojo) are generally free of charge.
Some browsers (such as Firefox, Safari and the next version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, IE7) have a built-in RSS reader. For people using Internet Explorer 6, Window on Woking displays a message explaining how to subscribe to a reader.
What feeds does Window on Woking provide?
We currently provide feeds for the Diary of Events, Councillors' web logs and for new organisations joining the community site.
If you're registered with an organisation, you can also subscribe to a feed of new pages published by that organisation from the link on their homepage.
Why am I asked for my username and password when I subscribe to the What's New feed for my organisation?
This feed requires you to be registered with the organisation, as it may contain links to pages that have been restricted to registered users, together with links to pages that have been published by other organisations and made available to registered users of your organisation as well.
The way that you normally log in to the site, however, doesn't work for RSS feeds, and so you'll be asked to provide your username and password again when you subscribe to the feed.
Most feed readers retain this "authentication" information, so you won't be asked for it every time the feed is refreshed.
Please note, however, that My Yahoo! doesn't support authenticated feeds at all, so the What's New feed won't work with this particular service.
What do I have to do to provide feeds for my organisation's pages and events?
Nothing. The feeds for your organisation's new pages and forthcoming events are created and handled automatically by the site.