Create an RSS Feed for certain pages on your Web site

I created RSS feeds for certain pages on my Web site (e.g., training calendar, Webzine, media releases). Every time I update the pages, people who subscribed to my feeds would be notified. It's fr-ee and easy to do this at www.FeedFire.com. (If you've seen RSS on Websites but don't know what it is, I wrote a simple article in my Jan-Mar 2006 Webzine, www.PeggyDuncan.com.

FeedFire will take virtually any Web page and convert it, and its content, into a fully formed, fully coded RSS feed...no programming knowledge needed. Here is what I did (if you maintain your own site, you should have no problems with this):

1) I have a page on my site that lists workshops I give that are open to the public. I created a separate Web page on my site that only includes a hyperlink to the workshop page (I did this because when the RSS code is generated at FeedFire, it only picks up hyperlinks on a page that have at least 4 words in them). I named this page TrainingEvents_for_Peggy_Duncan_rssfeed.htm. This is how the page looks (I added the text at the top in case someone lands on that page and wondered what it was.)

Once this page is created, change the page title by changing the Page Properties. This is important because (1) once someone subscribes to your feed, the page title is what pops up in their reader. Make this descriptive and put most important information upfront (e.g., COPE Webzine tips to work smarter); and (2) the page title is what you'll see when you log in later to view your list of feeds. If you don't change each page title to match that page's content, you won't know one feed from the other. You'll have to open each one to find out. To change the page title in FrontPage, right-click on the page, click Page Properties, add a description in the Title box. (In fact, you should do this on all of your Web pages because whatever is in this Title box is what shows up in the blue bar at the top of everyone's browser, and it's the text a lot of search engines index your pages by.)

2) Once you create an account at Feedfire (I chose the fre-ebie), create a channel that links to the link-only page (in my case the TrainingEvents_for_Peggy_Duncan_rssfeed.htm page). You'll need to copy the URL that will be generated when you create the channel.

3) I wanted to let people know I have an RSS feed for a particular page. I copied and pasted an orange RSS button on the page that has the full information on my events. Then I clicked the button and created a hyperlink to the URL I copied when I created the channel at Feedfire.

4) Every time I make a change to my training events Web page, I then change the document, TrainingEvents_for_Peggy_Duncan_rssfeed.htm. (The link info has to be different when Feedfire looks at it, so I just change the date at the end of the statement. See page sample above.) Every time I make this change and publish the page as I normally do, Feedfire.com will automatically update my feed (every 24 hours...if you use the paid service, they update more often). All the people who have subscribed to my feed will receive an update notice in their aggregator (feed reader).

5) I repeated this entire process for each page I wanted to create feeds for. (I created separate documents for each page.) It works! And Feedfire absorbs all bandwidth caused by creating and hosting the feed, so no problem with your ISP.

Note: If you ever need to delete a feed, you have to send an email to them requesting it...inconvenience I wish they would fix.