RSS is a new feature of vldPersonals that may  not be so obvious to many. I would like to take the time to discuss RSS for those who are interested. The benefits can be many. Feedback is welcome.

This discussion/tutor will be in two parts. Part 1 will be  a discussion of RSS and how to put subscriptions links on your site. Part 2 will be how to market your site with RSS by placing comments below this tutor. Even without Part 2, Part 1 could be a benefit to your members and your site if you understand how RSS can be used.

Before I get started, a big thank you to Radioact/vldCrowd for his help on coding the links for RSS subscriptions.

HEADER.TPL

If you look at the header.tpl you will notice coding between the head tags that looks like this:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="{settings.app_title} | {app_page}" href="{virtual_path}{member_blog_rss_link}" />

By providing the above code in the header.tpl, it makes it easier for browsers and RSS aggregators (readers) to automatically discover your rss feed for indexing and subscription services (will give an example of using a RSS reader later).

Vlad also uses conditional statements in the head tag like this:

<!-- IF active_module == "news" AND settings.enable_news_feed -->

What this means is if you have news settings turned on in the CP (most do) and are on the news page (it is the active module) you will see the subscription icon in the browser.

Should we add it to the homepage.tpl

I'm far from an expert in coding (vlad & radioact are), but from a user's perspective, my only concern with the conditional statements in the header.tpl is that most visitors initially land on your home page. If a user lands on your home page and is looking for a subscription service via browser icon, they may not be aware of it since all conditional statements in the header are coded to be displayed when that template is the active module as is the case for the news feed.

Before I talk more about the homepage.tpl, understand that most of the RSS feeds are based on member's input and not on your overall website. For example,  when Member A writes a blog OR if Member B signs Member C's guestbook a RSS feed is created. This type of RSS  makes the RSS feed member orientated. You could make an exception to this with your site's news feed which we will talk about next for your homepage.tpl.

Unlike blogs and guestbooks, News feed is created by the Admin. This makes this feed more of a site feed rather than a member orientated feed. Consequently, I would use your news feed as a way to display a RSS icon on your homepage.tpl by making the following changes in your header.tpl.

FIND IN YOUR HEAD TAGS

<!-- IF active_module == "news" AND settings.enable_news_feed -->

CHANGE TO:

<!-- IF active_module == "news" OR active_module == "homepage" AND settings.enable_news_feed -->

NOTE:  if you are going to make this change to your header, recommend you add  a link in your footer for the news feed which I will show you how to do later.

Now if a visitor lands on my home page looking for an RSS feed in his browser, he will see the RSS icon for the News feed.

If a visitors clicks the icon on the home page, they will see the RSS News feed and can subscribe.

SUBSCRIPTION LINKS

Subscription links is just another way of providing visitors and members a way to subscribe to a news feed. What I want to discuss is how to create these links.

Before I get started one caveat. Not all browsers can handle the coding for RSS templates in vldPersonals. In most cases we are talking about older browsers.

If I click an RSS link using an older browser (for example, i.e. 6) it will ask you if you want to download the file instead of displaying the RSS feed. Probably this isn't a big concern since most are using the latest browsers, but I wanted to make you aware of it.

FOOTER SUBSCRIPTION LINK FOR SITE NEWS

Where you want to put the link in the footer is up to you. Here is the coding for the link:

<a href="{virtual_path}news/rss/" title="{app_page}">Site News Subscription</a>

If you want to use the RSS icon with your link you would have to download and upload the icon to your templates media folder. Since the icon is an image, there may be some formatting involved to display the icon the way you want in your footer. I went without the icon, but if I did use it, the link would look something like this:

<a href="{virtual_path}news/rss/">Site News Subscription</a> <img src="{virtual_tpl_path}{session.template}/media/rss2.gif" border="0" align="absmiddle" />

Note: you can find tons of RSS icons by googling.

SUBSCRIPTION LINK FOR MEMBER'S BLOG

There are two templates I would consider for placing a subscription link for member's blogs: MEMBER_BLOG.TPL & MEMBER_BLOG_ENTRY.TPL

Where you place them is up to you but the coding may be slightly different depending on where you place the link in the template.

MEMBER_BLOG.TPL

Here is where I placed it on my site:

FIND: <li>{lang:"member","post_date"} {entry_post_date}</li>

AFTER ADD: <li><a href="{top.virtual_path}{top.member_blog_rss_link}" title="{app_page}">Subscribe to {top.member_username} Blog</a></li>

NOTE: Since I placed the link inside an array, I had to use "top" in the path statements. If you place the code outside an array on member_blog.tpl you probably don't have to use "top" in your link. Instead it would look like:

AFTER ADD: <li><a href="{virtual_path}{member_blog_rss_link}" title="{app_page}">Subscribe to {member_username} Blog</a></li>

If you are not sure, try one if it works you got it. If not, try the other.

MEMBER_BLOG_ENTRY.TPL

On my site, I placed it at:

FIND: <li>{lang:"member","post_date"} {entry_post_date}</li>

AFTER ADD: <li><a href="{virtual_path}{member_blog_rss_link}" title="{app_page}">Subscribe to {member_username} Blog</a></li>

NOTE: same note as above about using "top" or not in your link.

If member A is in love with simplebutterfly, they may subscribe to her blog on google reader, facebook, myspace, youtube reader and a thousand other places. Or if another site is just looking for some content for their site, they may subscribe as well. It doesn't matter, it is a link to your site, that is all you care about.

SUBSCRIPTION LINK FOR MEMBER'S GUESTOOK

There is only one template I used for subscription link for member's Guestook: MEMBER_GUESTBOOK.TPL

FIND: <li>{lang:"member","post_date"} {entry_post_date}</li>

AFTER ADD: <li><a href="{top.virtual_path}{top.member_guestbook_rss_link}" title="{app_page}">Subscribe to {top.member_username} Guestbook</a></li>

NOTE: Since I placed the link inside an array, I had to use "top" in the path statements. If you place the code outside an array on member_guestbook.tpl you probably don't have to use "top" in your link.

MEMBER_SECTIONS_CARD.TPL

I would of never figured this one out without Radioacts/vldCrowd blog post and his help.

The concern with putting a blog link in the member_sections_card.tpl is having a link in a member's profile when they did not create a blog.  Consequently, we only want to create a link in their profile if the member created a blog. Here is the coding:

<!-- IF settings.enable_blogs AND member_total_blogs > "0" -->
<dt>Member's Blog</dt>
<dd><a href="{top.virtual_path}member/{member_id}/blog/rss/">Subscribe to {member_username} blog</a></dd>
<!-- ENDIF -->

Where you place the above code in member_sections_card.tpl is up to you, but I usually just keep adding new code at the end of the links

SUBSCRIPTION LINK FOR EVENTS

I don't use Events on my site so I did not do the coding. However, with the above examples, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out. Without looking more into it,  Events seems more like an overall site RSS link than a member's RSS link. If that is true, you may want to lean towards a link similar to the News RSS subscription link. I'm sure those who use Events on their site can figure out which is the best type of link to use based on the above examples.

NOW WHAT

Before we talk about marketing with RSS, I wanted to give you some idea of how RSS readers work. The list of readers is overwhelming so don't be shy -- start googling and you will find tons of ways to use RSS links.

There are basically three types of readers, (1)desktop readers, (2)personal site & browser readers and (3) website readers.

With desktop readers you do not have to be online to read the content of the RSS feed. You can read it from your desktop.

Personal Site & Browser readers are usually part of a site -- for example if you have a Yahoo My Page you can subscribe to RSS feeds, if you have a google account you can subscribe to RSS feeds, if you use firefox as your browser you can bookmark and subscribe to a RSS feed, etc.

Website readers are usually used to place RSS feeds on your own website. Seeme uses a Website reader on his site as I do on one of my sites. In some cases all it takes is a link, other times it requires you to install some code be it php or javascript.

I'll  demo a few readers but hopefully others will provide feedback  if they discover a RSS reader and the best way to use it.

Desktop  Readers

The little demo above is only meant to give you a flavor of RSS readers. It would take hours to cover all the variety of readers and how to use them. You may be asking,  are users savvy enough to use them. I was surprised how savvy they were. Since this is my first round with vldPersonals and RSS it is too early to tell, but with my other sites, I can report how pleasantly surprised I would be when I would discover my RSS content from my wordpress or 4images site on another website.

Lets look at some other options you can explore

Personal Sites and Browser Readers

Google Reader: http://www.google.com/reader

Yahoo Reader: http://my.yahoo.com/s/about/rss/index.html

If you use firefox as a browser (this is probably true of other browsers, but I'm more familiar with firefox), there are several ways to subscribe to a feed as you can see in the image below.

Website Readers

This is probably the most popular and  useful RSS reader. If another webmaster finds your site content interesting he may place a RSS link of your site's content on his site.

I'm a little cautious about placing my own RSS link on my site in fear of being penalized by google, but below is an image of a RSS Reader on my site reading the feed from another site. The same theory if a webmaster decided to put your RSS feed on his site.

My thoughts are that vldPersonals made a good start with RSS, but in future updates, I hope there are  RSS feeds to global blogs, global videos, and global pictures, etc, to increase interest from other webmasters, which in turn will give you more  inbound links and traffic.

RSS Marketing

I'm been debating how to discuss part 2 and marketing with RSS. Depending on the marketing technique each topic could be an article in itself. After some thought, I think it would be best to add comments below this post related to RSS marketing. Now that you have an idea how RSS works on vldPersonals, the challenge is how to use it to help promote your site. For example, how to use RSS with twitter to market your site, how to use facebook, myspace, etc.

Last edited by db3204 (2009-06-24 08:35:14)