RSS Feed Now Available

For those of you who may have been sleeping for the last 12 hours (and i hope most of you were), you may have missed the orange symbol on the bottom left of the page, an orange "RSS" button . RSS was first brought up in this RSS THREAD and the more i read the more i liked the idea. As many may not have heard of RSS, and even fewer really understand what it is and the power that it holds, i will give a brief description and why it is relavant to you:

What is RSS?

Many now say it stand for "Really Simply Syndication", but there are a host of other definitions. Regardless of what you call it... it's pretty cool. :) In a nutshell, RSS allows us to share pieces of content with 1) other websites, and 2) individuals without websites.

Every hour, the board produces a "feed" for anyone that wants it. The feed contains links to the the last 10 active threads on the board, as well as the first post of each of those threads. This feed can then be used in two ways (i'm sure there are many others, as well as many more to come, and since i too am new to RSS please add your ideas below if you have more suggestions):

1) Websites

If you have a website you can add the content from our feed on your own site. With just a line or two of code, you can display a variety of the conent mentioned above (from the last 10 active threads and the first post from each). As the website owner you can display as much as or as little of the information you want. Choose to show just the topic titles, show the topic titles with just the first 100 characters of the first post, show the entire first post, etc, etc. Once you have put the few lines of code on your pages, the content will automatically update. This provides your own users with additional content to read on your site, and since it constantly updates automatically, gives them reason to return to your site more frequently. It also keeps your site active with 'fresh' content, which the search engines always like as well.

2) Individuals

There are many indvidual uses for RSS feeds too.

The Firefox browser has a feature where you can add an RSS feed to your bookmarks. By adding our feed to your bookmarks you can then see the last 10 actives posts on the board (topic titles only) without even visiting BetterBidding... right on your own desktop! If you're busy you can quickly look at the feed to see if any new topics are of interest to you. (realize however that since this is an active board, and the feed updates every hour, you'll be bound to miss some posts). There is also application for Firefox that will display an icon on your browser's toolbar alerting you of new posts on te board... sort of like email, but instead of getting spammed, it's only 'email' and notifcations from places you want information. The next version of Internet Explorer 7.0 (currently available in beta) will also have the ability to seemlessly integrate RSS feeds.

Google also allows those with a google (gmail) account to customize the blank space on the google search page. The first thing i did when i set up the feed was add it to my Google page. Now everytime i go to google, below the search box i'm able to see the 10 most recent posts from the board. There is room for more than just our feed, and i can add news headlines, weather, and feeds from other message boards i visit to this space as well. This was very easy to set up and i can help anyone that may need help.

We have started with just one feed, which covers the entire board. However, as long as we see this feature is being used, we will then create additional feeds, so that users who are only interested in (let's say) posts for New York, can subscribe to a "New York only" feed, those who only want Canda can get a "Canada only" feed, etc, etc... we'll ultimately have feeds for every section of the board and users can pick and choose which they wish to subscribe to (you can subscribe to more than one)

So that is a short taste of RSS and what it means to you. I'm still learning about it but know enough to help if anyone needs help adding our feed to their own website or any of the other uses above.

Just to add about adding the RSS feed to your bookmarks (in Firefox) as i just read a good explanation of it:

Think of these as "live bookmarks".... instead of just bookmarking to a single page on a website, think of it as "bookmarking the last 10 active threads", which will automatically change as new posts are made to the board.

good job thereuare, it's a good way to attract more members

Those of you who use My Yahoo for a web home page can add RSS feeds to that page as well:

Just click Add Content, then click the Add RSS by URL link.