LonnieOlson

With the prevalence of bloggin tools providing auto-generated RSS/XML feeds for thier sites, I decided to take advantage of it and make my time online much more productive. More info on RSS/XML

It all started when I found this wonderful PHP tool called MagpieRSS This tool will allow you to include any data from an RSS feed into a webpage. It is really only a development library though, so I had to create the interface myself.

Now for the interface I knew I wanted to be able to see the most recent news from many different websites all on one page. How do I manage the list of websites. Since I use Textpattern for my content management, I decided to add a “module” that will store the list in the regular Textpattern database. Now I can update the list easily from anywhere. This idea is great, but it really wasn’t mine. I got the idea from Andy whose Photopattern “module” manages photos on your site.

All done w/ the interface! Now I add all the sites I want to keep track of into my database, and visit my display page. Woo hoo. I now have the links to the 5 most recent articles for each page along with a short description of the article. If it sounds interesting I can click to read it. This allows me to keep up to date on many different sites w/o having to visit each site.

Since it heavily depends on MagpieRSS I don’t think I am going to post my lame interface on here. It doesn’t look pretty, just useful. However, if you want more info… Email me