RSS Feeds for the LAVA Forums, What are they and how to use them.

Note: If using Thunderbird See here.

Recently, I introduced a new feature to the LAVA Forums. RSS feeds. RSS stands for "RDF Site Summary" or "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich site summary". Take your pick. Whatever the acronym stands for, the essence of it is that it is a name given to an XML document that describes the content of a website in a standard universal format. I'm not going to go into the details of what XML is, a quick Google search should help you in that area.

You will notice that at the top right corner of every webpage is an orange rectangular icon with the RSS symbol.


If you click on this icon in a web browser you will see the following:


As you can see, the contents look like an XML document. This format shows the latest posts on the LAVA Forums in an XML format. There is a PHP script on the LAVA Forums that goes through the posts and generates this file for you. If you look closely you will see that each LAVA post is segmented in the file.


Item: is the actual post.
Link: is the URL to the post.
Title: is the title
Description: is the content. Etc.

The details about the format of the RSS file are not really important to you. Unless you are the web programmer, you would never have to see this formatting. The benefit however of having a standard format (schema) is that other applications can parse through this stuff, decode it and present it in a nice manner.
The benefits of this are huge. For example, if you want to read the important daily content of a website, you probably don't need to use a web browser anymore. Also, if you monitor many websites that have RSS feeds, you can consolidate the viewing in one location and use something that's better suited to your needs like an email reader. If you are the owner of a website, you have the added benefit of having live feeds of other related websites plopped right into the front page of your site.

Ok, at this point I probably lost a few of you. The best way to demonstrate this is via a few examples.

Example1: Using Firefox "Live Bookmarks" Feature.
The latest version of the Firefox browser allows you to create a live bookmark of an RSS enabled website. This creates dynamic bookmarks that change whenever new content is present on the website.


If a website is RSS enabled, you will see an icon at the bottom right corner of the browser. This will allow you to click on it and select subscribe. You will be prompted for a bookmark location. Once saved, you will then have a special live bookmark. This bookmark will be folder that contains links to the last 10 posts on the forums. Of course, this list will change as new content is available, automatically.


Example2: Using the Sage extension for Firefox.
Firefox has the capability for other developers to add plug-ins to the environment. One interesting extension is called Sage. Here is an image of the Sage extension installed in my Firefox.


You can enable it From the Tools>>Sage menu in Firefox. Once open, you can manage your RSS feeds in one spot. As you can see from my demonstration, I have other RSS feeds in my list. The display of the content on the right hand side is sparse. Since you are getting the content NOT the formatting, you can augment this view with custom styles and formatting of your own.


Example3: Using the Forumzilla extension in Thunderbird.
If you are using the email reader program called Thunderbird then there is an extension called Forumzilla. This integrates RSS feeds right into your email reader.


This extension has options that allow you to view the whole html from within the program or just a plain text of the article. Here is an example of both modes:


You can also notice that in the article list, you can see the posts in threaded mode. One wish I have, that is not implemented, is the ability to reply directly to the post through your email client and have the reply go straight to the LAVA Forums… That would be cool!

Example4: Using an RSS feed aggregator website like Bloglines.
There are many websites out there that provide RSS feed aggregation. One of the popular ones is Bloglines. It started off as a place to aggregate Blogs that have RSS feeds but you can use it for any RSS enabled site. As of writing this, the site is free to use but this may change in the future.


Again, the focus here is multiple RSS aggregation in one spot. No need to jump to multiple websites if the most important thing is the content, NOT the graphics.

Example5: A website wants to integrate RSS feeds from the LAVA site.
If you are the Admin of a LabVIEW related website and want to include a small section on your site with the latest LAVA Forum posts then all you need to do is include some code in your website homepage. This will only work if your site is running dynamic content like PHP or shtml. If you are using PHP then you just need to include the RSS URL in an include statement:
include("http://forums.lavag.org/rss-8.html");

RSS URL's for the LAVA Forums
Every section of the forums has a unique RSS feed. The one on the top right of the main page is a general RSS feed and will give you the last 10 posts to the forums. You will see more RSS links in other areas of the site. There are two other levels of RSS feeds. One is for the specific Forum category and another is for the specific topic. These icon's are visible when viewing the category or topic. They are not visible from the main page. The benefit of this is that you can have more resolution of the type of feed you're interested in. If you are only interested in the Scripting forum then just subscribe to that.

To figure out what the RSS feed address is just click on the RSS icon and look at the URL in your address bar of your browser. Copy this and past it in your favorite RSS handler application.

I hope this has been usefull information and I hope that by implementing RSS feed capability in the LAVA forums, I have given you more choices. Choices are good.

PS. Do you know of any extensions that are available for MSOutlook or IE? IF so, send me a PM (personal message) and I will augment this article.


Common LAVA RSS Feed links

• - ALL OF LAVA -
• LAVAcr Last 10 Submissions