Reading new posts using RSS
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[edit] What is web content syndication?
Web content is published on the web and viewed in a browser. Either as an adjunct to web pages, or independently, web content may also be syndicated for viewing in feed reader.
A feed is an XML file, more precisely, a Resource Description Framework (RDF) resource, that conforms to the schema for RSS or Atom. The markup for a feed is relatively easy to follow.
[edit] What RSS feeds are available from the STC Forum
Lou Quillio listed them here: http://stcforum.org/viewtopic.php?id=249
[edit] How can I use RSS to read new Forum posts?
You can (1) use a feed reader to personally monitor the feed, or (2) have your own website poll the STC Forum feed, transform the items into HTML, and display them as though they were part of your site.
This topic does not address pulling syndicated Forum content into a website, since that's dependent on each site's architecture, If you want to do this and don't know how, you should consult with a web developer.
[edit] What is a feed reader?
A feed reader is client software used on a network. You use a Web browser as a client for viewing webpages on the network (the pages are on a web server on the Internet). You use an email program as a client for reading email on the network (the messages are on a mailserver on the Internet, provided by your ISP or someone else). A feed reader is a third kind of client software, used for viewing RSS.
Feed readers are useful because they (1) make RSS content easy to read, (2) automatically check for new items, and (3) can keep track of which items you have read, or that are unread. Feed readers work much like email programs in helping you read RSS files as they are received.
There are free and at-cost feed readers for every PC platform. These can be standalone applications you run on your desktop, or a Web service provided by another site, such as Bloglines, http://bloglines.com/). A third type of feed reader comes as a Web browser plug-in, or perhaps as a native feature. The Firefox, Mozilla, Safari, and Opera browsers all provide a built-in feed reader; MS Internet Explorer 7 does, too.
There are many feed reader lists, like Wikipedia's Aggregator list, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_aggregator. Choose the feed reader that works best for your interests and habits.
[edit] How can I subscribe to the STC Forum feeds?
Once you have a feed reader, you'll need to subscribe to the feeds you want to monitor through your feed reader. There are millions of feeds available; you usually discover them by visiting websites and looking for an orange or blue "RSS" or "XML" button. Typically you'd right-click on the button and "Copy link location" (or similar), then return to your feed reader and paste the feed's URL into its mechanism for adding feeds. There are instructions for manually adding a feed URL to the Sage reader for FireFox on the STC Forum: http://forum.stcforum.org/viewtopic.php?pid=175#p175
Copy-paste any of the feed URLs into your feed reader to begin subscribing via RSS. There is a list of the feeds in the post "Improved RSS Feeds" (http://stcforum.org/viewtopic.php?pid=958#p958).
You may prefer to simply visit the forum to see what's new, or prefer email digest subscriptions. The Forum RSS feeds are a third option that may fit your habits and workflow better. And, naturally, you can combine these methods in interesting ways. For example, you might use a service like RSSFwd (RSS Forward) to receive RSS feed subscriptions via email.
[edit] What's in the feed for the STC Forum?
If you are interested, look at the main RSS feed for the STC Forum: http://stcforum.org/extern.php?action=active&type=RSS
You can see that the outermost wrapper is the "channel" ("STC Member Forum"), and that there's a link to the Forum's homepage associated with it.
Within the channel are "items", which in this case represent recent forum posts. Title, author, date, and a link to the exact forum post are associated with each item. The goal for this feed is to show what's new on the Forum, so we include items for the fifteen most recently created or updated topics, Forum-wide (it's an arbitrary number; could be anything). We also sort the items from newest to oldest.
We could write the RSS file (again, the "feed") by hand and post it to the Web, but our forum software does a better job of publishing it automatically, in real time. Whenever you look at the RSS feed, it will always have the fifteen most recent posts.
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