RSS Feeds

[HorseOptions]

Doing a search for RSS feeds on here I found the following in the "documentation knowledgebase" -

RSS Feeds
68 Classifieds comes with a file named external.php that will create an RSS feed of your listings. The external file also allows different parameters to be passed to it, which allows you to customize which listings are included in the feed.

I my question is if I am wanting to submit my RSS feed to other websites do I need to create one manually or has 68Classifieds already created one in the background? And if one is already created, how do I create a button for it for people to subscribe to? Or do I NOT want to do that? And do I want / need to manually submit the feed to other websites? Is there a favorite place to go to to do so?

Please advise.

Thanks.

Rob Shurtleff
HorseOptions.com

PS. What do you think of the website?

[Mike-N-Tosh]

Just read in the documentation for the use of the external.php file.

You can put a link to it wherever you would like to. Link to it like so:

<a href="yoursiteurl/external.php">RSS Feed</a>

Documentation excerpt:
For example if you want to show new listings that are priced between 1500 and 2500 you would use this URL: http://www.yoursite.com/external.php?type=new&minprice=1500&maxprice=2500

So in this example, your link would then be:

<a href="http://www.yoursite.com/external.php?type=new&minprice=1500&maxprice=2500">RSS Feed</a>

-Mike

[HorseOptions]

It's that simple? Just copy/pste the code anywhere we want to? Cool. Thanks.
Rob

[Mike-N-Tosh]

Yep, it's that simple.

I have a mini tutorial on my blog if you need more info on the use of it.
Using the RSS Feed

-Mike

[ombre]

I love this file . In addition with the SEO module you can make things like :

www.mydomain.com/rss/newads
www.mydomain.com/rss/featuredads
www.mydomain.com/rss/bmw
www.mydomain.com/rss/porshe

Here is my mod for the .htaccess file

# rss
RewriteRule ^rss/newads$ /external.php?type=new&limit=20 [NC]
RewriteRule ^rss/featuredads$ /external.php?type=featured&limit=20 [NC]
RewriteRule ^rss/([0-9a-zA-Z_-]+)$ /external.php?limit=20&cat=$1 [NC]

[seymourjames]

You should also consider putting title tags onto the links generated by RSS feeds and make sure they reference the same urls (i.e if you are using html urls for your adverts then the rss feed should reference the same or you generate duplicate pages). This former is not so easy to do but possible. You need to test which type of feed you have within the RSS feed to set the RSS title and description.