Freeway 5.1 features an RSS Feed Action that can be used to generate valid RSS 2.0 feeds. Also included is a helper Action that allows you to create a link in the browser address bar to one of your feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) helps keep your site visitors up to date with your news and other site content using a news reader. These Actions help you build and maintain an RSS feed for your site without the need to use a separate application or to hand code the necessary XML from scratch.
RSS Feed Action
To create an RSS Feed in Freeway:
- Select New Pages... from the Page menu.
- Give your page a meaningful name such as "Latest News Feed" and click OK.
- Give the page a file name such as "feed.xml" (don't use an html or php extension) in the Page General panel of the Inspector palette.
- Open the Document Setup dialog from the File menu and click on the Upload tab. Enter your web address in the Web Address field (this is required by the Action) and click OK.
- Go to the Page menu, open the Page Actions submenu, and select RSS Feed.
- Select Actions from the Window menu to open the Actions palette.
- You will see two areas in the Actions palette, one labelled Feed and another labelled Items.
- In the Feed area you can set details that are specific to your feed. Enter a title for your feed (such as "Latest News") in the Title field, then enter a description in the Description field. If the main language of the feed is not English, either select the correct language from the Language popup menu or enter the two digit code for your language.
- The Items section will contain all of your feed items. Enter the title for your first feed item in the first Title field, along with a brief description or summary in the Description field. Then choose or enter a link to the full article from the Link popup, and click the Get Date button to get the current date. The date is used as a time stamp for the item that will always remain the same (unless you change it). It's important for this to be correct as it is used to order and sort the items in the live feed.
- If you want to add or remove feed entries use the + and - buttons alongside the last item. The Total Number field allows you to manually type in the number of items you want to be displayed, the maximum is 50.
- When you are ready to view your feed, open the File menu and choose Safari from the Preview in Browser submenu (OS 10.5) or choose Upload from the File menu and enter your server details in the Upload dialog and navigate to the feed in a browser.
Note:
Safari on Mac OS X 10.4 does not support viewing local RSS feeds. If you attempt to do so you will get see an error page. Firefox 2 and 3 on 10.4 and 10.5 will display a local feed as a plain XML file. To see the feed as it will be seen online you will need to upload it.
Feeds will not work on IE6.
All HTML, graphic or other Action items on the feed page will be removed, if you have any Actions on your page errors will be produced.
RSS Page Link
This Action will create a link from a standard page in Freeway to any RSS Feed (Freeway generated or not). The RSS icon will appear in compatible browsers' address bars. To create the link:
- Choose the page you want to link to an RSS feed in the Site Panel.
- In the Page menu open the Page Actions submenu and select RSS Page Link.
- Select Actions from the Window menu to open the Actions palette.
- Use the RSS Feed popup menu in the Actions palette to choose the RSS feed you want to link to.
- Preview the page in a browser and you will see the RSS icon in the browser bar.
Standard HTML or graphic links can be made to feeds as normal using the Edit Hyperlink dialog.
