RSS Generator

Using RSSGenerator, you can define:

• Title or name that identifies the RSS channel
• Description of the RSS channel
• Interval (in seconds) in which the generated RSS file's content is considered updated. When a RSS file is requested, if it was generated in a period shorter than the one specified, the stored file is returned, otherwise, a fresh RSS channel is generated.
• RSS Start Page, the page where the RSS channel begins when it is generated.RSSGenerator uses the start page as a departing point to explore the website and generate an RSS channel based on the links that can be reached from that page (The start page's URL must be an absolute one, htp://...)
• Levels: must be an integer. Defines the amount of levels that RSSGenerator will explore. If that field's value is 1, then it will only explore the links on the page declared as Start Page.
• Penalized URLs, are URLs that will not be considered while exploring the website, during the process of RSS channel generation. If you wish to maintain some parts of your website private, all you need to do is list the relevant URLs in this section, and in that case they will not be explored even if they are linked to from the explored pages. (Penalized URLs must be absolute as well, http://...)

• Adobe Dreamweaver MX or later (compatible with: DW6/MX, DW7/MX 2004, DW 8, Dreamweaver CS3, CS4, CS5 and CS6).
• PHP 5 enabled in the webserver

• Double click the MXP file to install it.
• Access the RSS Generator from the "Commands Menu >> Insert RSS Generator"

RSSGenerator explores the website, beginning from the webpage chosen as "start page", to as many depth levels as you specify.

For each webpage reached by the RSSGenerator, its title is extracted and used as title of the RSS Item. The date of last page modification is then extracted and used as Item date. The description of the RSS Item is generated depending on the webpage structure; if it has a meta tag name ="description", its content will be used as item description; if the page does not have such tag, the content of the first paragraph tag ("<p>") will be used as item description.

For each of the webpages reached by the RSSGenerator, <a> tags, containing a href to another webpage, are extracted as paths to continue the website's exploration. If the values ofhref attributes are calls to a javascript function, or begin with mailto: for email sending, or are links to webpages under a domain different from the start page, then all these are not taken into account by RSSGenerator.) Each of the paths to explore are compared to the Penalized URLs; if any of the paths are on that Penalized URLs list, then they are not taken into account either.

Finally, RSSGenerator creates a rss.xml file that contains all the structure of the RSS Channel (in RSS 2.0 format).

At the moment when a RSS channel is requested from RSSGenerator, if the rss.xml.php has already been created within the interval shorter than the one specified as the update interval, then the stored rss.xml.php is returned without the need to explore the website again.

Notice: The directory "DWB_RSSGenerator" generated by the RSS Generator in your web site, require permission for writing to allow the rss file generation.