Operation Manual

270 Adding Dynamic Content
RSS feeds and podcasts
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds are streams of constantly changing
news and information which are very popular on fast-paced Web sites. The
popularity of RSS feeds is evident if you use Internet-based news services
regularly. You'll see RSS feeds indicated on Web sites by a
symbol—by
clicking the symbol the user may be able to manually or automatically
subscribe to that RSS feed via a RSS Reader.
Podcasts are syndication feeds just like RSS feeds but offer slightly different
options that reflect a podcast's use of digital media such as audio and video
files. Put simply, RSS feeds will publish articles, while podcasts will broadcast
information as episodes.
In WebPlus, you can create your own RSS feeds or podcasts that you can
frequently publish and update. In essence, you become the publisher (rather
than the reader) of one or more information services containing headlines,
Web site summaries or your very own articles. For podcasts, you broadcast
media clips as episodes. Web visitors can subscribe to these feeds via manual
or one-click subscription. For the latter, the visitor simply clicks on a
diagnostic symbol which indicates the type of feed, i.e.
For RSS Feeds.
For podcasts.
One-click subscriptions are set up to subscribe the visitor to a chosen reader,
i.e. Google Reader, My Yahoo!, or Apple iTunes®. For manual subscription
(e.g., to Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox) your published RSS feed or
podcast offers a clickable subscription button, i.e.
Using podcasts as an example, the Web visitor sees a podcast in their chosen
reader once subscribed. The examples below show a constantly updating
fictitious school's podcast with clickable links to media (both audio and
video).