Although there's a lot of hype involving RSS a lot of people still don't seem to understand it, so Webcams.com has created a small introductory text with some samples of what you can do with RSS.
In a nutshell, RSS offers SELF UPDATING WEBSITES
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) allows you to display our freshly updated content on your site dynamically. This means that when an RSS feed that you're using is updated the new, updated information appears on your site automatically. Automation means less work for all of us.
Here is a sample RSS feed:
http://www.webcams.com/affiliate/wca...seller=webcams
So how is the RSS data displayed on your site? With an
RSS Parser. An RSS feed parser is a tool (usually in a scripting language such as PHP) that takes the data from the RSS feed and displays it in an easy to read format on your site by taking pre-defined RSS tags that the parser knows to look for such as <title> and <description> and parses them straight into your site.
What makes the process automated? Every time your page loads the parser loads the RSS feed URL. If a new item exists in the RSS feed, it is automatically placed on your site.
The most common sort of RSS parser are plugins for
Wordpress (blog software) such as ?rss2blog? but custom parsers can be created easily as well (such as the one we provide for our online model and model profile RSS feeds).
RSS Parsers work by looking for tags that appear in a certain feed automatically. Some of the most common tags are item, link, and description. Parsers are designed to know that all the data that appears between an <item> and an </item> tag belongs to a certain entry on the feed, for example. It will then look for the <title></title> tags and know that the data between this is the title of the item, and so on.
Most feeds have standardized tags so that they will work with most parsers. Some feeds have custom tags for data that is specific to a certain site. For example, our online model feeds have tags like <wc:screen_name> and <wc:categories>. For custom feeds, you will need a custom parser to make the data appear intelligibly on your pages.
Webcams.com provides this parser for you so you don?t have to program one. You can use our parser to display data from our online model or model profile feeds on your site in a way that is completely customized by basic embedded PHP template.
Webcams.com offers a variety of RSS feeds to use to keep your site fresh and updated:
- Blog Entry Feeds: These are some of the most popular feeds. Instead of having to update a blog manually, you can load a Webcams.com feed URL created to your specifications from our promo area into your blog software and a new entry will appear automatically every time we add a new blog entry. The blog entry feeds are standardized with some pictures and a detailed ?blog post? that describes the featured Webcams.com model.
- Feed Hosted Gallery Feeds: You can display these feeds on your site instead of having to use gallery software to generate gallery results, or you can use these in a blog as well. These feeds include a preview thumbnail of one of our webcam galleries along with a description in a format of your choosing.
- Online Model Feeds: These feeds display a real time list of Webcams.com online models. You can choose the models you would like to display on your site by parameters such as niche, user rating, model join date, and more. For example, So if you wanted to display Asian girls with a minimum rating of 7 who joined in the past week, you could do this using our Online Model Feeds!
- Model Profile Feeds: If you would like Webcams.com model profile data for a particular model to display on your site in a format that matches the rest of your site all you need is our model profile feeds. These feeds display real time data from the model profile as it is updated. So for example if the model ?why chat with me? field is updated by the model, it will be updated on your site automatically without you having to do anything!
Here are some sample pages using our feeds and parser that give you a better idea of what we mean:
Model Profile: You can display any model's profile values directly on your website so the profile can be developed to look however you want.
Online Models in a Table: Display our online models in an array of your choosing. This sample is of a simple table, similar to most other sites' 'iframes'
Multiple Models in Different Niches on One Page: Display models in various niches all on one page, separated by niche
One Online Model: Basic sample of one large picture for one online model featured on the page. You could insert this into a side navigation bar, for example!
We hope this gives you a good introduction to RSS and how it can assist you in keeping your pages updated dynamically.