amazonRSSwriter: create Amazon RSS feeds automatically
Saturday, January 14, 2006
This is a new script that I have created just to provide easy Amazon RSS feeds on different subjects. You can try the script here. Simply enter a word or a few words and the script will return an Amazon RSS feeds with books related to the search terms.
The whole script is here:
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The whole script is here:
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<?php
/*
Project: AmazonRSSwriter: Amazon URL RSS writer
File: amazonRSSwriter.php
Author: hombrelobo <minilobo@gmail.com>
Version: 0.50
For the latest version of the writer, questions, help, comments,
etc., please visit:
http://wolfb.com/2006/01/amazonrsswriter-create-amazon-rss.html
http://wolfb.com/
What is AmazonRSSwriter ?
Sometimes is convenient to have RSS feeds of Amazon products, to
keep track of new books in a certain topic. This script uses Amazon
services to create a simple one.
You can see it in action in:
http://wolfb.com/rss/amazonrsswriter.php
Enjoy it !!
******************************************************************************
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY
or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
This work is hereby released into the Public Domain. To view a copy of
the public domain dedication, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/ or send a letter to
Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
******************************************************************************
*/
?>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Amazon RSS writer</title>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="Amazon, RSS, writer">
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Amazon RSS writer, create your own feeds">
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX, FOLLOW">
</head>
<body><br>
<?php
// Sends an email if the form has been submitted
if ($_POST['send'])
{
//Affiliate link code
//http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml3?t=deustocom&dev-t=amznRss&KeywordSearch=rss&mode=books&sort=+daterank&offer=All&type=lite&page=1&f=http://xml.amazon.com/xsl/xml-rss091.xsl
$basic_link= "http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml3?t=deustocom&dev-t=amznRss&KeywordSearch=SEARCHWORD&mode=books&sort=+daterank&offer=All&type=lite&page=1&f=http://xml.amazon.com/xsl/xml-rss091.xsl";
$term=$_POST[texto];
// First we replace all the spaces with %20
$term = preg_replace('/\ \b/i', '%20',$term);
$find = '/\SEARCHWORD\b/i';
$replacement = $term;
// Now we replace the search terms in the feed.
$content = preg_replace($find, $replacement,$basic_link);
// And now we output the feed and the subscription links:
ECHO <<<END
This is the URL of your feed:<br><br>
$content<br><br>
And you can subscribe to it here:<br><br>
<a href="$content" title="Subscribe to my feed"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" alt="" style="border:0"/></a>
<a href="http://add.my.yahoo.com/rss?url=$content" title="RSS books in Amazon"><img src="http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/us/my/addtomyyahoo4.gif" alt="" style="border:0"/></a>
<a href="http://www.newsgator.com/ngs/subscriber/subext.aspx?url=$content" title=""><img src="http://www.newsgator.com/images/ngsub1.gif" alt="Subscribe in NewsGator Online" style="border:0"/></a><br><br>
<a href="http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=$content"><img src="http://buttons.googlesyndication.com/fusion/add.gif" width="104" height="17" style="border:0" alt="Add to Google"/></a><br><br>
<a href="http://client.pluck.com/pluckit/prompt.aspx?GCID=C12286x053&a=$content"><img src="http://www.pluck.com/images/pluck/pluspluck.png"/></a><br><br>
<a href="http://www.bloglines.com/sub/$content" title="" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.bloglines.com/images/sub_modern1.gif" alt="Subscribe in Bloglines" style="border:0"/></a><br><br>
END;
}
else
{
?>
<table>
<td width="60%"align="left" valign="top">
<?php echo "Amazon RSS writer script" ?> <br><br>
<?php echo "Create your own Amazon RSS feeds easily with this script" ?> <br><br>
<?php echo "Type the search terms for the feed:" ?>
<br>
<form method="POST" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] ?>">
<p><?php echo "Term:" ?><br>
<textarea rows="1" name="texto" cols="56"></textarea></p>
<p><input type="submit" name="send" value="send"></p>
</form>
</td>
</table>
<a href="http://wolfb.com">hombrelobo</a>
<?php
} //end else
?>
</body></html>
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How to create and optimice your RSS feeds and other syndication
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Let's start for the beginning: What is RSS ?
The easiest way to create a RSS feed for your site is using a program or script that creates them automatically, like Blogger, or a CMS like Drupal.
But if that is not possible I'd recommend using any if the free PHP RSS writers available. Among them, I like RSSWriter, which allows the creation of RSS 1.0 feeds (only text), or my own script playRSSwrite , which allows for the creation of RSS 2.0 feeds with images incorporated and that can accept data from a database or from static data.
Once we have that first basic RSS file, I'd recommend following these steps to optimise it:
This is it, good luck getting subscribers now.
The easiest way to create a RSS feed for your site is using a program or script that creates them automatically, like Blogger, or a CMS like Drupal.
But if that is not possible I'd recommend using any if the free PHP RSS writers available. Among them, I like RSSWriter, which allows the creation of RSS 1.0 feeds (only text), or my own script playRSSwrite , which allows for the creation of RSS 2.0 feeds with images incorporated and that can accept data from a database or from static data.
Once we have that first basic RSS file, I'd recommend following these steps to optimise it:
- Use Feedburner to transform our feed into another feed, but readable by humans and optimiced. It also allows for statistics on the feed.
- Include the autodiscovery tag in the <head> of your pages. This way, some RSS aggregators will find it automatically. The code is as follows (you have to substitute the feed with yours, of course):
- Use rssfwd to put a code in your page for people to subscribe to your feeds via email. Remember that RSS technology is very recent, and most people still don't know what you are talking about. Email remains the communication method for a lot of people.
- Add chiklets, those little subscription buttons. You can use Feedburner for that or create your own chiklets with Buttom Maker.
This is it, good luck getting subscribers now.
playRSSwriter: a RSS 2.0 feed writer with support for images
Sunday, January 01, 2006
What is playRSSwriter ?
When working on creating a rss feed for our site Playlingerie.com, we realized that all the existing php writers were either for rss 1.0 or for rss 2.0 but without support for embeded images. So I created this code.
You can see it in action in:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/sexy-lingerie
Code:
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When working on creating a rss feed for our site Playlingerie.com, we realized that all the existing php writers were either for rss 1.0 or for rss 2.0 but without support for embeded images. So I created this code.
You can see it in action in:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/sexy-lingerie
Code:
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<?php
/*
Project: playRSSwriter: RSS 2.0 writer with images support
File: playRSSwriter.php
Author: hombrelobo <minilobo@gmail.com>
Version: 0.95
For the latest version of the writer, questions, help, comments,
etc., please visit:
http://wolfb.com/2006/01/playrsswriter-rss-20-feed-writer-with_01.html
What is playRSSwriter ?
When working on creating a rss feed for our site http://playlingerie.com,
we realized that all the existing php writers were either for rss 1.0 or for
rss 2.0 but without support for embeded images. So I created this code.
You can see it in action in:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/sexy-lingerie
Enjoy it !!
******************************************************************************
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY
or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
This work is hereby released into the Public Domain. To view a copy of
the public domain dedication, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/ or send a letter to
Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
******************************************************************************
*/
// First we start defining all the variables that we will insert in the
// xml code.
// Insert here the the title of your feed
$rss_title= "Title of your feed";
// Insert your site, in the format site.com
$rss_site= "site.com" ;
// Insert the description of your website
$rss_description= "Description of your website";
// Applicable language of the feed. For spanish, change to "es"
$rss_language="en";
// Address of the logo file. Only need to put the file name
$rss_logo="http://".$rss_site."logo.jpg";
// the feed's author email
$emailadmin="email@site.com";
// set the file's content type and character set
// this must be called before any output
header("Content-Type: text/xml;charset=iso-8859-1");
$phpversion = phpversion();
//set the beginning of the xml file
ECHO <<<END
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss">
<channel>
<title>$rss_title</title>
<link>http://www.$rss_site</link>
<description>$rss_description</description>
<language>$rss_language-$rss_language</language>
<docs>http://backend.userland.com/rss</docs>
<generator>PHP/$phpversion</generator>
<image>
<url>$rss_logo</url>
<title>$rss_site</title>
<link>http://$rss_site/</link>
</image>
END;
// Now the variables about the individual items to appear in the feed. Here we
// take them from a MySQL database, but can also come from a included file
// Define database
$server = "localhost"; // Server
$rss_database = "name_of_the_database" ; // Database name
$db_user ="user" ; // Database user
$db_pass = "password" ; // Database password
// Open the database
$db = mysql_connect($server,$db_user,$db_pass);
mysql_select_db($rss_database,$db);
// Calculate the number of records in the table "Products"
$num_rows = mysql_num_rows(mysql_query("select * from Products"));
// Select all the records from the table "Products". You can modify the
// query to only select some records, change the order, etc.
$query = "select * from Products" ;
$result = mysql_query($query) or die("Query failed") ;
//Make a loop to create the feed for all the items selected
while ($results = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
// Pass the database field Photo_name to the variable $photo_name
// The Photo_name has to include the relative path,
// for instance: $photo_name="images/photo1.jpg";
$photo_name = $results['Photo_name'] ;
// Pass the record URL_product to the variable $url_product. It also
// has to include the relative path, like in: "path/product1.htm"
$url_product = $results['URL_product'] ;
// Pass the record Description to the variable $description
$description = $results['Description'] ;
// Clean the description
$description = str_replace ("&","",htmlspecialchars(stripslashes($description)));
// Pass tags to describe the product
$rss_tags = $results['Product_tags'] ;
// If you don't have tags for the product, simply change to a fixed value,
// for instance put:
// $rss_tags="tag1 tag2";
// Make a short description for titles of only 75 characters
$short_description = substr($description,0,75) . "...";
$counter ++ ;
// Calculate the size of the image and resize it to a thumbnail
$photo_size= getimagesize($photo_name) ;
$photo_width = $photo_size[0] ;
$photo_height = $photo_size[1] ;
unset($height_limit,$width_limit) ;
if ($photo_height > $photo_width )
$photo_height= "90" ;
else
$photo_width = "80" ;
// Create the html for the description item. No need to modify this unless
// you want to change the look
$content="<p><a href=\"http://$rss_site/$url_product\">$description</a></p>
<p><a href=\"http://$rss_site/$url_product\" title=\"$description\"><img src=\"$photo_name\" width=\"$photo_width\" height=\"$photo_height\" alt=\"$short_description\" style=\"border: 1px solid #000000;\" /></a></p>
<p>$rss_site</p>" ;
// Escape all the descriptions
$content = preg_replace(array('/</', '/>/', '/"/'), array('<', '>', '"'), $content);
// display an item
ECHO <<<END
<item>
<title>$short_description</title>
<link>
http://$rss_site/$url_product
</link>
<description>
$content
</description>
<author>$emailadmin</author>
<media:content url="$photo_name" type="image/jpeg" height="$photo_height" width="$photo_width"/>
<media:title>$description</media:title>
<media:text type="html">
<p><a href="http://$rss_site/$url_product">$description</a></p>
<p><a href="http://$rss_site/$url_product" title="$short_description"><img src="$photo_name" width="$photo_width" height="$photo_height" alt="$short_description" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" /></a></p>
<p>$rss_site</p>
</media:text>
<media:thumbnail url="$photo_name" height="$photo_height" width="$photo_width"/>
<media:category scheme="urn:$rss_site:tags">
$rss_tags
</media:category>
</item>
END;
}
// Close the database
mysql_close();
// And end the xml file
ECHO <<<END
</channel>
</rss>
END;
// Done !! Use http://feedvalidator.org to verify that it's correct.
?>
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