1) Location:
Proposed:
While not required, we recommend that each portal newsfeed should
be located in an "XML" (or "xml") folder under the agency's
root folder and should be named "newsfeed.xml" (or .asp or .jsp. As
long as it validates).
Rationale:
The RSS file should be located in the same place on all sites
and should have a common name. This will make maintenance easier in the future.
By naming the file "newsfeed.xml" instead of "rss.xml",
we give the agencies some flexibility to develop other RSS files (perhaps in
RSS 0.91) for other audiences.
The "XML" folder gives each agency a standard location for other
XML files that may be shared between agencies or other entities (like businesses).
2) RSS Fields
<channel> <title>
(This topic still needs discussion.)
The title field in the newsfeed should reflect the name of the
agency. For instance, the Insurance title should be "Missouri Department of
Insurance News" and not "MDI News".
Rationale:
Once a newsfeed is published, it can be read by any news reader. It
is important to give the feed a title that fully describes the file. Acronyms
of agency names may confuse some users.
<item> <link/guid>
The link or guid field should go to the agency's news page
and not necessarily to the agency's home page, unless the agency home page
is the main news page.
Rationale
The idea here is to get users to your news page, not to your
home page. They will be able to get to your home page easily enough from your
news archives.
<item><pubDate>
The date must meet the RSS standard for date formats. All
pubDates must use the following format:
Sun, 01 Jun 2003 13:01:55 GMT
where "Sun" is the three-letter abbreviation for the day of
the week, the date is in "dd mmm yyyy" format, and the time of the posting
is stamped. The "GMT" means "Greenwich Mean Time", although you could use
"CST" or "CDT" for "Central Standard Time" or "Central Daylight Time".
3) Validation
Your newsfeed must validate to RSS 2.0 standards.
An RSS 2.0 validator is available at http://feeds.archive.org/validator
You are also encouraged to view your newsfeed using a newsreader. There
are several free newsreaders available, including:
Rationale
If it doesn't validate, it doesn't get published.
4) Getting your newsfeed on the Missouri portal
Send an e-mail to oawebmaster@oa.mo.gov with
the location of the newsfeed in your webspace.
5) Other newsfeeds
It is possible to have other newsfeeds from your news page
as well as a newsfeed just for the state portal. For example, Conservation
could have a special newsfeed for hunters or landowners. These newsfeeds would
have a different name than the feed for the state portal, and may use a different
format, such as RSS 0.91 or RSS 1.0. RSS 0.91 is the most basic and the one
most commonly used.
These newsfeeds would NOT be picked up by the state portal.
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