Member Avatar for EP_95_Z28

Hello everyone, I'm working on a website for a friend's business. He isn't exactly IT material, which is why everything I've done so far has been linked in from other content management sites. (Photobucket for the galleries, Proboards for the message forum)

Basically, I've searched everywhere. I'm looking for a solution so that he can have a newsfeed without having to do hardcoding.

  • 3 Contributors
  • 4 Replies
  • 119 Views
  • 3 Weeks Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by Sogo7

Dani AI

Generated

Two practical, low-friction ways to give a non-technical site owner a maintainable external newsfeed (without hardcoding):

As asked, and building on points from and , there are two approaches that work well long-term. One is a hosted, embeddable widget/service: create the feed or post items in the provider dashboard, copy the embed snippet (script or iframe) and paste into the site. Benefits: zero server work for the owner, simple UI to add items. Caveats: some services add branding or fees, and some CMSs strip script tags — use an iframe embed if scripts are stripped or mixed-content blocks occur.

The other is a tiny “spreadsheet CMS” using Google Sheets + Apps Script: the owner fills a Google Form or the sheet directly; a small Apps Script publishes an RSS/JSON endpoint the site can embed or fetch. Steps: create a sheet with columns (title, link, date, summary), write a brief doGet that reads rows and returns RSS/XML, deploy the script as a web app (public), then embed the web-app URL or pull it server-side. Sample Apps Script (replace SPREADSHEET_ID and sheet name):

function doGet() {
  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.openById('SPREADSHEET_ID');
  var sheet = ss.getSheetByName('Feed');
  var data = sheet.getDataRange().getValues();
  var items = [];
  for (var i = 1; i < data.length; i++) {
    var r = data[i];
    if (!r[0]) continue;
    items.push('<item><title>' + escapeXml(r[0]) + '</title><link>' + escapeXml(r[1]||'') + '</link><pubDate>' + escapeXml(r[2]||'') + '</pubDate><description>' + escapeXml(r[3]||'') + '</description></item>');
  }
  var rss = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0"><channel><title>Site News</title>' + items.join('') + '</channel></rss>';
  return ContentService.createTextOutput(rss).setMimeType(ContentService.MimeType.XML);
}

function escapeXml(s){ return s? String(s).replace(/&/g,'&amp;').replace(/</g,'&lt;').replace(/>/g,'&gt;').replace(/"/g,'&quot;') : ''; }

Google’s Apps Script web-app guide explains deployment details: Apps Script — Web apps. After publishing, validate the feed with this tool: W3C Feed Validation Service.

Quick troubleshooting: if the site strips scripts use an iframe; if updates don’t appear check caching and deploy versioning on Apps Script; prefer a manual input or a form instead of brittle HTML scraping for long-term reliability.

Recommended Answers

All 4 Replies

Member Avatar for EP_95_Z28

no one?

Member Avatar for almostbob

I'm using feedreader its going to be either 1 or 2 on the google search, all you need then is the address of the rss feed, which you can get from the newssite

the prior post wasnt just a smartalec, I think the animated thing is cool

Edited by almostbob because: n/a
Member Avatar for Sogo7

You can create and RSS feed for your site using Yahoo Pipes, this can scrape content from the sites own pages to make the feed.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.