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Sakai Help Document
News
Includes
Description
Example of use
How to set up news
Sample RSS news feed
Description
RSS is a data
format that is used to syndicate news on the web. It allows users to view continuously updated content from a
news site in another website.
Sites that distribute news in RSS
format are called "news feeds." The
CTools News tool is an RSS "news aggregator" (or "news reader") that
reads and displays content from RSS
news feeds. In addition to news,
some websites use the RSS format for information that is updated often,
such as blogs (web logs that serve as publicly accessible personal
journals), events listings, or the
revision history of a book. An RSS feed URL can usually be identified
by the .rss or .xml in the URL (e.g.,
http://www.csmonitor.com/rss/scitech.rss or
http://www.umich.edu/news/news.xml).
RSS, which is short for RDF (a
programming language) Site Summary or Rich Site Summary, is an application of XML, a markup
language for creating web documents
Site owners can customize their News
feature by putting in a web
address for any RSS news feed. Many feeds can be found by searching
Google for RSS feeds in your area of interest.
UM Above: University of Michigan
News
is shown by default in the News tool, and can be changed to another
feed using the "Options" button
Example of use
Undergraduate Spanish classes have
customized News to include news feeds from Latin American publications.
How to set up News
Users with the required permissions can
set up
a site to display the news. You must enter a URL to an RSS news feed.
An RSS feed is a specially formatted kind of list of news
articles. Note that when the site is set up or at a later time,
it is possible to add more than one News tool.
1.. Click News in the
menubar.
2.. Click Options.
3.. Type a name that will be displayed
on
the the frame with the news in it.
4.. Type the complete URL for an RSS
news
feed.
5.. Click Save.
Sample RSS News Feed
September 2,
2004
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