Personal RSS File Maker (RSS 2.0) 

This software was first distributed from the Possibilities Ezine article, "Personal RSS File Maker" linked from   
  http://willmaster.com/possibilities/archives/   
   
Tech support is available at http://willmaster.com/support/



Installation and Use instructions:


The Software:

View the RSSgen.cgi program code only in an ASCII/plain text word processor like NotePad or BBEdit. 

Verify the first line of the program points to the location of perl on your server.

Upload the file RSSgen.cgi with an FTP program as ASCII/plain text.

Give RSSgen.cgi 755 permissions.



The Template:

Upload the RSS template file, "RSStemplate.txt", into the same directory the RSSgen.cgi program file is at.

(You may rename the template file or even the program file, if you wish.)




The Form: 

Do not upload the RSSform.html form web page to your server. Instead, leave it on your hard drive somewhere, maybe on your desktop. 

When you're ready to use it, double-click the file or drag it into an open browser window. 

(If you _must_ have the form web page on your server, use a password-protected directory.)


When you use the form, there are several considerations. 

What's not mentioned below I expect to be intuitive. But if you need help understanding a form field, tech support is available at http://willmaster.com/support/


1. The form tag's action="_________" attribute needs to be the complete "http://" URL to the "RSSgen.cgi" program.

2. Many of the form fields can have values hard coded into them so they don't have to be typed every time the form is used. Some already contain values; change or remove them as appropriate.

3. The location of the template file is the template file name that has been uploaded into the same directory where the "RSSgen.cgi" program will be running.

4. The location of the RSS file is the file name for the RSS file (with an .xml extension), including directory location, if appropriate.

If no directory location is specified, the document root is assumed. ("Document root" being the directory where the main/index page is located for your domain, the page that loads if only the domain name is typed into the browser's address bar.)

If a directory is specified, make it relative to the document root directory.

Wherever the RSS file is to be written to, the directory permissions must allow it. Because different servers are configured differently, no exact answer can be provided here. But 755 permissions may work. If 755 does not, 766 or 777 might.

5. The "Channel Information" section applies to the channel rather than the content itself, similar to how the home page might apply rather than individual pages of a web site.

6. The "Channel Image Information" section of the form is optional. If no image SRC URL is provided, the image section will be omitted from the generated RSS file.

7. The publication date in the "Content Information" section needs to be specified in day month year format with a space or any non-alphanumeric character between them. Here are some examples of valid formats:

 02 June 2009
 02-June-09
 2/Jun/9
 02 6 2009
 02.06.09
 2 6 9


Tech support is available at http://willmaster.com/support/

