RSS Feeds?

Hello

I pretty new to owning internet sites etc, what exactly is an RSS feed? someone told me it can bring content into the site.

if this is true is there any way i can set things like this up to automatically post announcments and articles etc?

thanks

Sure is. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. vB has a build in rss feature that you can use to bring content into your site til you get members posting. OR if there is specific content that you want brought in, even if your site is busy. Like here at FAQ, we have RSS set up to bring in any new announcements from vBulletin.com.

Go to the site that you want the info collected from and get the url to their rss feed, then go into your acp, scroll down to RSS Feeds, click add new feed, and set it up. The fields are pretty self-explanatory, but if you need further assistance, just holler.

Take a look at this page (http://www.vbulletin-faq.com/forum/external.php?forumids=4) and you will see the RSS output from one one of the forums here on vB-FAQ.

And yes, you can use RSS feeds to add content to your forum. On one of my sites, I pull RSS feeds from The Scotsman into a Headlines module of my vBa CMPS page. On another site, I post RSS feeds from the News Headlines of the Glasgow Herald into a news forum and the Political Headlines into a politics forum. Here (http://www.clannalba.com/forums/latest_salmond_attacks_westminster_minister-t563/index.html) is an example of a thread started via an RSS feed.

If you look at the my postbit, you will see a block called Latest RSS Feed. That is a link to a post on one of my other sites, supplied via RSS.

It can be a handy tool to use, from several points of view.

So - just say with a forum site (like this) that post vBulletin mods, if i want to make those mods post onto my site, i simply just.. go to the forumdisplay and enter the url?

so like Forum>vBulletin>Mods i give the 'Mods' URL and enter it into the rss feed then it should take the content from there and auto post it?

It's not going to post the actual mod onto your site, no. It will post a snippet of a new thread, with a link back to the actual thread on this site.

Click on this link (http://www.clannalba.com/forums/salmond_reveals_his_plans-t630/index.html) and you will land on a thread started via an RSS feed. Once there, you will have to click on the More link to read the full article. This will give you an idea of how the feeds work. That particular forum section deals with Scottish politics, so the feed supplying it is from the politics headlines of the Glasgow Herald. RSS feeds allow you to pull select content into your forum, with an eye to developing discussions around that content.

thats fine but how what URL exactly do i put in from a forum? just say i want vBulletin.com announcments. what URL would i put in or would there be a RSS feed from vBulletin already given?

If you wanted to display the Announcements from vB.com, then you would use this URL - http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/external.php?type=RSS2&forumids=1


If you wanted to snag a particular forum feed from here at vB-FAQ, you can locate those URL's here - http://www.vbulletin-faq.com/forum/cv_rss_feeds.php