RSS feed or something similar?

[Azuin]

Hello all, this is my first post so I'll introduce myself first =)

I'm a huge Vanguard fan, ever since I heard about the game three months ago. I originally played EverQuest for four years, but now I sit and wait for the game to surpass all other games... I've also been paying rapt attention to the Silky Venom news articles, which I find very interesting. Keep up the good work ;)

All this flows fluidly (Who woulda guessed. Usually things flow solidly) into the purpose of this post, which is to find out if Silky Venom has an RSS feed or something similar. I have my own guild site, which you can find ---Here--- (http://www.aftermathguild.org/mythrus). I haven't started recruiting at all, except for my current gaming friends, but I hope to make it into a fun guild when Vanguard comes out. Currently I only have a home page and some forums, so don't be surprised if you visit a blank page when you click on a link...

As you can see if you visit my site, I have something which allows me to show the newest posts on the forum on the home page itself. There is a good chance that I will make the page a kind of blog for Vanguard related articles, and was wondering if Silky Venom supports that kind of thing.

Either Silky Venom would have to have an XML file in RSS format, or I would have to come up with some code that would automatically take the latest news from the Silky Venom home page. I noticed that you guys take the latest information from the forums with your Dev Tracker, so perhaps the web master knows a little bit about this.

Here's a link for you if you are curious what RSS is: Clicky me! (http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html).

Thanks for listening! If anyone knows *anything*, let me know and I'd appreciate it.

- Azuin

EDIT:
I tried to decipher the source code for the Dev Tracker, and I came up with the following line of code:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Vanguard Silky Venom - Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Fansite RSS Feed" href="/forums/external.php?type=RSS&amp;forumids=6,25,27" />

Now, can anyone tell me what it means? hehehe

[Elrar (of Silky Venom)]

we do have one, I'm just not the man with that info, you'll have to talk to Nolaquen. I'd recommend PMing him, or waiting for his response here.

[Nólaquen]

I tried to decipher the source code for the Dev Tracker, and I came up with the following line of code:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Vanguard Silky Venom - Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Fansite RSS Feed" href="/forums/external.php?type=RSS&amp;forumids=6,25,27" />
That piece of code is more for the little "Live Bookmark" feature in Firefox that allows you to have our news feed as a bookmark.

We're probably going to be changing the feed URL a bit, but for now, here it is:

http://www.silkyvenom.com/forums/external.php?type=RSS&amp;forumids=6,25,27

It only contains the news items, currently, but when we change the URL, it may also have the possibility of containing dev tracker items and other things. So keep in touch.

[Azuin]

Thanks a lot for the replies! I'm relatively new to web design, so I still have some research to do before I can integrate the feed into my home page. However, I'm moving along at a rapid pace (thanks about.com for having a lot of tutorials on the different coding languages, all of which I am investigating), and should have it up within a week.

Will come back later as soon as I've finished so that I can show off my work to the SV forums ;)

[Pyxia]

I'm a huge Vanguard fan, ever since I heard about the game three months ago. I originally played EverQuest for four years, but now I sit and wait for the game to surpass all other games...

I feel the same way. I really like the look of Vanguard and from the information released, it looks very exciting.

Please keep updating information on your guild as well. It looks interesting!

[Azuin]

Argh.. looks like I was one away from being the 500th subscriber. Ah well, congrats Pyxia ;)

After doing some research it looks like I need the following tools:
(1) a program that retrieves the RSS file periodically
(2) a program that parses the RSS file
(3) a way to put it on my website

From your experience with parsing the Vanguardsoh.com forums, do you have any ideas for those three points? If I'm asking too much just tell me to RDFM (read da <censored!> manual) or do more research, I'll accept both answers humbly ;)

Edit: I found a great PHP based parser that accomplishes those tasks. Here's the link in case anyone is curious.
http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/faq.php

[Azuin]

BLOGS ARE DONE!

Check out http://www.aftermathguild.org/mythrus

I now have an automatic news system which displays posts from my Public News forum, and also a summary of the latest Silky Venom posts. The RSS feed is cached every 2 hours so that I don't take up all of your bandwidth.

I've learned a lot of PHP coding in a little time, so I was able to really customize how the RSS feeds were displayed. For instance, I split the <description>Forum Name: bleh Poster: Nobody</description> part of the RSS feed into an array, so that I could display the Forum Name and Poster separately.

Tell me what you guys think ;)