Troop 53 News

About Our RSS News Feed

Perhaps you noticed the orange and grey "XML RSS FEED" graphic on this page and our Troop 53 News page. If you are using Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and maybe some other browsers, you will also see this icon ==> in the address bar. Internet Explorer 7+ displays this icon as well except it's on the "command bar". These mean that a RSS news feed is available. Now you can get the latest Troop 53 news without having to manually check the News page. With a news reader you can subscribe to the news feed and either automatically or manually update the feed from this site. Each news item in the feed has a title, body, and link to the page that has the information indicated. Readers treat and display these differently, but the information is always there.

What you need

To subscribe to our news feed you will need:

• News reader software — Internet Explorer (IE) 7+, Mozilla Firefox 1.0+, and Opera 9.0+ all support RSS natively. But if you want to use a separate news reader, a list of where to get readers is at the end of this page. Many are free. Download a few and find one you like.
• The address of our raw news feed file (if subscribing with a separate, non-browser, reader):
  http://troop53.net/news/troop53_news.rss

How to subscribe

• If you are using Internet Explorer 7.x or newer, click the feeds icon on the command bar. The Troop 53 News feed will display in the browser. At the top of the page, click on the "Subscribe to this feed" link. In the dialogue box that opens, click on the "Subscribe" button.
• If you are using Mozilla Firefox click the RSS icon described above. The news feed will open. At the top of the page click on the "Subscribe Now" button. Put the "Live Bookmark" where you want it by clicking on the smaller arrow on the right side of the dialogue box, clicking on a folder and then clicking "OK".
• In Opera, click on the icon and a dialogue box will appear saying "New Subscription". Click on the "Yes" button and the feed will be added to the list under "Feeds" in the menu bar.
• If you are manually subscribing using a news reader you will have to add a new feed. Each reader is slightly different in how they do this. You will have to enter the address of our feed (above) when prompted.

Upon subscribing, the news items from our site's feed file will be retrieved and displayed in your web browser or news reader.

The RSS feed for this site more or less mirrors the information on the main news page and is updated at the same time.

Reading the news

With a news reader you should be able to just click on an item to have it display. In Firefox it's a bit different. Click on Bookmarks in the menu bar, navigate to the "Troop 53 News" folder and click on a news item to go to the page referenced in the news item. It's a little weird but it works. In Opera, click on Feeds in the Menu bar, then click on Troop 53 News. Another tab will open with all the news items listed and the latest item's description in the lower pane. A link to the appropriate page on this site will also appear. In IE7, click on the Favorites icon (the star icon on the left of the command bar), then click on "Feeds". A list of the feeds to which you are subscribed will appear. Click on the "Troop 53 News" item and our feed will be loaded in the browser window/tab.

Updating the news

Again, each reader is different. Some will allow you to automatically update your subscription(s)/feed(s) and others are just manual: click on a button or menu item to update. You'll have to figure that out yourself.

Firefox's Help file has nothing about how to update Live Bookmarks but I figured it out. There are 2 ways of doing updates:

1. Auto-update: Looking through our site's access logs it seems that Firefox updates Live Bookmarks once an hour or so. Also, if you close all browser windows then reopen Firefox, it will automatically update.
2. Manual update: Right-click on the "Troop 53 News" Live Bookmark folder and select "Reload Live Bookmark" from the popup context menu that appears. Then come back to the Live Bookmark and the updated items (if there are any) should be there.

I don't know how often Internet Explorer or Opera updates the feed, but in Opera, every time you click on the feed it does retrieve the latest information. In Internet Explorer, right-click the "Troop 53 News" item and click on "Refresh" from the context menu.

RSS readers

• A rated list
• A non-rated alphabetical list — more extensive than the above
• 
• 

And that's about the sum-total of my knowledge in this area! Many other sites have news feeds to which you can subscribe. Some readers come "pre-populated" with a number of subscriptions. I'll leave the fun of exploration to you — Beyond here be dragons!

Webmasters, interested in building your own feed? See RSS 101.