Jan Karel recently added RSS to his excellent Excel site, ADS. I’ve subscribed via Bloglines. Clearly RSS is a terrific technology for websites that are updated frequently, like Excel Overdose Daily Dose of Excel. But it may be even more useful for static websites that are updated infrequently. ADS is not a very good example of that because Jan Karel is updating like a bat out of hell, but there are plenty of Excel sites out there that only add pages once per month or once per year. I think RSS would be invaluable on those kinds of sites.
Take The Spreadsheet Page as an example. It has outstanding content and I certainly would want to know if there was new or updated content on the site. Since it already has everything you’d want to know about Excel, it is understandably updated infrequently. I could check the first page every day or every week and any new new content would likely be listed there. Or I could open Bloglines, as I do everyday anyway, and in the course of reading all my favorite Excel blogs, I could scan the list of static sites for new content. If there’s only one new page a year, it costs me nothing extra to check it every time I use my RSS reader.
Jan Karel pointed to Making an RSS Feed as a nice tutorial. If you have an Excel site, static or dynamic, I encourage you to have an RSS feed. Right now I’m subscribed to JKP-ADS, Methods in Excel, JMT Forum, and several KB alerts sites, all of which I would consider static.
I’m not an expert on RSS, I just like to use it. There may be some downside to having of which I’m not aware. Maybe every time I open Bloglines, it loads your xml page and costs you bandwidth. I simply don’t know, but if anyone knows the downside to it, be sure to leave a comment here.
Wow, you’re putting me in a tight spot now Dick!
I’m no Batman , but as I read this, I feel I’m obliged to keep my target of one new page a week.
Which is a good thing. I guess.
I’ve already written most of chapter three of my series of articles about: Creating an addin from an Excel macro, so stay tuned, it will be posted soon.
Hmm, seems the link doesn’t work, how do I post a proper link in a reply?
re: Batman – nice try, but we all know you’re a superhero :)
re: link – if you don’t include http, it thinks it’s relative. I fixed it up for you.
Thanks Dick.
Good point Dick.
I was thinking the same thing, but I dont want to get pinged with a bill for the bandwidth. My site costs nothing at the moment.
I’ll likely look at blogger or something this weekend, maybe for doing as little as announcing site updates.
Rob
[…] it was after you stopped by. And many thanks for the nice mention on your blog. Finally, DDOE reported that the Excel site “JKP Applica […]
Hi Dick
RSS is a great way to read websites
You can user browser based readers or standalone readers or readers that integrate into your email application.
I personally use saucereader after trialling more than 10.
i have written some information that will assist ypour readers to learn
what RSS is (it stands for really simple syndication) and how to choose an RSS Reader.
RSS will cost you bandwith, though generally less than surfing to the page directly, as usually ads and other extraneous content isnt downloaded. The xml file is generally smaller than the html file.
the main benefit is exactly as you pointed out – you dont have to go and check the page manually – the updates can come to you directly and you can read them whenever you want.