Getting Your Content in the Penn State Student Portal Presented By James Leous, Program Manager James Vuccolo, Lead Research Programmer

Agenda Introduction Creating RSS Content Publishing RSS Content Best Practices Wrap Up

Introduction What is RSS? What does RSS look like? RSS Parser

What is RSS? Rich Site Summary or RSS is an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) based format developed by Netscape for channels that are used in their portal (NetCenter) RSS defines an XML grammar (a set of HTML-like tags) for sharing news Each RSS text file contains both static information about your site, plus dynamic information about your news stories, all surrounded by matching start and end tags

What does RSS Look Like? Career Services Penn State Career Services en-us Penn State Career Services Penn State Career Services Fall Career Days

RSS Parser The parser performs the following: –Syntax checks an RSS file to make sure it conforms to the DTD –Performs feature extraction –Generates HTML using the extracted features Developed using Lex, Yacc and C

Creating RSS Content Do-it-yourself method RSS Generator

Do it yourself method Using the specifications set forth in the DTD and a simple text editor, you can publish your own RSS See for a list of free and commercial editors

RSS Generator What is it? What types of channels can I create? How do I get access to it? How do I use it?

What is it? A tool developed in Perl that aids you in the development of RSS channels The generator stores group and channel information in a DB2 database After you create your RSS channel, the generator invokes the RSS parser to convert the channel to HTML

What types of channels can I create? Simple –These are channels that contain your most up-to-date content Role Based –These type of channels are typically in a group –Roles defined in LDAP determine which of the channels is displayed –They use a consistent naming convention CSUP01-CSUP09

How do I get access to it? Send a to requesting access and include the following information: –Organization name –Reason why you want access –List of users within your organization that you want to give access for creating content

How do I use it? Authentication Group Selection Channel Selection Channel Creation/Update Channel Preview

Open a Web browser to The following dialog will be displayed: Enter your Penn State Access Account userid and password Authentication

Group Selection As a content developer, you will be a member of one or more publishing groups Select from the following dialog box the group for which you wish to create channels:

Channel Selection After you select your group, you will be asked to select either a channel to update or a channel to create Make this selection from the following dialog box:

Channel Creation/Update Required Information Optional Information Channel Items

Required Information When defining an RSS channel, there are certain items that must be specified, these include: –Filename for new channels –Channel title –Channel description –Channel URL –Image URL Link URL Image Title

Required Information cont’d The following dialog box illustrates the required information:

Optional Information Even though the RSS standard deems the optional information as optional, we require that you specify the following: –Copyright organization The RSS parser automatically inserts a copyright statement at the bottom of the channel –Managing Editor Address This a person within your organization that people can contact if they notice problems with your channel It is recommended that you set up an alias or listserv so that more than one person can handle any problems

Optional Information cont’d The following screen illustrates the optional channel information:

Channel Items The RSS standard deems that there can only be a maximum of 15 items in an RSS channel For each item you can specify –Item title This is the title text that is displayed for a channel item –Item Link URL This is link to a URL that provides information about the item –Item Description (optional) This is an optional description associated with the item It is recommended that you keep descriptions to a minimum because they take up precious Portal real estate

Channel Items cont’d The following screen illustrates the channel item entry:

Channel Preview After you complete your channel and click the submit button a preview of it will be displayed

Publishing RSS Content OK, I got my channel so now what? What about creating a tab?

OK, I got my channel so now what? After you create your channel, send to with the following information: –Channel filename –Channel Category(s) –Whether to display the channel in a new window –Whether or not the channel is a role channel

What about creating a tab? If you are going to develop a group of channels for the Portal, you may want to consider placing them on their own tab If you are interested in doing this please send to with your request

Best Practices Content Creation Guidelines Site Organization Guidelines

Content Creation Guidelines Site with evolving content should have some revision or version control mechanism in place Consider taking full advantage of META tags to assist search engines in indexing your content Regular backups are key to making your content always available

Site Organization Guidelines Consistent site navigation –Once you get them there how do you keep them? Organization dynamic content by date –Depending on how rich or dynamic your site is, determines whether this is daily or monthly –For example, The Digital Collegian Portal Partner Icon?

Wrap Up Comments! Questions?