Hi!
This is the documentation for NewsFeed, a RSS newsfeed grabber (Update: Now with increased compatibility and cache!).
This ASP application will grab RSS and XML feeds and will display them on your website. RSS is a great way of providing up to date data on your site, including News, Entertainment or Blogs. NewsFeed will display any RSS/XML feed that complies with W3C Regulations (www.w3c.org).

To set up NewsFeed you require an ASP enabled server. (This will work under IIS 5 and IIS 6, however I have not tested it on ASP via Apache). Unzip all the files to a directory that is accessable via your web server, and navigate to admin.asp.
If you intend to use the inbuilt admin page (admin.asp), it is imperitive that you grant the database (NewsBase.asp) read/write permission. (The majority of errors occur because of this).

Enter "Administrator" and "Password" (sans quotes) as your username and password to enter the admin page. (It is strongly reccomended that you change the password as soon as possible). The administrator interface allows you to Add/Edit/Delete RSS Feeds, and also allows you to view a feed as it would appear. The interface is (hopefully) intiutive.

The file default.asp is where the rss newsfeeds are displayed. The list of different RSS feeds appears on the left, and when a feed is selected, it is displayed on the right. default.asp is intentionally made bland so that you can add any template you like to the page with minimum fuss. To view a RSS Feed that is not on your list you can do so by entering:
default.asp?rssurl=YourURLHere

Newsfeed now allows you to set a cache interval for each feed (via the Admin page). Newsfeed will only download an rss file from the web if the copy stored in the database is older than the cache interval. This will reduce network congestion, and allows cached pages to be loaded faster.

To change the font/colour of the list of news feeds:
The list of news feeds is displayed in "default.asp" in the line:
<a href="default.asp?rssurl=<%=rsnews("feed")%>"><%=rsnews("rss")%></a>

To change the font or colour of the news feeds enter the appropriate HTML tags before and after <%=rsnews("rss")%>.(I.e.:
<a href="default.asp?rssurl=<%=rsnews("feed")%>"> <b> <%=rsnews("rss")%> </b> </a>

To change the font/colour of the RSS feed:
The properties of the actual RSS feed text are in an external XML Stylesheet (news.xsl). The lines to change to change the properties of the table, title and text are respectivly:

<table border="0" width="100%" bgcolor="#666666" align="center">
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#333333" size="3"><xsl:value-of select="*[local-name()='title']"/></font>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#666666" size="2"><xsl:value-of select="*[local-name()='description']" disable-output-escaping="yes"/></font>

I hope this helps.
For a working demonstration, see
http://news.anticlockwize.net

If you have any queries, feel free to email me at:
dot.dot<at>iinet.net.au

Jaidev V.