I was playing with the Ben Brown creation called RSS Monkey. It’s a versatile perl script that formats RSS feeds from syndicated websites. PHP-Nuke, B2, Radio, powered sites all have RSS syndication built in. It can be used with SSI’s, PHP, ASP, or even from the command line if you’re so inclined. There are literally thousands of RSS feeds out there, but there hasn’t really been a fool proof way to add support for a standard users site without building your own support for them, RSS Monkey changes that. Just keep your eye out for links that say syndicated or the standard orange gif that says xml on it. (rss files are stored as xml files)
In a few minutes time I was able to make an RSS feed page that accepts URLs of feeds and displays them, but I gave it a google theme. (all I did was copy google’s html). Enter a RSS URL into the search area and hit google search. The result displayed will be the contents of the syndication. Simple.
I hadn’t actually planned this, but it could be a good way to read weblogs or news sites at work, but make it look like your just searching google. I just threw it together so don’t go clicking all over the page because most of it is just faux-google.
Here are a few quick examples that use my theme with rss monkey:
