Fedafi - Wordpress Plugin for RSS

I stumbled across Horse Power, the blog of marketing agency Twelve Horses today and a couple of posts are really worth taking a look at. First Why do search engines love blogs makes the point about RSS:

RSS - Blogs have RSS feeds. Search engines are paying more attention to RSS feeds as they provide a clear and concise version of the content without any old school SEO tricks. An RSS feed contains the post’s date, title, full or abbreviated text, tags, enclosures and other relevant information. They can’t be faked with a ton of keywords in the sites presentation or meta data.

Of course this applies to all RSS feeds, not just those attached to blogs.

The second article links through to a step by step of a campaign they did that includes social media, worth a look at here if for nothing more than watching the Diggnation podcast.

Frank Gruber at Somewhat Frank points to Zach Braff’s (Scrubs) blog and to Zach’s RSS blimp. Zach seems to be embracing social media and also has his own MySpace page. Zach’s new movie The Last Kiss has a really neat podcast featuring ‘a day in the life’ worth a watch.

If you hit the site you may find it difficult to find the podcast feed, I did, in fact I couldn’t find it, maybe I’m getting old and stupid and need to stop using a magnifying glass to read the screen and get some real glasses, anyhoo grab the feed from this URL

http://www.lastkissmovie.com/podcast/podcast_last_kiss.xml

It includes Rachel Bilson (The OC) washing her dog “Thurman Murmen” which just has to mean something to someone.

The UK lads mags have always seemed to find ways to use the web to help them and Amanda Lorenzani at WebTwitcher points us to FHM’s new feed:

After the popularity of the Maxim RSS feeds that you seemed to enjoy adding to your MIX page immensely, (judging by the numbers), WebTwitcher has been waiting with baited breath, week after week, wondering when more of our favourite lad’s mags would follow in their footsteps. Cue fanfare…
FHM has finally redesigned its website and included an RSS feed you can add (no doubt immediately) to your MIX page, for daily updates from one of the UK’s best selling men’s magazines.

The feed is located here, thanks Amanda.

Today we launched the branded version of our RSS generator to the world. Up to now we have been using the company name Stream Distribution but as we have the nice new logo and the website finished it’s time to unleash it!
Fedafi. Pronounced fee·da·fi (’fi’ as in hifi).

The new site includes v1.0.3 of our software which includes complete tracking for all podcast media and the re-introduction of the free Lite version.

We are still working on the site so watch out for any glitches, a full press launch will follow shortly.

Today we released version 1.0.2 of Stream Distribution with some great new features, including:

• Podcast feeds now come with css and xsl files making them web viewable
• Items in podcast feeds can now be tracked

This means you can now track exactly how many downloads you get of each and every podcast.

The css and xsl files are similar to normal RSS feeds and you can edit both to style your feed.

To upgrade from v1.0.1 to v1.0.2 just grab the StreamD-upgrade-v1-0-1-to-1-0-2.zip from the downloads section. Upload it’s contents to the root folder of your install.

Inside the RSS folder of the zip file you will see a file called htaccess.txt, open this and copy the two lines in there into your own .htaccess file in the rss folder of your install.

Any problems drop by the forum.

We’ve been working hard over the last week developing some enhancements for podcast feeds, including web styling, links to web based feed readers, links to download/play the podcast and tracking.

The tracking has been delayed thus far due to iTunes need for file extensions formatted in a certain way, however it looks as though we have found a solution that 99% of users will be able to adopt and track their podcast feeds and downloads.

This means a revision will be released later this week and a set of update files.

More information to follow.

If you move your Stream Distribution application to a different location you will get a licensing error when you try and login. To rectify this you need to re-issue your license.

To do this login to the client area, click ‘view your licenses’ and then the ‘View & Download’ button. Here you will see a ‘Reissue’ button, click this and then go to login at your new location, a new license will automatically be issued.

Stream Distribution allows you to customize the look of every internal feed you create using CSS and XSL. When you create a feed three files are created:

1. feed1.php
2. style1.css
3. style1.xsl

The number in each file corresponds to the feed id.

By editing style1.css and style1.xsl you can completley change the look and feel of your feed when viewed in a web browser.

Here is what a standard feed looks like:

Click to enlarge it or view the live feed here. By editing those two files you can make the web version of your feed match your website, here’s one Joomlarize have customized to match their site:

Click to enlarge it or view the live feed here.

All Joomlarize have done is edit the xsl file to include their logo and changed the css file to match their style.

It’s that easy!

Along with the Lite version (free) released today we have also made a few changes/bug fixes, the main changes are:

• License keys can now be updated on the config page
• The tools section now allows for the creation of chicklets
• The header now shows license type
• Config update now stops if admin password not present

Today we’ve launched a Lite version of Stream Distribution for FREE.

The lite version comes with a few restrictions but hey what do you expect for free

• It can be used for your internal business purposes only, in other words you can’t create feeds for other people whether you charge for them or not.
• You are limited to creating/managing just one feed
• You are limited to just one Lite license per legal entity (person/business)
• You provide valid personal/contact details at time of order

Check out the full details here and now there’s no excuse for not trying it.