An Architect's View

5 responses so far ↓

• 1 Gideon Marken // Sep 29, 2005 at 9:51 AM

  I may be wrong, but looking over their site, it seems they do not support anything but flat files.
  
  So if you wanted to generate RSS from your database, like most people, then this isn't a product to consider - at least, not at this time.
  
  It seems odd that they focused on flat files - I think if they ran a survey on people's needs, they'd find that the majority of their target market would be interested in a database oriented solution.
  
  Then again, I'm sure there's 1,000's of people who use Dreamweaver and never play with databases - so for those folks - this is great.
  
  Hmmm - I just looked over their Help file - it seems they don't support/read XML.

• 2 Sean Corfield // Sep 29, 2005 at 12:21 PM

  Gideon, you're missing the point: this is specifically a solution for people building static sites! The vast majority of web sites out there are static HTML - or mostly static content with, perhaps a small members-only section or a couple of web forms. The market is huge.
  
  

• 3 Gideon Marken // Sep 29, 2005 at 1:02 PM

  Sean, I understand, and certainly there's a lot of static content sites, I'm just addicted to databases :)
  
  I couldn't imagine building a site that needed RSS feeds that was based around static content, unless the static content was being published from the db.
  
  Looking over it a bit more, I see that it is basically a 'local' page scraper that's harvesting content.
  
  Aren't there sites/services online that will do this for free? If not, I think this is a solution that might be better served by an online service than a stand an addition to Dreamweaver. I'm surprised FeedBurner do not offer this as one of their servies... or do they?
  
  Nonetheless, it does look like an 'enabling' product, and anything that helps people get the ball rolling with just a few clicks is doing a good thing. :)
  
  btw - if anyone wishes to build such a service, I just checked, these domains are still available:
  
  WebsiteFeeder.com
  WebsiteToRSS.com
  RSSHarvest.com
  RSSHarvester.com
  RssOnTheFly.com
  GenerateRSS.com
  
  :) yes, I have "Domain's Disease" Those are some good names though!

• 4 Magda Neagu // Oct 3, 2005 at 7:52 AM

  Hi Gideon,
  
  If you are interested in a RSS tool for dynamic websites than you should definetly take a look at MX RSS Reader-Writer. You can find it here http://www.interaktonline.com/Products/Dreamweaver-Extensions/MXRSSReader-Writer/Overview/ and it solves your problem about the RSS integration with dynamic sites.
  
  Hope this helps.

• 5 Gideon Marken // Oct 3, 2005 at 8:55 AM

  Magda/interaktonline - That's nice that you have a $30 solution, but I don't have a problem with RSS integration, :) My current solution works great.
  
  I was just pointing out that a scraping solution is probably best served from the Web and not one's editor.

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