RSS Feeds

Keeping in touch via RSS Feeds

RSS ('Really Simple Syndication') is the modern alternative to email for keeping in touch. This web site provides many RSS feeds to tell you of changes made on the web site. The web site itself uses feeds to get information from external sites (the BBC Forecast, for example). Where a feed is available, you will see a small orange symbol with a 'loudspeaker' style logo on it. Rather than go to long explanations of RSS feeds, go to this web site for advice on free RSS readers, and here for another selection. If you want to integrate RSS into Outlook Express, then go here for info. Other email clients also offer RSS as an option.

RSS Feeds for forums and other web site content

The best thing to do with this new web site is to use it to access the forums. No subscriptions required, visible threading, and all the other news that we hope you will enjoy. You can catch up with latest news using the 'latest news' menu, and not miss anything of interest.

There is an email list that copies the contents of the 'General conversation' forum. It should be noted, however, that the email list will not mirror the other forums.

If you want to know what is happening without visiting the web site itself, the best way is to use the RSS Feeds that are provided. RSS ('Really Simple Syndication') is a method of notifying you of changed content. Each of the new forums has an RSS feed associated with it, as does the front page, and the events calendar.

You can read these feeds in any decent internet browser, a dedicated RSS feed aggregator or most email clients.

When imported into an email client, they look just like regular emails.

Outlook Express needs an add-on to do it; most other email clients have RSS capabilities built in to them.

Why use RSS?

It bypasses lots of problems with email:

  1. No subscription required. So no unsubscribing during your holidays/resubscribing when you get back.
  2. It doesn't matter if you forget your password, or your email changes.
  3. No email exposed = no spam received.
  4. No endless repeats of old emails because someone can't be bothered to snip the old stuff out before (s)he adds a one-liner.
  5. No AOL/Yahoo spam black holes. No endless support requests. No email bounces from people who are 'out of the office'.
  6. If you come back after a long time away, you don;t find an overloaded in-box; you get the last few messages, but you don't miss everything.
  7. You can use RSS for all sorts of neat non-flying stuff, like keeping track of items of interest via BBC news, Google, or Ebay, or whatever.

Disadvantage: you need to go to the web site to reply. But then you really wanted to, didn't you?

Setting up the Feeds:

URLs for each feed

Each feed has a separate URL. They are:

  • The Front Page news is 'http://shgc.org.uk/?q=rss.xml'
  • For the main discussion forum, use 'http://shgc.org.uk/taxonomy/term/2/0/feed'
  • For the 'Flying Trips' forum, use 'http://shgc.org.uk/taxonomy/term/3/0/feed'
  • For the 'Cloudbase Cafe' forum, use 'http://shgc.org.uk/taxonomy/term/5/0/feed'
  • For the website-related stuff, use 'http://shgc.org.uk/taxonomy/term/6/0/feed'
  • You may combine the forum feeds into one by using 'http://shgc.org.uk/taxonomy/term/2+3+5+6/0/feed'
  • To get a feed of all the club events, use 'http://shgc.org.uk/event/feed'
  • As detailed above, for the Flight Diaries feed use 'http://www.shgc.org.uk/flightdiaries/feed'
  • For local meetings at Glynde, use 'http://shgc.org.uk/local/feed'
  • For London Wing postings, use 'http://shgc.org.uk/londonmeets/feed'
  • For the super-duper do-it-all feed, use 'http://shgc.org.uk/allposts', which lists all activity on the web site NEW!

Outlook Express

  1. Go to here, and download RSSPopper.exe.
  2. Run it to install it into Outlook Express. You may also have to download and install .Net 1.1 to run it if you don't already have it installed.
  3. Load Outlook Express. This will download a whole load of RSS feeds that are pre-set up. You may remove these later.
  4. You will see a folder called 'RSS', containing the preset RSS Feeds.
  5. You will also see a menu at the top of the page, containing 'Edit Feeds' and 'Settings', amongst other things.
  6. The 'Settings' menu item lets you set the interval time to go fetch the latest news items. This is initially set to 900 (15 minutes). Don't make this smaller- it just loads the web site unnecessarily.
  7. Go to 'edit feeds'
  8. Get rid of the stuff put there with delete button against each feed, (unless you want the pre-supplied feeds, that is).
  9. Hit the 'new>>' button, and select 'RSS/Atom' feed.
  10. To access the Flight diary feed, in the 'link' field, put 'http://shgc.org.uk/flightdiaries/feed'.
  11. Hit the 'get title from feed' button. The title field should get filled with 'Flight Diaries'. If it doesn't, you have entered the feed address incorrectly.
  12. Once the title has been fetched, you can change it to whatever takes yer fancy, and hit OK.
  13. Repeat the process for each feed that you want.

Evolution Mail

  1. Go to 'edit/preferences
  2. Select 'News and Blogs'
  3. Hit the 'add' button
  4. Fill in the URL(s) as above. The new feed will appear under a new 'News and Blogs' folder.
  5. Repeat for all feeds required.

Mozilla/Thunderbird email

  1. Go to edit/account settings
  2. Select 'Add Account'
  3. Select 'RSS news and blogs' ,and hit the 'Next' button
  4. Alter the account name on the next screen, if you want to, and hit 'Next'
  5. Hit 'Finish' to add the RSS feed account, which you will now see in the list.
  6. Hit the 'manage subscriptions' button
  7. Hit the 'add' button.
  8. Fill in the URL(s) as above. The feeds will be added to the 'news and blogs' folder.

Instructions for any Browser

  1. Click on the orange RSS icon (looks like a small loudspeaker symbol) to be found at the bottom of the page concerned.
  2. Follow the instructions. (usually just click OK to add the feed to your browser). Then you can select the feed without actually going to the SHGC web site.