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» Review ListGarden RSS Feed Generator Program v1.3

(October 2006)
 

RSS Feed Generator

The ListGarden™ program is a tool for manually creating and maintaining RSS feeds. It is an easy to use open source authoring tool operated with a browser interface that can run locally on a computer running Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux, or accessed remotely through a web server. The resulting XML file may be stored locally or automatically copied to a remote web server using FTP. It is useful for RSS feeds that need to be maintained without an automatic system that has built-in RSS generation capability. It can be used for RSS feeds that are change logs, event lists, lists of physical objects, or post lists of podcasts and manually authored weblogs. (Automatic systems with built-in RSS capability include most weblog authoring tools and some content management systems.) The program requires no knowledge of XML or the RSS data format, and is tuned for quick additions of new items and simple editing.

ListGarden can produce an optional companion HTML file for human browsers to read. It also has basic list-maintenance functions making it useful as a simple list manager. The RSS XML and HTML files can be uploaded to any web storage. Most ISPs like EarthLink, Comcast, and Verizon provide basic web hosting storage to their customers that can be used to hold RSS XML and HTML files, so you can publish lists even if you don't have a main website.


Features:

Creates and maintains RSS feeds
Produces both XML and optional human-readable companion HTML
Runs either on your PC or on a web server
Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux
Open source
Requires no knowledge of XML or the RSS data format
Tuned for quick manual additions of new items and simple editing
Supports enclosures (New in Version 1.3)

Perfect for:

Podcasting (New in Version 1.3)
Change logs
Notification of additions and updates to traditional websites
Companions to email newsletters
Event Lists
Alerts, announcements, and ongoing status
Notification of the arrival of new products in a store
Maintaining simple online lists accessible as both XML and HTML
News website headlines
Experimentation with RSS
Use within a corporate firewall for internal websites
 

You can run the program in the following way:

Double-click on the program in Windows Explorer where you saved it or execute a shortcut you make to it (for example, in the Start Menu). The program will start running and show up as a "sprout with roots" icon in the system tray.

To interact with the program, use a web browser to view "http://127.0.0.1:6555". You can get the program to launch a browser viewing that page by double-clicking on the tray icon, or by single-clicking to bring up a menu and then selecting the "Launch UI" menu item.

Exit the program by using the "Quit" button in the program's UI shown in the browser:

Alternatively, use the "Shutdown" menu item on the tray icon.

There are a few options that you can set before running the program. To do that, you can use a shortcut that includes command line options in the Target property after the filename of the program. (The filename will be in quotes, type the options after the quotes.)

The options of interest are:

-b to launch a browser automatically when the program starts.

-s number to use a different socket port number than the default 6555.

-d string to use a different datafile prefix than the default "listdata". Datafiles are named "prefix.feed.name.txt", e.g., "listdata.feed.dblog.txt". The prefix may include path information to use a different directory, e.g., "C:\Documents and Settings\Name\My Documents\ListGarden\listdata".

Note: Datafiles are stored in the current directory by default. If you run ListGarden from another directory, you will need to set the current directory or use this option to access feed information you have previously stored.


Only one instance of ListGarden may be run at a time. Running it a second time will just bring up the browser again, like the Launch UI menu command.

To uninstall the program:

Delete the file you downloaded and any shortcuts you made to it.

If you want to remove all traces of it immediately, and have run it at least once, look in your TEMP directory (probably in the user's Local Settings\Temp directory) for files starting with "pdk-". That is where the Perl DLL and source files are extracted to when you run the program. They are normally deleted automatically when execution ends.

 

Size : 1.5 MB Download ListGarden RSS Feed Generator Program v1.3 (win)

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