RSS .91 to 1.0 using ASP

What is RSSup?

RSSup is an ASP script that allows web­mas­ter who already gen­er­ate an RSS .91 feed for their site to dynam­i­cally cre­ate an RSS 1.0 feed. Using the Microsoft XML parser (sup­plied with IE 5) on the server side, you can now move to RSS 1.0 with­out hav­ing to worry about recod­ing your channel.

Min­i­mum Requirements

I haven’t tested these scripts on mul­ti­ple plat­forms but here’s the envi­ron­ment I used to cre­ate them:

• NT 4.0 with ser­vice pack 6
• IIS 4.0
• Inter­net Explorer 5.5 (this is impor­tant because Microsoft replaced the XML engine on which this script relies)
• A well for­mat­ted RSS .91 file

What files are in RSSup.zip?

Recently, I’ve started doing some manip­u­la­tions or RSS file for dif­fer­ent pre­sen­ta­tions. Included in this zip file are three files to do so:

• rssup.asp Cre­ates the 1.0 channel
• rssupvars.asp Vari­ables you have to change
• Readme.html Basic documentation

Instal­la­tion

Installing those files is rel­a­tively easy.

• Down­load the source code
• Open rssupvars.asp and edit it. For your ref­er­ence, here are the dif­fer­ent variables:
  • myRSSfile is the loca­tion of your RSS file.
  • myRSSurl is the root direc­tory for your server. In my case, it would be http://www.tnl.net
  • myRSStitle is the name of your chan­nel. In my case, it would be TNL.net newsletter
  • myRSSlink is the name of a direc­tory on the server you want to point to. For exam­ple, if your feed is not for the main page, you can put the sub­di­rec­tory here. In my case, that would be http://www.tnl.net/weblog/
  • myRSSdescription is a descrip­tion of what your chan­nel is about. This allows direc­to­ries to get more data on what the chan­nel is. In my case it would be some­thing along the line of "a newsletter about Internet technology"
  • myRSSlogo is the loca­tion of an image logo for your chan­nel. Please spec­ify the full path to the URL like http://www.foo.com/images/foologo.gif for example
• Put the files on your site and that’s it. You’re up and run­ning with a new 1.0 chan­nel at http://www.yoursite.com/rssup.asp

How much does it cost?

RSSup is free. If you want to use it on your server, a link back to TNL.net or Pay­pal dona­tion would be very appreciated.

Copy­right and final comments

I’ve cre­ated those files for my per­sonal use and am happy to share them with you. How­ever, I do not make any guar­an­tee as to their impact on your server. They seem to work fine on mine. If you use them, I’d appre­ci­ate a link back to TNL.net. I’ve moved my site off the Microsoft plat­form in late 2002 so I do not plan to update or con­tinue sup­port­ing those scripts. Use them at your own risk.

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