Advanced UsageThere are times where you are simply unable to find a RSS feed for a page that you would really like to pull content in from. An example of a site like this which we will work with is monster.com. For those of you not aware, monster is a leading website that allows for individuals to search for jobs that are posted by employers. Lets take this page as an example we will work with. It is a monster search for project manager jobs in the 92109 zip code. The problem is that there is no RSS feed for this page. Luckily for us another site called Feedity is here to help us solve this problem. Before we begin, lets be upfront and let you know that this solution will take a little technical skill and HTML knowledge. However, we will try to explain it as clearly as possible with lots of pictures. Lets get started. We start by going to the Feedity site. Take the URL that you found for your search on monster (example: http://jobsearch.monster.com/Search.aspx?brd=1&q=project%20manager&cy=us&where=92109&rad=20&rad_units=miles&re=130) and paste it in the preview box where the red arrow is in the picture below. Then click "Preview."
From the preview screen there are options to refine a search by defining the start and end pieces of HTML code, which will define a item in your new RSS feed. To find these pieces of code lets go back to the monster site. What we are looking to do is return each row from the list of jobs as an item in our RSS feed. To do this, right-click in the middle of the window and select "View Page Source" (see picture below).
You will be given a window with a bunch of HTML code in it. Do not get overwhelmed at this point if you are not familar with HTML code. What we are looking to do is find a starting and ending segment of code to define each item. Lets go ahead and press Ctrl-F or Edit/Find from your browser to search for the text in the first row. Try searching for the title that is on the first line. In this case we are going to search for "project manager." It highlights this in green for us (see picture below).
Here is a close up view of the code we are interested in. In the middle you see"Project Manager" (see the middle red arrow below) which we searched for and found in green above. In HTML "<tr> defines the beginning of a row and "</tr>" defines the end of a row. In this case the starting piece of HTML code is "<tr class='SingleLineViewEvenRow'>" and the ending piece of HTML code is "</tr>" (see the two outside red arrows below).
Now that we have found the starting and ending code segments lets go back to the feedity site. Click on the "Advanced Refine" on the right hand side. Place the starting code "<tr class='SingleLineViewEvenRow'>" in the field for Title Start Block (see below). Place the ending code "</tr>" in the field for Title End Block (see below). Once you have done this click the "Refine" button. It will come back with a preview of your results. At the bottom go ahead and select a category in the dropdown box (choose a related topic), and click the "Get Feed" button.
On the next page shown below you are given your RSS feed URL. Example: (http://feedity.com/rss.aspx/monster-com/UlVSUFFT) Copy the URL you are given and take it back to Read Some Stuff to add it into a new feed within one of your outlets.
Hopefully, we did not lose you along the way. As stated above, this is more advanced and not necessarily meant for all users. If it works for you, wonderful! If not, you should be able to get by pretty well by finding RSS feeds on pages, letting Internet Explorer and Firefox help you, by selecting from feeds already defined by other Read Some Stuff users, or by creating feeds from sites based on your keyword , which is all explained on the Getting Started page. Good luck and have fun! |
