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How to create and share newsfeeds

RSSOwl's subscription feature lets you publish newsfeed collections on your local drive, local network, or on the Internet, and invite friends colleagues to subscribe to the collections. Whenever articles and article lists from any of the published and shared feeds are updated by the newsfeed content providers, the updates are available to everyone who uses your subscription.

To create and publish a subscription:   

1. In the RSS Favorites pane select the category or newsfeed you want to publish as a subscription.
2. Right-click on the category or newsfeed name and choose Export>Create Subscription. A Save As dialog appears. Choose a name and location for the subscription file, then click OK to close the dialog.

3. If the subscription file is to remain on your local drive only, you'll need to provide a way for subscribers to access the file. Consult your platform's file sharing options, or read the instructions for whatever HTTP or FTP server software you wish to use for this purpose.

   If you're on a network, you can copy the file from its saved location on your hard drive to a network location that is accessible to all of your subscribers.

   If you have a Web site, you can copy the subscription file to your site as you would any other site element.

To load a subscription:

The steps below describe how you can test your published subscription, or access subscriptions posted by your friends and colleagues.

1. In the RSS Favorites pane, choose a position for the subscription. The subscription can be a new top-level category, or you can position it within an existing category.
2. Right-click on the positioning category or element, then choose New>Subscription. If a category is selected as the positioning element, you can also choose New>Subscription (Subcategory). With either choice, the Add New Subscription dialog box appears.

3. Enter the subscription location in the URL\Path field. The location may be a network drive mapping, a local file specification, or a URL. If the subscription is on a Web site, be sure to include the "http://" or "ftp://" prefix in the URL. Also, any spaces in your location specification must be replaced with "%20", e.g., "http://www.myserver.net/joes%20newsfeeds". The subscription must be new to your collection; if the same URL exists elsewhere in your Favorites, a warning is issued.

   If the subscription is accepted, click OK to dismiss the dialog. A new subscription folder bearing the title you specified in the dialog now appears in your Favorites tree. If the subscription file is found, a message box confirms the successful loading of the feed. Expand the subscription folder to view the feeds and articles it contains.

   If the subscription file location was incorrectly specified or the subscription file is found to be invalid, an error message will appear. To correct the problem, delete the failed subscription right-clicking on the subscription folder and choosing Delete from the popup menu, then try New>Subscription again.

To keep subscription content current, right-click on a subscription folder and choose Reload Favorites.