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Syndicator

Syndicator is a really simple application for generating an RSS feed. All you have to do is upload it, tweak the included example RSS file, and then use it by filling out the included form any time you want to add a new entry. There are no comments, trackbacks, pingbacks, themes, search boxes, categories, tags or any other needless shit, but it does do exactly what it says on the tin and no less.

It’s designed to be hacked upon, and therefore releases are very infrequent. Why not subscribe to the Anthology of Software release schedule RSS feed, powered by this very program?

Installation & Usage

  1. Download.
  2. Upload syndicator.php and feed.rss to your server, in the location of your choice.
  3. Change the permissions of feed.rss so that anybody can edit it. (Unix octal mode 666 minimum)
  4. Tweak the metadata inside feed.rss to reflect the what your feed will be and contain.
  5. If you want to run Markdown on your script, go grab a PHP Markdown-compatible port of it and drop it in the same folder as the script with the name markdown.php
  6. Go to syndicator.php in your Web browser and put in your first entry.

Upgrade Path

To upgrade your old Syndicator 1.0 setup to 1.1, just replace the syndicator.php file with the new one. Then go into your feed.rss file and replace <!--- Generated by Syndicator 1.0: Items Go Here ---> with <!-- Generated by the Syndicator: Items Go Here -->

If you’re really pernickety about having a validating RSS feed, go to each of the description tags and wrap the content inside of them in <![CDATA[ and ]]> tags.

Download

Syndicator 1.1.1, released 10/03/09. ZIP file, 4KB.

Frequently Asked Questions

I want to start a blog. How useful is this to me?

It depends on your needs. Combined with Publish Press, Syndicator makes a very robust, high-performance flat-file–based blogging system. But, unless you’re really willing to hack the system, they’re not really ready for writing a large blog such as this one.

I already have a blog. How is this useful to me?

Not at all useful unless you’re maybe looking to start a podcast or maybe some other type of thing where you’ll want an RSS feed for each item without the hassle of a full blog publishing system.

I hate this.

Please contact me with any bugs or feature suggestions.