HawaiiStories Aggregator

Many content management systems used to publish journals, blogs, and other material on the web also provide RSS ("Really Simple Syndication") feeds, which are basically automatically updated indexes to new material. (What is RSS?) For example, Movable Type and WordPress, the two tools used at HawaiiStories, generate RSS feeds. With an RSS feed, readers can use a variety of tools (news aggregators) to easily discover when you've posted something new to your site.

If you are a HawaiiStories member, and if your journal or blog offers an RSS feed, we can include your site in the HawaiiStories aggregator, which is featured on the front page of the site. This allows visitors to easily find the latest updates across our whole `ohana of storytellers. The latest five entries are displayed for tenants (people who are hosted on HawaiiStories), locals (people living in Hawaii), and members afar (people outside Hawaii with Hawaii ties). The lists are updated every hour.

Not every publishing system offers RSS feeds, and some offer feeds that are invalid. (Presently, this includes Xanga.) You can check the validity of your site's RSS feed at feedvalidator.org.

If you are not using a content management system, but want your site included in the HawaiiStories aggregator, you could create and manually update a RSS file. However, the specifications are fairly strict, and an invalid feed can break the aggregator. You can, however, find some automated tools on the web that create the RSS file from links and excerpts that you manually enter.

If you do not want your site be included in the HawaiiStories aggregator, please drop us a line.