how to create bespoke rss feeds for The Space.

About If you use Google Reader, here is what to do if you want to set up an RSS feed for a website which has none, particularly if you want just search for a particular topic.

The example I'm going to use it The Space, the new joint venture between the Art Council and the BBC. I've wanted to keep track of when the various Shakespeare content is uploaded for my own benefit and so that I can add something to @shakespearelogs but rss feeds haven't been included yet.

So here is how to create bespoke rss feeds for The Space.

Firstly I went to the Google Alerts page, which you can see if you're logged into Google here:

http://www.google.co.uk/alerts?hl=en&gl=uk

In the site query box, type "site:" and then the URL of the website so:

site:http://thespace.org/

Sometimes, as it the case with http://www.bbc.co.uk every link on the website flows into the preview box on the left.  But we want to just the Shakespeare links from The Space, so:

site:http://thespace.org/ shakespeare

Then select a result type.  Since The Space is a static website, we need to select "Everything" from the drop down list so that it includes web pages.

Unless you want to create an email alert, ignore "How often".  You'll see why.

If you look at the preview box, you'll see it's not "everything".  That's because "only the best results" is selected in "How Many".

Change that to "all results".

Select feed in the "Deliver to" menu box.

Click the red "create alert" button.

This will bring up your list of alerts.  Scroll down to the one you're looking for and you'll see next to it the selections you made plus a link to Google Reader.

Click that link.

Google Reader opens and usually automatically subscribes you to the search.  The first entry is an automatically added welcome thingy, but after that the post you saw in the preview box will appear and then any new entries after that.

Needless to say a feed based on:

site:http://www.bbc.co.uk/ shakespeare

updates whenever a new page featuring his name is added to the BBC website.  You can also add subdomains if you want to just search a particular section.  That works better on some websites than other.

Hope that's of us to someone.