Nate Lanxon

Monday 10 November 2008, 3:53pm

Ponyfish: Build RSS feeds for any site

Ponyfish is a free service that allows you to create simple RSS feeds for any Web site that doesn't offer one itself.

There are paid options if you want to manage your feeds and add further options. I bought a $24 (£15) per year plan to create a feed for this blog on CNET UK, and you can check out the results (and subscribe!) here.

Let's walk through how you can create a feed, using my blog here as an example. You don't need an account, but a free account is advised.

First, choose to create a feed, then take the URL of the page you want to create a feed for and paste it in the box.

If a feed already exists for that page, Ponyfish will tell you. To continue making your own, click the link provided in the warning box.

Next, you'll be given the page you're creating a feed for inside a box. In our example, we're creating a feed for all the blog entries that appear on this page. Ponyfish needs to learn what to look for when the page is updated, so click on the titles of each blog entry. It'll then know to look for new titles that appear the same. Then click continue.

Ponyfish has looked at the URLs of these blog entries, compared them, and discovered which parts are different each time. So, if each entry lived under URLs such as cnet.co.uk/blog-104 or cnet.co.uk/blog-206, you would assign the three numerical digits as wildcards. Any link that appears with a new number at the end will be posted to your RSS feed as a new item.

Then give your feed a title and description and hit finish!

And there you have it -- your personal, customised RSS feed for a site that doesn't provide one. We strongly recommend this site, and suggest a paid account if you want to create lots of feeds. Accounts also let you modify feeds you've created.

Go ahead, subscribe to my blog via the Ponyfish RSS feed. I've set it up through FeedBurner to monitor usage statistics, and you can subscribe here.

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