Frequently Asked Questions

How can I improve the visibility of my news item?
Tagging can be done either at feed or at item level. Because AgriFeeds aggregates and provides filtering based on keywords assigned to items, you can improve the visibility of your news item by adding categories to the item. The best practice is to add 3-5 tags which best describe the news item. The tags are also assigned to generate the tag cloud.

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Will I (and my application) always have access to the feeds from this site?
This site is part of a "Feasibility Study" on the use of web-feeds for aggregating and filtering news and events. Therefore, the site and/or its feeds may be unavailable from time-to-time.

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What is RSS?
RSS is an XML-based format, where the site's information is described in a format that simplifies the news down to a few key elements.

RSS is sometimes called "Rich Site Summary", "RDF Site Summary", or "Really Simple Syndication".

RSS can be made available in various formats such as 0.9, 0.91, 1.0, 2.0 and Atom.

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How to create a channel?

To create a RSS news channel that lists the various articles on your site or in your e-mail newsletter, you have several choices:

  • Construct it from scratch in Notepad (easy in some cases but not efficient in the long run eg. when the people working on it are not able to edit XML)
  • Prepare the feed from a stand-alone tool such as RSS Channel Editor. (example)
  • Have a software tool "scrape" the site and incorporate the most important information it finds there
  • Exploit your Content Management System if the contents of your website are managed this way: CMSs usually have functionalities for exporting contents to RSS or your webmaster can easily write a function to read all contents and create an RSS output

For more detailed information, read our Guidelines.

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Where can I learn more about web feeds?

To start learning about RSS feeds, you can use the following sites:

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Where do I upload my feed file?
The file can have any extensions (.rss, .rdf, .xml) and can be uploaded to a webserver where it can be viewed and automatically checked by news aggregators such as this one.

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I submitted a feed but it was not added to the list.
There are two possible reasons why your feed was not accepted:
  1. It does not sufficiently cover Agriculture and its related domain areas, and/or
  2. The feed was not validated correctly by feedvalidator.org or does not contain the elements that are mandatory for AgriFeeds: read our guidelines.
More details
  1. If you submitted a feed and when you edit it you see that the URL is not saved, it means AgriFeeds did not recognise the XML file at the URL you provided as a valid feed. See if your feed appears under "Problem feeds" (in the "Monitor" section of the right menu, only visible if you are logged in).
  2. If you submitted a feed and you cannot see the items from your feed, this could mean one of the following: a) the feed has not been approved yet: check if your feed is among the "Pending feeds" (in the "Monitor" section of the right menu, only visible if you are logged in); b) AgriFeeds could not parse the RSS file at the URL you provided. See if your feed appears under "Problem feeds" (in the "Monitor" section of the right menu, only visible if you are logged in): in this case, read our guidelines carefully as regards accepted formats and mandatory elements.

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How do I validate the RSS file?

You can use RSS validation programs, such as Feed Validator metioned below, but they require the file to be available at a URL.

Alos keep in mind that, in order for the feed to be accepted by AgriFeeds, in addition to the basic requirements of an RSS feed, the following elements/refinements are mandatory:

A)
• (RSS) Title
• (RSS) Link
• (RSS) Description
• (RSS) pubDate

Besides, in items describing events the following additional elements/refinements are mandatory:

B)
• (AGS) Start Date
• (AGS) End Date
• (AGS) Location City
• (AGS) Location Country
(Please submit your feed as an event feed only if it these elements are there and are in the correct format)

Not complying with the (A) requirements may result in your feed not being loaded at all.

Please read our Guidelines carefully.

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Why do I have to register to submit a feed?
Registering yourself allows us to associate multiple feeds to the same user. It will also allow us to limit spam and control the quality of the feeds submitted. Anonymous users could submit off-topic feeds or feeds containing advertisments or adult contents. Registered users are responsible for the content of the feeds they submit.

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Can I submit more than one feed?
Yes. You may submit more than one news and/or event feed.

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Can I submit any agriculture-related feed that I know?
No. Users should submit only the feeds they are responsible for. Typically, a user should submit feed(s) available for his/her organization/department/project/website.

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What if more than one user submits the same feed(s) for the same organization?
Each organization should delegate one contact person to create an account and submit and manage the feed(s). However, we will try to monitor the submission of duplicate feeds and the users concerned will be alerted.

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When submitting a feed, what type of feed should I select?

You should select the type of feed according to the format of your feed. If your feed is a standard RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 or Atom feed, just select the corresponding type of feed. If (and only if) your feed complies with one of the following formats, you can select the "Events" type of feed and the items in your feed will be displayed both in the general Aggregator and in the Events section, where they can be viewed in the Calendar:

Please do not submit as feeds of events feeds that do not comply with the above specifications.

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Which items can be viewed with the Calendar?

Only events. Events are: - items retrieved from feeds of events, i.e. feeds using one of the following formats:

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The events in my feed do not show up among the other events or show up with incorrect dates
There are two possible reasons:
- Your feed is not an event feed. Only items from feeds submitted as "event feeds" show up among the events and are viewable in the calendar. And only feeds containing XML elements from the accepted event namespaces (Event AP and RSS event: see Guidelines) can be submitted as event feeds.
- Your feed was submitted as an event feed but does not contain the basic information about events: dates and location. See our Guidelines.

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In the Keywords list, some strange words / phrases appear
The keywords used to index the news items come from:
- the "keywords" field in the feed submission form: all items inherit the keywords assigned to their source feed;
- the and elements assigned to the items themselves in the source feed.
Therefore, the reliability of the keyword search depends on the quality of the source feeds.
Complying with the following general rules will help to offer a better service:
- Assign different keywords to different and instances (these elements are repeatable)
- Use a controlled vocabulary for selecting the keywords (Agrovoc recommended)
See our Guidelines for more information.

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How do I create a custom output feed?
AgriFeeds offers different feeds to syndicate its contents:

- A complete feed containing all the news/events items: the link to this feed is always available in the left menu.
- Feeds by subject: you can just browse our subject directory of news / events and in the results page for each category you will find a link to the corresponding RSS feed.
- Custom feeds: use our "Filter news" and "Filter events" links to set the filtering criteria for your custom feed: in the results page you will find a link to the corresponding RSS feed.

Besides, each time you are on a page with filtered results, a link to a "Filtered RSS feed" is always available in the left menu, below the RSS feed [full] link.

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How do I read my custom output feed?
You have several options:

- A news reader software: you can find several tools using a search engine, install one on your computer and add the url of your AgriFeeds feed(s). The software will allow you to manage the news items in a friendly user interface.
- An online news reader: you can find several using a search engine and many are part of the services offered by the search engines themeselves. You just need to subscribe and then you can add the url of your AgriFeeds feed(s). Also these services allow you to manage the news items in a friendly user interface.
- An RSS widget to publish the feed on your website. If you have a blog or a wiki, RSS widgets are provided by most platforms. If you have your own website, you can search for RSS widgets and you will find the code (usually javascript) to embed a feed in your website.
- An XSLT stylesheet: you can easily find on the Internet a basic stylesheet for formatting RSS and re-use it on your website.
- Plain XML parsing: if you are a webmaster and can do some client-side or server-side programming, there are XML parsing functions in all programming languages.

More information and useful links for these resources will be available soon.

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How can I add events to my Outlook Calendar?

Whenever you see the link "Add to my Outlook" on AgriFeeds, it means you can save an .ics file (compatible with the format Outlook uses) containing all the events displayed on that page or filtered according the criteria you selected.

Click on that link, save the file to your computer and then import it into Outlook.

For importing into Outlook: open Outlook, open the File menu, click on "Import and export", select "Import an iCalendar file" and browse your folders to select the file you just downloaded.

Notice that double-clicking on the file will only open and import the first event!

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