Broadcast Builder Review Page 3 Usenet Features Usenet can be thought of as a giant group of forums called newsgroups on every subject you can think of. If you're reading this page, you probably have access to usenet since most internet service providers offer free news servers. You can access usenet through your email program or using an autodownloader like Newsbin. More information on usenet and how to configure your email program to access it can be found on our usenet configuration page. The usenet features in Broadcast Builder make it easy to use of this vast resource by importing and exporting data. While creating an RSS feed, you can reach an even larger audience by exporting the data to the newsgroup of your choice. You can also import any information on a newsgroup that you would like to include on your RSS feed. Exporting to usenet is as easy as publishing an RSS feed online. 1) Click on the "File" button in the top menu bar, select "Export to" from the drop down menu and then select "Newsgroups". 2) Select which feed you want to post to usenet by checking the box next to the feeds listed. If you can't find the feed you want in the default directory, use the directory tree to the left of the window to access the file of your choice. Click the right facing blue arrow to continue. 3) Click the down arrow on the text box for server selections available. You add servers in the configuration window. 4) The button to the right of the server text area will download the available newsgroups. You may experience a long delay if you have a slow connection or if your news server supports thousands of newsgroups. If you can't get a faster connection, you may want to try one of the many free news servers that don't offer binaries. This will reduce the number of newsgroups you have to access and speed up the process. Please note that this is not always a solution since some free news servers are very slow; try a few and see which works best. 5) Select the newsgroup you want to post to and click the right facing blue arrow to continue. 6) Slect the feed you want to post and click the button in the lower right corner to post your article. Importing is done in a similar manner. 1) Click on the "File" button in the top menu bar, select "Import from" from the drop down menu and then select "Newsgroups". 2) In the first window, select server, click handle attachments as enclosures then click the retrieve newsgroups button. 3) Select the newsgroup you want to access and click "articles" tab to access the next window. If you experience lengthy delays, see the suggestion about free news servers mentioned above. 4) Select which articles you wish to import and click the "export details" button to access the next window. 5) The information on this page will determine where the feed that you create from the imported data will be located. Click the process data to import the data and create an RSS feed. When importing items from usenet with attachments, Broadcast Builder can change them to enclosures. The files will NOT be attached to the RSS feed and must be uploaded to the base url specified in the config page for readers of your newsfeed to find them. Usenet support is available only on the enterprise edition of Broadcast Builder. Import From Database Broadcast Builder allows you to import data from a database and use it to create an RSS feed. You'll find this technique an advantage if you use a database to dynamically create web pages since you'll be able to reuse the data to automatically create an RSS feed. Before you can use this technique, you'll need a database with the proper fields and a DSN to connect to the database with. For the best results, the database you use should have fields that provide information for the RSS feed title, article link, article description and author. If the database doesn't have a field for one of these categories, then the category will be left blank but the RSS feed will still be created. A DSN is a Data Source Name and is set up by the ODBC Data Source Administrator that you can find on your control panel. If you're not familiar with this, see the ODBC configuration page. The example used is to set up a myodbc driver to connect to a server based MySQL database but the technique is the same for most drivers. It only takes a few minutes to set up even if you've never done it before. After the DSN is setup, importing from a database is very simple. 1) Select "File" from the top menu bar then "Import from" from the drop down menu then "Database". You can also use the hotkey command CTRL - ALT - D. This will open the window shown below. 2) A list of available User and System DSNs are listed on the left; File DSNs will not show up. Select one for the appropriate local or online database. 3) The DSN selected in the example, RSS Feed Info, refers to a database with only one table to choose from named "rssinfo". If there were multiple tables in the database, a list would appear in the right side of the window. Select the table of your choice and click the "Next" button to bring up the window shown below. 4) A list of the fields of the database table appear in the right side of this window. From this list, you will want to assign a field to provide data for the newsfeed title, link, description and author. To do this, drag and drop the appropriate field names to the item boxes at the bottom of the window. For the example, field names were used to match the RSS item, such as the field newstitle being used for the item title. No field was used for the Item Author in the example which will result in the RSS feed not validating properly. If you plan on using an existing database to create RSS feeds using the import command, be sure the database has fields to provide information for all four items. Click next. 5) This window allows you to finalize the feed and select where it will be stored. Fill out the information and click "Process Data". Please note that information entered here regarding the feed title, link and description refer to the entire feed and not the first item in the feed. 6) Since this method creates an RSS file directly and not an rds file, you can't open it in the "Open RSS file" command. Instead, import the newly created RSS file by selcting "file" from the top menu bar, "Import from" on the dropdown menu and "From RSS" from the second dropdown menu. You can also use the hotkey CTRL-ALT-R. This option is only available in the Enterprise version of Broadcast Builder. Export to Server Based Script Instead of creating an RSS feed directly by importing from a database, this option creates a script that uses database information to dynamically creates the RSS feed. Upload the script to your server and a new RSS feed is created from database information every time the script is run. The drawback to using scripts is that the DSN you use on your PC to connect to a remote database is usually NOT on your server. Your server may have it's own database tools but you're not using a PC based DSN when you use them. For the Broadcast Builder exported scripts to work, the DSNs must match. With this in mind, you may find the scripts are more useful to those who control their own server and server DSNs. Skip Hours/Skip Days When you use a news aggregator, it automatically looks for updates and will notify the user that new items are available. FeedDemon, for example, has a pop up window appear displaying that information when the program is minimized. Although this is very good for news feed readers, there are times when you don't want your feed updated. You don't want date sensitive announcements being published prematurely and you certainly don't want your feed updated when you're in the middle of working on it. Broadcast Builder allows you to avoid these problems by setting certain hours and days of the week when news aggregators will be instructed NOT to update the feed. It's fairly obvious how to use the Skip Hours and Skip Days features; just select the click boxes next to an hour or day and news aggregators WON'T update your feed for that time. The time is in GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) with 0 being midnight and 23 being 11 PM. This feature is only available on Broadcast Builder Enterprise edition. MediaCapture The Media Capture device can be used to add video to your RSS feeds and Blogs by clicking on the camera button below the "Description" text box for RSS news items or in the menu bar in the blog editor. The devices available is determined by how you set the parameters for multimedia on the configuration window. Check the configuration section at the start of the review for more information. This feature is only available on the Enterprise version of Broadcast Builder. Conclusion and Registration If you've read this entire review, you've probably come to the obvious conclusion that Broadcast Builder offers a complete RSS solution, an easy interface, and import/export features to allow interaction with other formats. What you may not be sold on is why you need an RSS newsfeed in the first place. here's a few good reasons: 1) Exposure - The constant updates presented by an RSS feed will keep your site current in the minds of your target audience. Yes, email campaigns try to do the same thing but often come across as spam instead of as breaking news. 2) Traffic - Web traffic doesn't appear by itself. Anyone who's ever posted a web page knows this and also knows that if you want people to look at your web site then you better do something to bring attention to it. An RSS news feed should help increase your presence on the web. 3) Convenience - Updating an RSS feed just means adding a new item on the end of an existing feed and not recreating the entire file. Some versions of Broadcast Builder take the convenience a step further by letting you reuse content through database access. Now the information used to create dynamic web pages can create RSS feeds as well. Join the RSS revolution. Broadcast Builder makes RSS easy and also allows you to explore the often untapped resouces of blogs and usenet when publicizing your site. You can download the trial version of the Broadcast Builder by clicking on the button below. You can check on the latest registration fee by clicking on the green "Register Program" button. If you decide to register this program, please support Shareware Genie by using the green button link to register instead of the option in the program. I hope you find the program useful and would like to hear your comments at - The Genie - << PREV | 1 | 2 | 3 | News || Reviews || Utilities || Home/Office || Web Tools || Web Utils || Graphics || Security || Games || Other Categories || Program List || FAQ || Forum || About Us || Contact Us || Home Strategy Games || Action Games || Puzzle Games || Card Games ||