Have you wondered how you can dynamically publish an RSS news feed on your web page? Grazr is a free web service that lets you do this easily without any programming. After you’ve incorporated the Grazr code into your web page, the news feed will automatically update with any new headlines from that feed. Your web page will be refreshed with new content!

Step 1: Visit Grazr and Create an RSS Widget

The Grazr web page lets you create an “RSS Widget” that you can embed into your web page or blog. To get started, navigate to http://www.grazr.com/.

Step 2: Create a Widget

Click on the “Create Widget” tab at the top of the page.

Fill in the URL of the feed you want to publish under the “Enter a feed or outline URL” box:

Click the Update button.

You will then see a preview of your feed in the box in the middle of the page. This screenshot shows the latest NewsBits feed:

Step 3 (Optional): Customize Your Widget

If you wish, you can customize your widget’s look and feel with the “Customize Your Widget” box (to see the expanded options below, click the “More Options” link at the bottom of the box).

Step 4: Publish Your Widget

Grazr provides automatic publish buttons for some popular services (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) To use those, you will need to establish a free Grazr account.

Most likely, however, you will want to embed the Grazr code in your own web page. To do this, copy the code listed under “Embed code”:

Using your favorite web page editor, paste the code into your web page in an appropriate place. View the page in a browser, and you should see the updated RSS feed!

This screenshot shows what a simple page (in this case, a “Test page” displaying the PSR NewsBits blog feed) will look like in a web browser. In the real world, the RSS feed would be integrated into the look and feel of your web page.

Other RSS to Web Page Tools

If Grazr does not meet your needs, there are a number of other services that allow you to publish RSS feeds on your web page without programming. For a list of more free RSS feed to web page tools, visit David Rothman’s list at http://davidrothman.net/rss2webpage.html. Note: this page will take a long time to load since it brings in samples from each tool.

Questions?

Contact Sharon Dennis, PSR Technology Coordinator, at sdennis@library.ucla.edu or 310-825-9170.