Fancy having the fastest Anarchy Online news around on your website? Or even your desktop? Then you've come to the right place :) Here you'll find a selection of links and tips on using AO Stratics' RSS-based newsfeed with JavaScript, PHP, Perl or even with Trillian and other systems.
The simplest an easiest way to put the newsfeed is to use JavaScript. You have two options: a pre-formatted feed (as seen above) and an unformatted feed that will allow you to format to match your sites design (you'll need to use CSS - see the CSS section below for details).
To use the pre-formatted feed, simply include the following HTML snippet on your page where you want the feed to appear:
<script language="JavaScript" src="http://ao.stratics.com/php-bin/rss/jsformat.php"> <noscript><a href="http://ao.stratics.com/">Latest AO News</a></noscript> </script>
And to use the un-formatted feed, include the following HTML snippet on your page where you want the feed to appear, then set up the CSS on your page to make it look nice:
<script language="JavaScript" src="http://ao.stratics.com/php-bin/rss/javascript.php"> <noscript><a href="http://ao.stratics.com/">Latest AO News</a></noscript> </script>
If you don't want to use JavaScript, you can also grab the newsfeed using PHP (or Perl/SSI). The PHP include command can, if your install of PHP allows it, be used to read the feed. Simply add the line:
<?php include("http://ao.stratics.com/php-bin/rss/format.php"); ?>into your page (or call http://ao.stratics.com/php-bin/rss/read.php if you want the un-formatted feed).
If you want to use Perl instead, you can get the same effect using a small script and the LWP module (which is usually installed on most systems these days). Add this script to your /cgi-bin/ as, for example, simpleread.pl:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use LWP::Simple;
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print get('http://ao.stratics.com/php-bin/rss/format.php');You may need to change the first line to point to your copy of Perl and, again, you can use http://ao.stratics.com/php-bin/rss/read.php to get the unformatted version. With that in place, add the following SSI command to your page to read the feed:
<!--#include virtual="/cgi-bin/simpleread.pl"-->
The feed supplied has a number of CSS classes set up. You can set these in your own page to control the look of the feed if you want. The classes are as follows:
<table class="aos_main">
<tr><td class="aos_head"><a href="http://ao.stratics.com" class="aos_hlink" target="_blank">Anarchy Online Stratics</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><table class="aos_list"><tr><td class="aos_item"><a href="http://ao.stratics.com/content/news/StraticsNetworkNews.php?Cat=#newsitem1165974775,26041," class="aos_ilink" target="_blank">Regarding Our Virus Issue</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="aos_item"><a href="http://ao.stratics.com/content/news/StraticsNetworkNews.php?Cat=#newsitem1165944075,53232," class="aos_ilink" target="_blank">Attention Stratics Browsers</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="aos_item"><a href="http://ao.stratics.com/content/news/Community_News.php?Cat=#newsitem1164802215,7823," class="aos_ilink" target="_blank">Yesterday In History</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="aos_item"><a href="http://ao.stratics.com/content/news/StraticsNetworkNews.php?Cat=#newsitem1163186791,33877," class="aos_ilink" target="_blank">FINAL FANTASY® XI Vana'diel® Collection 2007 Contest</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="aos_item"><a href="http://ao.stratics.com/content/news/General.php?Cat=#newsitem1162381746,83687," class="aos_ilink" target="_blank">Funcom Seeks testers for New Player feature set</a></td></tr>
</table></td></tr></table>
If you want to access the raw RSS 1.0 data, you can reach it at http://ao.stratics.com/php-bin/rss/raw.php. Several programs can be set up to read and parse this, including WatzNew for which we have already created a channel you can install. Some older systems, like the RSSNews plugin for Trillian Pro will need the earlier RSS 0.9 format, which can be reached at http://ao.stratics.com/php-bin/rss/091.php.
Comments, bugs and suggestions can be directed to Auz.