CyberNotes: How to Create a Feed for Sites Without Syndication

Weekend Website

I have come to rely on my RSS subscriptions more than I would like to admit. In fact, the very first thing that I do in the morning when I turn on my computer is open up my Feed Reader to go through all of my subscriptions. It’s become a way of life.  Because of that, there’s nothing more frustrating than coming across a site that I’d like to keep tabs on, that doesn’t have any syndication like RSS available.

Searching for a solution to this problem never really occurred to me until recently when I stumbled upon Feedity. It turned out to be exactly what I was looking for.

Feedity is a web feed generator for sites that don’t have syndication available.  Thousands of sites use a feed to get their content to readers, and despite this, some sites still don’t offer it.

It’s very simple, yet powerful and useful.  All you have to do is go to Feedity.com with the URL of the site without the syndication, enter in the URL, and Feedity creates an RSS feed that you can subscribe to. And to boot, no registration is required which means this is definitely a no hassle solution.

Feedity works by using content analysis to pick up on hyperlinks, and then generates a feed based upon that. Sometimes, what it generates may not be exactly what you’re wanting. If you’re not satisfied with the results, they offer option to refine them.

The first time I used Feedity was to create an RSS feed for YouTube’s “Most viewed videos for the day.”  I entered in the URL, and right off the bat it worked without a glitch, and I was able to subscribe to the feed. I tried several different sites, and with each one, there was no need to refine the results because it worked exactly how I wanted it to the first time.

Another thing that I like is that they give you examples of how you could use Feedity, like for IMDB Movie Recommendations, TiVo shows search, or even an eBay search.

Feedity is one of those things that you’ll want to stash away in your bookmarks, because eventually you’ll probably come across a site that doesn’t offer syndication. They consider this “experimental” and in Beta, so you may come across a problem here or there. Luckily, I didn’t have any problems, so no complaints here.

I’m sure there are others besides Feedity that offer the same kind of service. If you know of one, definitely let us know in the comments below so that everybody can benefit from it!

 This is just one of the hundreds of CyberNotes we have done. You can find more of them by visiting our CyberNotes category, or by subscribing to our CyberNotes feed. We also have a full feed available if you want to receive all of our articles in your reader!

Tags: CyberNotes, Web Sites

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