Prerequisites

Background Knowledge

Before you start generating news feeds for the NZ Government Portal, you need to:

• Make sure you are generally aware of XML (Extensible Markup Language), RDF (Resource Description Framework), and RSS (RDF Site Summary).
• Have an agency internet Web site up and running with established procedures for generating content and updating pages.
• Make sure you are familiar with the SSC E-government documents RDF Site Summary for Publishing Government News and A Standard for the Publication of Government News Summaries.
• Make sure you have a means of generating RSS news summary items in well formed XML, either by using a third-party web management tool or by implementing scripts developed for your web server.
• Be familiar with the RSS Aggregator on the NZ Government Portal web site. You should be able to see the aggregated RSS news feeds on http://news.portal.govt.nz/news.rss if you have a browser that displays XML.

Skills Required

To implement the RSS news feed, you need to either have the skills, or have access to people with skills to:

• Generate news items in HTML
• Publish news items by updating your agency web site
• Reliably generate news item summaries in XML to strict specifications
• Regularly update the news summary page on your agency web site
• Liaise with SSC site administration staff and respond to issues that may arise.

Software Required

Depending on what procedures, processes and facilities you already have for managing your Web site, you may not require any new software to implement RSS and start supplying news feed.

If your agency already uses a third-party content management or web publishing package, you will probably investigate using that tool to produce your RSS news feed. In some cases you may need to acquire an additional module to augment the software you currently use.

If your agency uses scripting tools to generate HTML pages and maintain your web site, you will probably need to invest time and effort in developing and testing new scripts to produce your RSS news feed.

Manual coding and updating of your RSS news feed is not recommended. The XML standard format is quite demanding.