Hi Gordon,

Better late, right?


> - as to uploading a brief history etc... - How does
> that work - what do you think people will upload ?
> (you mean management logs? - I havnt done that yet
> - detailed logs)

No, actual messages they've received. Every (competent) email program
allows you to save messages out in some fashion or another. The MSG or
MBOX formats are probably the most popular. They zip them up and upload
them, your server exctracts it and then parses the content the same as
it would anything else.

Alternatively, if the group has an online archive you could have your
engine visit the site and spider the last 'x' messages.


> As to the RSS feed - i'll need the help of an RSS guru -
> i have no idea re RSS....

RSS isn't too hard. It's a strange markup language in that its NOT
intended to be used by people to just view it. But you can. Here's one
(for this group):
http://rss.groups.yahoo.com/group/xYG/rss

Yahoos RSS feeds are only available IF the group allows public archives.
If it doesn't then you're pretty much out of luck or have to build your
own based on the input you get from them (your own archives). I've also
written scalpers that essentially parse the results of a remote site
based on a given pattern and build the RSS feed on that. Here's one of
those:
http://reliableanswers.com/rss/mli.asp
The original source doesn't have an RSS feed (how sick is that?!) so I
had to make my own. :)

There are a number of RSS aggegators out there, and they can work pretty
much any way you might want. I personally use the "News" plugin for
Trillian for aggregating my RSS feeds. I don't know how I'd live without
it these days. I also use server-side-code-based aggregators for
different client sites. For example, this site:
http://www.motherlodek9.com/
...has an RSS feed taken from "clickertraining.com" embedded directly
onto the homepage near the bottom using a couple lines of ASP code. I've
considered doing the same thing for my programming lists on different
pages of my own sites. I've been putting it off for over a year. Sigh.

Regards,

Shawn K. Hall
http://12PointDesign.com/
http://ReliableAnswers.com/

'// ========================================================
Some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant.