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How To Library: How to Add a News Feed to a Site in bSpace

This document will demonstrate how to add news to a site in bSpace using an RSS news feed. Adding news to your worksite using RSS feeds allows you and your site's participants to keep up-to-date on news from other Web sites. Content is displayed within your bSpace worksite. Some possible uses include:

  • Add a feed from a relevant research journal to your course or project worksite
  • Add a feed from a foreign newspaper to a conversational language course worksite
  • Add a political news feed to a Political Science or Journalism course worksite
  • Add a feed from NASA for an Astronomy course worksite
  • Add a feed from the UC Berkeley News Center
Before you begin, make sure:
  • you are logged in to bSpace with your CalNet ID or guest account (http://bspace.berkeley.edu)
  • you have clicked the tab for the site you want to update
  • you have editing privileges in the site

  • Locating the RSS feed

    Let's start by finding an RSS feed that we want to use. RSS feeds can usually be found by going to the relevant news or journal site and searching for the text “RSS” on the page, or looking for an orange RSS logo on the page. In this example, we will located the RSS feed for the New York Times: Technology section, to be placed on a course site.

    1. First, let's visit the main New York Times website at http://www.nytimes.com .

    2. Next, let's search for the text “RSS” on the main page. To search for text on a page in your web browser, type CTRL+F or simply go to the Edit menu and select “Find” – in Firefox, this will say “Find (on This Page)” and in Mozilla Firefox this will say “Find in this page.”

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    3. After selecting “Find,” a text box will appear which allows you to type in your search term. In Internet Explorer, this text box will pop-up in the middle of the page. In Mozilla Firefox, the text box will appear near the bottom of the screen.

    4. Type “rss” into the text field and press Enter.

    5. The text search will lead you to an RSS link near the bottom of the page. Click the orange RSS icon.

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    6. After clicking the RSS link, you will get a page of the different RSS feeds offered by the New York Times. Since we are looking for the Technology RSS feed, scroll down to the “Technology” link and click the orange RSS icon.

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    7. After clicking the RSS link, you will get a page with news feeds.. We want to copy the URL for this page so we can later paste it into the bSpace News tool. The URL (web page address) for the page can be found in the address field at the top of the web browser.

      Tip: Most RSS feed URLs end with either “.xml” or “.rss”. If the URL you find ends with “.xml” or “.rss”, there is a good chance it is an appropriate RSS feed URL and not just a normal web page URL.

    8. Keep this web page open so you can copy the URL into bSpace later in this tutorial (Step 5 of Adding the News Tool below).

      Next, let's add the News tool to your bSpace site so that we can access this RSS feed from bSpace.

    • Adding the News Tool

    1. From within your bSpace site, click Site Info in the left toolbar. Tip: You can also add news when you are first setting up your worksite.

    2. Click the Edit Tools button in the top toolbar .

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    3. Click the checkbox in front of News to select it and then click the Continue button at the bottom of the screen.

    4. Enter a title for the news feed in the Title field. This title will display in the left toolbar of the course worksite. In this case, we've entered “NYT: Technology.”

    5. Paste the exact URL from the New York Times: Technology RSS feed into the URL field, and then click Continue.

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      Tip: You can add more than one feed by choosing the number of additional feeds you want from the More News Tools dropdown menu.

    6. On the next screen, click the Finish to confirm the addition of the News tool to your site

    7. The news feed title you have chosen will now appear in the left toolbar of your site. Clicking this button in the toolbar displays the current RSS feed content within your bSpace site .

      Tip: To change the title and URL for any RSS feed in the toolbar, click the Options button at the top of the RSS feed page (highlighted in the screenshot below).

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