Display RSS feeds on your webpage

Someone asked me this week how I display RSS feeds from three external sources on my personal website ErikBainbridge.com if it’s not a WordPress website.  WordPress after all offers a convenient function, RSSImport(), for reading RSS feeds on a WordPress webpage, but there is no equivalent function that I’m aware of for non-Wordpress webpages.

The answer is that I cheated.  Although ErikBainbridge.com doesn’t appear to be a WordPress website, it actually is.  I’m just not using a Theme and I don’t have a blog on that website.  I simply built WordPress into it so I would have access to RSSImport().

It’s a solution that works, but building a website with WordPress underlying it is a lot of work just to have easy access to RSS feeds.  Is there an easier way?

Yes, there is, and I use it on my AvatarPlanet.com website, where I display the three most recent posts from my Avatar Planet blog.  I could display RSS feeds from any website, not just my own.  It’s equally as capable as using RSSImport(), and the way I did it is actually easier to implement as long as you don’t mind dealing with a few lines of PHP.

Before I start, there are several caveats you need to be aware of.  In order for this to work, your PHP implementation needs to have PEAR and XML_Parser installed, and allow_url_fopen must be set to “ON”.  Unless you are the system administrator, you probably won’t have control over either of these.  Assuming that your system is configured this way,  you should be able to fairly easily display RSS feeds on your webpage.

The following is how I did it on avatarplanet.com to read feeds from my blog, blog.AvatarPlanet.com and to display the three most recent posts.  The output is in the form of a bulleted (unordered) list in which every line is the headline from the RSS feed that you can click to read the full post :

<?php
require_once “XML/RSS.php”;

$rss =& new XML_RSS(“http://blog.avatarplanet.com/?feed=rss”);
$rss->parse();

echo “<ul>”;
$number_posts=3;
foreach ($rss->getItems() as $item) {
   if (++$i <= $number_posts) {
      echo “<li><a href=\”” . $item[‘link’] . “\”>” . $item[‘title’] . “</a></li><br>”;
   }
}
echo “</ul>”;
?>
If you haven’t written PHP before, here are a few basics you need to know:

  1. You insert these lines into your HTML file.  In order for them to work, you’ll  need to change the filename’s extension from .html or .htm to .php.  Be sure to remove the old file from the directory, or there may be unpredictable results, especially if the file is named index.htm or index.html.
  2. You should copy the above lines of PHP and paste them into your HTML where you want it displayed.
  3. “<?php” and “?>” are opening and closing tags that mark the lines as PHP rather than HTML.
  4. You need to copy and paste these lines exactly as they appear here.

There are only two changes you need to make, other than formatting changes (for example if you don’t want it to appear as a bulleted list):

  1. Change “blog.avatarplanet.com/?feed=rss” to the url of whatever RSS feed you want.  For example, if you wanted the New York Times home page RSS feed, you would use the url “rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml’.
  2. This example displays the three most recent items in the RSS feed.  If you want a different number, change the number 3 in the line “$number_posts=3” to whatever number you want.

If you want to display RSS feeds from more than one url, just repeat everything in the above code except the line containing “require_once “XML/RSS.php”;”  All you have to change is the url.

I can’t guarantee this method of displaying RSS feeds will work for you, but as long as your system is configured the way I described above, it should work.

Diva Wifi 7.4 released

Diva Canto has just released Wifi 7.4.  This means that those of us who have been waiting since OpenSim 7.4’s release last week can now upgrade.  Diva’s Wifi provides a convenient user interface for managing OpenSim logins.  To download Wifi 7.4, go to https://github.com/diva/d2/downloads and download wifi-0-7-4.zip. You can download OpenSim 7.4 at http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Download.

If you want to experiment with your own grid but don’t want to contend with the much greater technical challenge of full OpenSim, the Diva distro is a very nice preconfigured package that handles many of the technical details for you in setting up your own standalone OpenSim 7.4 world.  I’ve used it and it worked very well for me.  Diva Wifi is included as part of that package.  Go to https://github.com/diva/d2/downloads and download diva-r20232.zip.  It includes the Wifi package.

Exploring alternatives to Second Life

With Second Life® undergoing profound changes, many of us who love it have been left wondering how we should react to the changes.  Some people have been exploring other virtual worlds and a few of us have been experimenting with building our own.  In future posts, I’ll be writing about both.

In particular, I’ll be sharing my own experiences in creating my own little virtual world, which is still in very early stages of development.  I need to state up front that I am neither a Linux expert nor an OpenSim expert.  I’m learning both as I go.  My intention in this blog is to share my experiences from time to time with you, in the hopes that it will help you start and run your own world.

My little virtual world currently consists of 8 sims hosted on my own OpenSUSE server that I built and configured myself, running on my home dsl.  It’s still under development.  Time pressures have kept me from resolving some issues that I want to take care of before inviting more people into it.

I started by creating a test world using WAMP with Windows, and the Diva distro.  Diva is great – you can read about setting it up in an excellent Hypergrid Business explanation.  It allows you to get a basic four sim world up and running quickly, and a WAMP server is fairly easy to set up.  The problem is that WAMP is not very secure.  It’s a great way to start getting server and OpenSim experience, but if you choose to try it, don’t do it on your regular computer, or on any computer containing personal or confidential data!  Because I build my own computers, I had a spare lying around on which I could run WAMP without taking any great risks.  WAMP is a great way to do development on Windows, but it should not be used on a regular basis for an OpenSim grid that’s open to the public.

After getting a good introduction to OpenSim using WAMP and Diva, I built my own OpenSUSE Linux server and created an entirely new world with full OpenSim rather than Diva.

Why didn’t I stick with Diva?  I was impressed with Diva.  It’s fairly easy to set up and works well.  Diva does require a fair amount of technical skill, but much less than regular OpenSim.  For most people, Diva is the better way to go.

However I’m someone who enjoys tackling technical challenges and although I didn’t have much prior Linux experience, I am technically proficient – I’m a former software engineer and I’ve been building my own computers for 20 years – so I decided to plunge into regular OpenSim.

In future posts I’ll be writing about some of the challenges I’ve faced, solutions I’ve found, and useful resources.

I still love Second Life and although I’ve scaled back on my land ownership there, I have no intention of leaving. However the universe of virtual worlds is growing and in the future, we’ll probably be active in more than one.  For me, the prospect of being able to create my own world is even more exciting.  Not long ago it would have been an impossible dream, but with alternatives such as CloudParty, Kitely, Diva, and OpenSim emerging, it’s becoming a possibility even for those without technical skills.

Lamplighter photos from Burn 2 April Fools event

It’s been too long since I posted anything here!

Here are some photos of this weekend’s Lamplighter performance in Second Life at the Burn 2 April Fools event:

Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012
Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012

Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012
Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012

Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012
Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012

Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012
Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012

Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012
Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012

Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012
Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012

Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012
Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012

Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012
Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012

Burn 2 – what a disappointment!

What a disappointment!  You wait a year to see The Man burn in Burn 2 in Second Life, only to see a black void while others can see it and be part of it with no problem!

What went wrong?  I have no idea.  Some people could see the Man burn and could add logs to the blaze, while others like me couldn’t see or enter the sim.  This picture shows what it looked like for me.

Unable to see The Man burn
Man was burning out there somewhere, but many of us couldn't see him

I was using two computers, but had the same problem on both.  I tried three different avatars and five Second Life viewers (Phoenix, Imprudence, Firestorm, SL Viewer 3, and Kirstens), but all had the same problem.  I couldn’t see anything.  I don’t know whether the problem was the fault of Linden Lab or of the Burn 2 organization, or just a glitch in the matrix, but whatever it was, it was extremely frustrating to those of us who love this event and look forward to it every year.

There will be one more Man Burn in a couple hours, at 3:30am PST/SLT.  I expect that I’ll be asleep then.

The Temple Burn is tomorrow.  It’s my favorite event of Burn 2, even more than the Man Burn.  I hope it goes better than today.

The Temple is scheduled to burn at 11:30am PST/SLT Sunday, 3:30pm PST/SLT Sunday, and 3:30am PST/SLT Sunday.  Second Life members can teleport to The Man at slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Man-%20Black%20Rock/234/41/25 and to the Temple at slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Man-%20Black%20Rock/216/198/25 .

Where is everyone?

Attendance at this year’s Second Life Community convention is much less than I expected.  The last time I attended one, in 2009, halls were crowded with SL residents conversing and the Grand Ballroom was packed.  This year there are a lot fewer of us.  It’s disappointing that I’ve only met two people so far who I know in SL, but the two breakout sessions I’ve attended so far, portrait photography and a basic mesh tutorial, have been excellent.


Lighting for portrait photography in SL

At SLCC today, Stefan Buscaylet  gave an informative presentation about portrait photography in Second Life.  The photographic tools available in Viewer 2 are far more versatile than I realized, and should appeal to serious RL photographers.  I’ll write more about this in the future, after I’ve had a chance to work on it myself.

You can have your own virtual world

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have your own virtual world?  It might be for your business or university, or maybe just for you and your friends to hang out in without having to deal with griefers.   Or maybe you’ve wished you could experience other virtual worlds without having to create a new account in each one.

Both are becoming possible.  Two emerging software packages, OpenSim and HyperGrid, will soon make them realities and in some cases even easy.  Best of all, Second Life® members  won’t need to learn much that’s new.  The skills you’ve learned In Second Life will mostly carry over to the OpenSim worlds and you can use unofficial Second Life viewers such as Imprudence and Phoenix to visit any OpenSim world.  The Hypergrid will do something even more wonderful: it will connect OpenSim virtual worlds in much the way that the Web connects websites.  The day is coming when you can have a website that will contain a portal to your own virtual world, and when you’ll be able to teleport from your world to other virtual worlds.

I’ve tried  three ways you can have your own virtual world today.  All are new and still under development.  None are really products yet.  They are for pioneers, but they are real and available for you to try.  The ones I’ve tried are:

  • Kitely.  This is an amazing concept.  It’s what will interest most people.  You can have your own single sim virtual world created in just two minutes or less!  I have three Kitely worlds.  It’s the only one of the four that requires no technical ability to se it up.  The limitations are present are that you can’t get on the HyperGrid yet and you can have only one sim.
  • Diva distro.  This is the easiest way to get you to get a world with more than one sim and that’s on the Hypergrid, but you should try it only if you have some technical skills, such as being able to configure port forwarding on your router.  Nonetheless, for someone accustomed to configuring computers and software it’s fairly easy to set up.  I had mine up fairly quickly and friends were logging into it and enjoying it.  The Diva distro will meet the needs of most people.
  • OpenSim.  If you anticipate needing more than one server for your world or if you want full flexibility in building your world, then the regular OpenSim distro is what you need.  It’s not for the faint of heart, however, and requires a fair amount of technical skills.  If you have the skills and the strong pioneering spirit required for plunging into software that’s still being developed, the big problems you’re likely to face are the lack of documentation and the fact that because it’s still evolving as a product, answers you find to your questions are likely to apply to older versions of OpenSIm and not to yours.  I have just gotten my own 8 sim virtual world going, but it still needs work to get it to run right.  I’ll be writing about my progress in future posts.

Here are some links where you can learn more:

Kitely:  http://www.kitely.com/

Download links for Diva and Opensim: http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Download

Diva Canto’s blog (Diva Canto created the Diva distro and in RL is University of California at Irvine professor Cristina Lopes): http://metaverseink.com/blog/

Don’t let a landbot take your Second Life land

My last post was about a landbot was able to buy for only eight cents the Second Life™ land that I had planned to sell for $150.  Today I wrote a column on examiner.com that tells more about it.  You can read it at www.examiner.com/second-life-in-national/don-t-let-a-landbot-take-your-second-life-land.

Landbots have been a problem in Second Life for at least four years.  Linden Lab won’t do anything about it.  Opinions about it range from outrage that a landbot can take your land instantly if you make a careless mistake to smug belief that if you made the mistake, you deserve to lose your land.

I believe there should be a waiting period after it’s marked for sale before it can be purchased.  Not a long period, just a few minutes, to give the seller the opportunity to find their mistake and correct it.  At the very least, the seller should be warned before completing the transactions that there are landbots who will buy the land instantly if there are any errors made in marking the land for sale.

For me, going for two days believing I had lost my land and not even able to enter the land because the buyer had banned entry was like electroshock treatment.  I had been planning on buying a Second Life private region, but cancelled those plans and instead have begun creating my own OpenSim virtual world that will soon be on the hypergrid.  I’ll be writing a lot more about the process.

This doesn’t mean I’m leaving Second Life.  I love Second Life and have no intention of leaving.  I had been looking forward for months to buying a sim and developing it, but I’m finding that creating an entire new world is even more of a thrill, not to mention a lot cheaper.  I’m fortunate in having the technical skills and computers to host it myself, so  my currently four sim world has so far cost me exactly nothing.