Help me create an RSS feed from a site updated daily

August 16, 2009 12:12 PM

How can I create an RSS feed from a wordpress site that doesn't add new posts, only updates the SAME post every day? Please direct me to online tools I can utilize based on specifics below.

Specifics:
1. The website I want to create the feed from is: www.serveraday.com, which is updated every morning with a great dedicated server deal.
2. They update the SAME wordpress post from 6/25/2008 with the NEW information in this post each and every day. This prevents most feed creation tools, including feedburner, from updating a feed, as they think it's the same post.
3. I need to be able to set the tool I end up using to refresh on a daily basis, to capture the update on the site as soon as possible after it's posted.
4. I am not the owner of this site, just a person that wants to find great deals and share them through an RSS feed!

Thank you!!

posted by Merlin144 to computers & internet (5 comments total)

This isn't exactly a solution to your problem, but have you tried asking them why they do this? It would seem to me that they're kind of defeating the purpose of using a blog in the first place.

Anyway, this Google search has both pay and free options. I haven't used any of them (or anything else to monitor the changes on any site that doesn't have an RSS feed) so I can't give you anything more than that.
posted by theichibun at 12:41 PM on August 16

Changedetect?
posted by Boobus Tuber at 2:19 PM on August 16

I use Watch That Page to monitor a website with no feed that changes daily. It checks the site at the times I specify and emails me the changes. It should be able to do what you need.
posted by Tawita at 2:22 PM on August 16

If you have a server that you can run a cronjob on, perhaps set up a script to run these steps and execute it every [frequency of your choice]:

1. Fetch the contents of the blog post (cURL, wget, anything really)
2. Compare to latest saved file (see step 3)
3. If it's the same as the latest saved file, quit. If not, write to a new saved file.
4. Generate and output a feed from directory of saved versions of the page.

Either PHP or Perl could get the job done without much trouble. Assuming you have a server you can do this on, of course.
posted by jgunsch at 6:02 PM on August 16

@theichibun, I've done extensive google searches but can't find any options that offer RSS output of changes.
@Boobus Tuber, I reviewed the site and it doesn't appear that they create RSS feeds from the updated site.
@Tawita, same as above, I like their interface and options, but no RSS feed created from the changed site.

@jgunsch, Thanks for the idea! This is what I'll do. Cheers
posted by Merlin144 at 5:07 PM on August 17