Motocross & RSS

What is it about the Motocross industry and the web sites it puts online? You’d think in a sport with so many die-hard, loyal fans (like myself), the big online news sources could pull it together and incorporate RSS feeds in their sites! For a moto nerd who’s on the computer all day looking for the latest moto news (that’s part of my job), well, it just bums me out, bad!

Especially since surfing’s biggest mags have news feeds, quite a few BMX company sites have blogs with RSS built in, and skate just rules all the “extreme” sports in the internet tech dept. If only Racer X, TransWorld and MotoTalk had RSS feeds…oh how it would make life so much easier.

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about with all this “RSS” talk, RSS is basically a way to share web content like news headlines. You can subscribe to a web site’s RSS feed through an RSS service, which will recieve the latest news from the site and notify you the second it’s online. You will get a list of items, each of which contains a headline, description, and a link to a web page.

To use RSS, you will need a special RSS news reader. I use the web-based Bloglines, which shows me a little red dot in my browser every time one of the feeds I subscribe to is updated. I click on the red dot and can read the latest news in one spot, before anyone else, and without even setting foot in a slow, flash-filled, browser-crashing website. I like these instructions from etnies.com, so I’ll just re-post them here, of course modified for Cropley Imagery:

To sign up for RSS:

  1. Download the and install FireFox browser, the best way to get on the Internet (it’s free)
  2. Sign up for Bloglines (also free)
  3. Install the Bloglines Toolkit (yep, you guessed it, also free)
  4. Restart FireFox and configure the Bloglines extension (Go to: Tools / Extensions / Bloglines Toolkit / Options / Add toolkit to context menu)
  5. Right click on the RSS link below
  6. Once you’ve right clicked on an RSS link, select “Blogline Toolkit,” then select “Subscribe to this Page,” and then hit “Subscribe”

Now every time that Cropley Imagery is updated, you will see a little red dot next to the blue “B” in the right corner; click on it, and you can start reading the updated site right away!

Below is a list of motocross related sites I have come across with RSS feeds:

For motocross links check out motoxlinks.com

If you come across any moto-related sites with site feeds that are not listed above, please contact me so I can add it to this list and also to my Bloglines Goolge Reader.

If you’re into BMX, check out bmxfeed.com for a list of BMX sites with news feeds.

One Response to “Motocross & RSS”

  1. Gina Says:
    June 30th, 2008 at 11:52 am

    How can I get the feeds into my website as content on my news page? I did it once before but can’t remember how.
    Thanks

    Gina

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