[Broadway Ad Network]

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  • BroadwayStars collects and aggregates links from around the internet related to Broadway and other theatre. We've been doing this a couple of times per day for 13 years. One thing that most people don't know is that up until now, everything was collected by a person, coded by hand, and then published.

    This was easy when there were just a few theater-related websites. But now we need to stay on top of 20+ websites dedicated to theatre, at all hours of the day. In a typical week we publish links to over 100 different websites.

    We are getting tired.

    So, we are moving to a new publishing system that is collecting links via RSS feed, then creates the HTML coding, and then the humans are going to categorize them for publishing. This will make for a much more timely routine of updates for our readers as well as being able to widen the scope of our news collection.

    But, we need your help!

    If you are a publisher of theatre content, please send us a link to your RSS feed, even if you think we have it.

    If you already have an RSS feed, great. Please make sure that it adheres to RSS 2.0 standards and has the fields below.

    If you don't have an RSS feed you will need to create one that has the following fields:

    <item>
    <title>
    <link>
    <guid>
    <description>
    <pubDate>
    <author>

    How your content will appear on BroadwayStars:

    <title> = Headline. Top line in bold, possibly larger type

    <link> / <guid> = will be the deep link into your site. If your link is different than guid, we will follow the guid.

    <description> = for our purposes is the subhead (or deck) that is below the headline on BroadwayStars. It is a tease that should be short. We will clip them if they are longer than 200 characters (including spaces).

    <pubDate> = time live on your site. Things on BroadwayStars are generally newest on top. This will help us manage this aspect.

    <author> = byline, writer credit that will be found after the headline.

    Your feed will look something like this:

    <item>
    <title>Trust Star Zach Braff on His Wild New Role and Life After Scrubs</title>
    <link>http://www.broadway.com/shows/trust/buzz/153282/trust-star-zach-braff-on-his-wild-new-role-and-life-after-scrubs/</link>
    <description>You probably recognize boyish leading man Zach Braff as Dr. "J.D." Dorian, the rubber-faced leading man in the TV medical comedy Scrubs, which recently ended its run after nine seasons.</description>
    <pubDate>Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:49:33 -0500</pubDate>
    <guid>http://www.broadway.com/shows/trust/buzz/153282/trust-star-zach-braff-on-his-wild-new-role-and-life-after-scrubs/</guid>
    </item>

    And when we publish it, it will look something like this:

    The Cinematic View From Telluride By A.O. SCOTT

    The film festival over the Labor Day weekend is at once more relaxed and more intense than others.

    Linked from The New York Times

    If you are totally lost about RSS, here is a technical document that you can read:
    http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html

    Most publishing systems like WordPress, Blogger and Movable Type will automatically give you an RSS feed.

    If you do not have an RSS feed, and do not want to create one, (or you only publish occasional theatre stories) you can use our submission form:
    http://broadwaystars.com/s/

    If you have any comments or questions, please do not hesitate to call or write.

    Update: If at all possible, please do not add any html tags to your RSS feed. This includes the ![CDATA[ -- which is being used more often for non-standard data in RSS, but it makes your article on our site look bad.

    Published on Monday, August 16, 2010

    James Marino is the founder of BroadwayStars. A technology geek with a love of theatre, he has been involved with many aspects of show business throughout his lifetime. James lives on Long Island with his wife and two kids. He loves to email and is never very far from an internet device. You can contact him in many ways:
    Friend him on Facebook
    Follow him on Twitter
    Connect with him on LinkedIn
    Email him at: [email protected]
    or just pick up a phone and call 646-873-7695


    Why are you looking all the way down here?
    For more articles by James Marino, click the links below!

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