RSS feeds have made it very convenient to syndicate information from various sources. Most of websites and services that publish fresh content, such as ezines, press release, new agencies, blogs make their content available thru RSS feeds. As new content is published the RSS feed gets updated automatically.

Adding RSS feeds to web pages has many advantages. Let us say you have added RSS feeds from a popular ezine on one of your web pages.

* The content of the web page is automatically updated as the ezine makes new content available via RSS feeds. Every time search engine spiders crawl your web page they are likely to find the web page updated.

* The visitors to your web site will also find new content on every visit and they might be tempted to visit your web page more often.

* You do not have to bother about writing fresh content as RSS feeds are updated automatically.

Earlier I had written an article on adding RSS feeds to a web page using java script. While this method makes fresh content available to the readers, the content of the feed cannot be “read” by search engine spiders. Therefore the web page does not get the benefit of changing content from the search engines.

On the other hand php based installation makes it possible for spiders to notice the changing content of the web page. This article is a follow-up of my previous article which outlines simple steps to put RSS feeds on a web page.

For the purpose of this article I have chosen the free version of software available from CaRP. The software can be downloaded from this site:

http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/

The instruction manual which comes with the package gives detailed instructions for installing and running the software. Additional information is available from the site. While there are several options available for using the software, I am showing here the simplest steps to load and run the software:

1. Download the software on your computer. It comes in a zip file. After unzipping save the available folders and files on your computer. These files and folders will be available - carp (folder), img (folder), carpsetup.php, README.html .

2. Upload all the files and folders to the root directory of your website. This can be done by using FTP. If uploading is done file by file, ensure that the names of the files and folders, and location of files in their folders do not change.

3. Create a new mySQL database.

4. Run the setup file carpsetup.php from you web browser.

5. A new page will be displayed. On this page select mySQL database option which is easier of the two options given there.

6. Another new page will open in which you have to fill the details of mySQL database. Click on “Create Database Tables”.

7. The page which opens now will have code which has to be put on the web page where you want to show RSS feed. The code will be displayed in a gray box.

8. Within the code there is “setup code”. This setup code should be pasted into a file called carpconf.php . The file will be available in carp directory. On the html script of this file locate the line “//Add configuration code that applies to all themes here” . Just below this line paste the setup code.

9. Choose a web page where RSS feed has to be displayed. The file name of the page should have .php extension. If your page has .html or .htm extension, you can try replacing only the extension with .php . Normally this should not change the way the page appears in a web browser. If you encounter any problem you could make a new web page with .php extension.

10. At appropriate location of the web page, where you want RSS feed to be displayed, paste the code in the html script of the page. From there you can remove the setup code. It is not required to be added to all pages once it has been added to carpconf.php page in step 8 above.

11. If you now open your web page in the web browser it will start showing the RSS feed which comes along with the package. For changing this to RSS feed of your choice you will need to make changes in the code you have entered in step 10. In the code there is a URL after CarpCasheShow. Change this URL with the URL of RSS feed you wish to display.

Now the web page will display the RSS feed of your choice. You can choose to display more feeds on the same page or have separate pages for RSS feeds for different sources.

You can see this page on my website on which RSS feeds have been added using exactly the steps shown here.

http://www.sanjay-j.com/RSSFILE/homebusinesspop.php

You can see some more pages from the links on left column of this page.

I have tried to make the process easy to follow. You can always refer to more detailed instructions which come with the package. Take advantage of the free content available and use them to boost your page positioning and traffic to your website.

Will other spammers take heed? Don’t count on it. Jeremy Jaynes was on top of the world. By age 28, he owned a million-dollar home, a high-class restaurant, a chain of gyms and countless other toys. Yet those were only the spoils of his main line of business, which was swindling innocent people out of their money through email scams. From an unassuming house serving as his company’s headquarters in Raleigh, NC, Jaynes sent an estimated ten million messages a day pitching products most recipients didn’t want, amassing an estimated $24 million fortune in the process. Using aliases such as Jeremy James and Gaven Stubberfield, Jaynes spammed his way up to the #8 position on Spamhaus’ Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) and grossed as much as $750,000 a month, allowing him to live like a king.

However, Jaynes ran head-on into an information superhighway road block when a Virginia judge sentenced him to nine years in prison for his November 2004 conviction on felony charges of using false IP addresses to send mass email advertisements (some just call it spamming). The conviction was a landmark decision, as Jaynes became the first person in the United States convicted of felony spam charges. Though his operation was based in North Carolina, Jaynes was tried in Virginia because it is home to a large number of the routers that control much of North America’s Internet traffic (it’s also the home of AOL and a government building or two).

He should’ve Used the Privacy Software During the trial, prosecutors focused on three of Jaynes’ most egregious scams: software that promised to protect users’ private information; a service for choosing penny stocks to invest in; and a work-from-home “FedEx refund processor” opportunity that promised $75-an-hour work but did little more than give buyers access to a website of delinquent FedEx accounts. Sound familiar? Anyone with an e-mail address has received countless messages originating from Jaynes’ operation. (If you’re still waiting on your privacy software to show up, it’s probably safe to stop checking the mailbox.)

Jaynes got lists of millions of email addresses through a stolen database of America Online customers. He also illegally obtained e-mail addresses of eBay users. While the prosecutors still don’t know how Jaynes got access to the lists, the Associated Press reported that the AOL names matched a list of 92 million addresses that an AOL software engineer has been charged with stealing.

When Jaynes’ operation was raided, investigators found that the house from which he ran his operation was wired with 16 T-1 lines (a large office building can get by on a single T-1 line for all its users). Investigators also entered into evidence to-do lists handwritten by Jaynes. Take a look at Jeremy Jayne’s meticulously detailed lists at:

* www.ciphertrust.com/images/jaynes_notes1.JPG * www.ciphertrust.com/images/jaynes_notes2.JPG * www.ciphertrust.com/images/jaynes_notes3.JPG

Good Work if You Can Get (Away With) It The economics of spamming makes Jaynes’ decision to build a career of it understandable, though not noble. Spammers work on the law of averages, which would seem like an odd strategy considering that the average response rate for a spam message is just one-tenth of one percent. However, once you do the math even this miniscule response rate can make one very wealthy very quickly. If a spammer sends one million messages pushing a product width a $40 profit, a response rate of 0.1 percent works out to 1000 customers, or $40,000 per million messages sent. Since each message costs only fractions of a penny to send, and Jaynes was sending literally billions of messages a year, it’s easy to see how he pulled in $400,000 to $750,000 a month, while spending perhaps $50,000 on bandwidth and other overhead.

The fact that spamming can be such a profitable undertaking means that the profession is not likely to go anywhere in the near future. Spammers have financial motivation to come up with innovative ways to avoid detection, and they have begun to join forces. While the landmark decision handed down in the Jaynes trial may serve as a deterrent to some would-be spammers, it is unlikely that the threat of prosecution will keep future spammers from refining their trade. For now and the foreseeable future, the answer still lies in technology, not law enforcement.