Head First PHP & MySQL

Chapter 13. Syndication and Web Services: Interfacing to the world

It’s a big world out there, and one that your web application can’t afford to ignore. Perhaps more importantly, you’d rather the world not ignore your web application. One excellent way to tune the world in to your web application is to make its data available for syndication, which means users can subscribe to your site’s content instead of having to visit your web site directly to find new info. Not only that, your application can interface to other applications through web services and take advantage of other people’s data to provide a richer experience.

Owen needs to get the word out about Fang

One of the big problems facing any web site is keeping people coming back. It’s one thing to snare a visitor, but quite another to get them to come back again. Even sites with the most engaging content can fall off a person’s radar simply because it’s hard to remember to go visit a web site regularly. Knowing this, Owen wants to offer an alternative means of viewing alien abduction reports—he wants to “push” the reports to people, as opposed to them having to visit his site on a regular basis.

Push alien abduction data to the people

By pushing alien abduction content to users, Owen effectively creates a virtual team of people ...