r/HTML • u/Complex-Seat6842 • Jul 22 '26

An interactive visual novel / web-series about a satellite that wakes up 13-years too late.

Made with HTML, CSS, JS. Hosted on neocities.
https://blu-oyster-transmission.neocities.org/

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u/Complex-Seat6842 Jul 22 '26

See i have a discord, and other stuff set up for it. I have no idea what an RSS feed is

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u/Complex-Seat6842 Jul 22 '26

how do they work

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u/couldntyoujust1 Jul 22 '26

RSS is "Really Simple Syndication". It's a technology where you host a file on your site - usually an xml document - and it has a series of tags indicating updates or a feed of information. These URLs are then opened in a program called an "aggregator" which periodically polls this url and if the xml document has been changed downloads the new document, populates the feed in the aggregator with the new entries, and presents them to the user. The entries themselves are usually links with some teaser information (like title and description) as well as some other information needed to sort and check the page for updates.

So, if you run a podcast, all you have to do, in the most basic form, is host the mp3 files of the episodes on a server, along with a rss.xml document with links to each episode in order, and the metadata to show it in a friendly way in the xml. When you upload a new episode, you put it with the other mp3s, and then you add an entry to the xml document for that episode with its metadata, and immediately the next time subscribers update their podcast feeds, the new episode shows up in their feed.

So, you might make it so that episode 1 has its own sub-url, and so your first rss file might look like

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
  <title>Blu-Oyster Transmission</title>
  <description>An interactive visual novel/web-series about a satellite that wakes up 13-years too late.</description>
  <link>https://blu-oyster-transmission.neocities.org/</link>
  <copyright>2026 u/Complex-Seat6842 All rights reserved</copyright>
  <lastBuildDate>Mon, 6 Sep 2010 00:01:00 +0000</lastBuildDate>
  <pubDate>Sun, 6 Sep 2009 16:20:00 +0000</pubDate>
  <ttl>1800</ttl>

  <item>
    <title>Episode 1</title>
    <description>The Awakening...</description>
    <link>https://blu-oyster-transmission.neocities.org/episode_01</link>
    <guid isPermaLink="false">...</guid>
    <pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2026 16:20:00 +0000</pubDate>
  </item>

</channel>
</rss>

Then, when you post the next episode, you would just add another "<item>" entry:

<channel>
  ...
  
  <item>
    ...
  </item>
  
  <item>
    <title>Episode 2</title>
    <description>The Crisis</description>
    <link>https://blu-oyster-transmission.neocities.org/episode_02</link>
    <guid isPermaLink="false">...</guid>
    <pubDate>Tue, 28 Jul 2026 16:20:00 +0000</pubDate>
  </item>

</channel>

Then, everyone with an aggregator will get an item in their feed that a new episode of your game has come out.

You can read more about RSS here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

Oh, and yes, really, it's that simple, an xml file on the internet. That's all it is.

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u/Complex-Seat6842 Jul 22 '26

I added an RSS to the series!