Syndication Overview

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what is this?

The term syndication has its roots in the publication industry where it means "to sell (a comic strip or column, for example) through a syndicate for simultaneous publication in newspapers or periodicals."  In recent years, the term has applied to Web content, making the same content simultaneously available for multiple purposes.

The most common uses of syndicated content are:

• to provide fresh, up-to-date information (i.e., news headlines, stock prices, weather forecasts, etc.) for incorporation into a Web site; or
• to monitor an existing Web site for changes.

The content in this site is managed in MyST Blogsite^® as a collection of channels.  MyST Blogsite extends the syndication concept to encompass many additional information reuse possibilities, including:

• transforming channel content into an outline format (OPML), allowing the content to be manipulated in outline processing tools;
• subscribing to a channel using KlipFolio, a desktop utility that provides real-time notification of changes to a channel;
• subscribing to a channel as smart tags in Microsoft Office XP, allowing Office application to automatically hyperlink channel item names appearing in Office documents;
• direct access to all channel content in XML form,
• subscribing to a channel using all standard RSS variations (e.g., 0.91, 0.92, 1.0. 2.0) as well as variations that include extensions for content security information;
• presentation of a channel as a slide show; and
• many more