All About Feed Metadata

All About Feed Metadata

This feature of Syndic8 will allow you, the feed author, to add descriptive information to your feed's listing.

This extra info, or metadata as it's known, will let you tell Syndic8 things like:

Making use of these metadata elements is not difficult. Simply find the correct values and put them inside the <HEAD></HEAD> section of your web page. Then visit your feed's page on Syndic8 and select the Metadata checkbox. The Syndic8 server will visit your site, pick up that metadata and add it.

You'll get a notification if you also include a metadata element with your e-mail address:

<META NAME="dc.creator.e-mail" CONTENT="yourname@yourdomain.com">
<META NAME="dc.creator.name" CONTENT="Your Name">

There are currently 3 forms of metadata fields Syndic8 will use.

The process of collecting this metadata will require visiting some reference web sites. These links should help:

TGN - The Getty Thesarus
DMOZ - the Open Directory
GeoTags - GeoTags

  1. Open a new document in your favorite text editor. You'll use this as a working area for building this metadata.

  2. Visit the TGN and find the location that best represents your website's location. You should look for a location with the suffix (inhabited place). Make note of three things: the latitude, longitude and TGN number. The Syndic8 project, for example is located outside the Seattle, Washington area. It's TGN page is here.

    [2639853]

    Hierarchy Sammamish (inhabited place)

    Lat: 47 38 N Long: 122 04 W (represented in degrees minutes direction)
    Lat: 47.633 Long: -122.067 (represented in decimal degress and fractions of degrees)

  3. Make note of the TGN number, in this case it's 2639853. Then make note of nation, the latitide and longitude values. Use the ones listed in decimal degrees. Syndic8 will not use or recognize any format other than decimal degrees for latitude and longitude.

  4. Enter the TGN identification number, name and nation into the tgn metadata elements. Be sure to use the exact case listed, as it is case sensitive.

    <META NAME="tgn.id" CONTENT="2639853">
    <META NAME="tgn.name" CONTENT="Sammamish">
    <META NAME="tgn.nation" CONTENT="United States">

  5. Enter the GeoTag metadata elements. Again, match case sensitivity. You can use of the TGN data here.

    <META NAME="geo.position" CONTENT="47.633;-122.067">
    <META NAME="geo.placename" CONTENT="Sammamish, Washington">
    <META NAME="geo.country" CONTENT="US">

    The format of the geo.position supports three numbers, delimited by the semi-colon. A third number, elevation in meters, is optional. Many handheld GPS units provide this value.

    The geo.placename is the name of the inhabited place name and the most logical name of the region. For US cities and some countries, this is the State name. Use a name that would make sense for your region. It's acceptable for this to be just the inhabited place name. Don't feel the need to put something in here if it wouldn't make sense to people familiar with the area.

  6. The geo.country element is the two letter abbreviation of the country name. You can find the correct one on the ISO country code webpage.

  7. The dmoz.id element is is the hierarchy string that best represents your web page in the Open Directory.

    <META NAME="dmoz.id" CONTENT="Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/Tools">

    Visit the DMOZ page and find your site. If your site is not listed, consider submitting it to the DMOZ.

    If you have a listing then make note of it's URL. If your page is not listed in the DMOZ, find a section that would best represent it.

  8. Take that URL and pull off the portion for the site itself. For the Syndic8 listing this URL is
    http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/Tools/.
    The DMOZ string for this is Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/Tools/

  9. You should now have a text file that resembles this:
    <META NAME="dc.creator.e-mail" CONTENT="yourname@yourdomain.com">
    <META NAME="dc.creator.name" CONTENT="Your Name">
    <META NAME="tgn.id" CONTENT="2639853">
    <META NAME="tgn.name" CONTENT="Sammamish">
    <META NAME="geo.position" CONTENT="47.633;-122.067">
    <META NAME="geo.placename" CONTENT="Sammamish, Washington">
    <META NAME="geo.country" CONTENT="US">
    <META NAME="dmoz.id" CONTENT="Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/Tools">

  10. Place that text inside the <HEAD></HEAD> block of the web page listed in the site URL field of the feed's Syndic8 record.

  11. Visit the feed's page on Syndic8.com and check the Metadata: box. You need to have the Editor role to do this. If you do not have the Editor role on your account, post a message to the mailing list asking for help from an Editor.

This completes your work. The Syndic8 server will, during the next few days, visit your site and pick up that metadata. Once the metadata has been found you'll be able to see your site listed on the category, country and location map pages.