Syndicated content sharing with others

Definition – 'content sharing' means: offering the contents of a webpage to another website to directly insert into its own page. It is not the same as 'content management', the system by which a number of contributors automatically add or update content to a single website.

Content sharing has a number of advantages. The recipient site obtains added-value by the instant creation of additional pages, ready-written by other people. The donor writer receives additional readers for his or her material, and the donor site receives added exposure via a link on the shared page.

There are several ways of calling up the contents of a page into a recipient site. The method described here uses the Javascript insert method. The user adds a line of code which calls up a file containing the contents of the page, which has been 'parsed' (converted) into Javascript. This method of content sharing is explained here. If you only have a small number of unchanging pages to offer, then it is easy to convert them into Javascript, and place the files on your server for easy linking.

However, if you have a large number of pages that you wish to offer, which may also be frequently updated, there would be considerable work involved in maintaining and updating a duplicate set of pages as Javascript files. The system explained on this page uses PHP to automatically parse into Javascript, any page within a site. Once set up, it is therefore a great time-saver. All the pages on this site are available to insert using this method.

Uses

Although there is a more elegant CSS solution, you could also use it to create a second version of a page within your own site which is 'printer-friendly'. It can remove graphics, navigation bars, etc., and allows CSS to set narrow margins and font size at say, 12pt serif – an ideal printer setup.

The search engine trap

Other methods of content sharing which involve text 'hard-coded' into the page (e.g. normal PHP insertion, or permission to copy/paste the text) are dangerous because they create duplicate content visible to search engines. Any system of content-sharing using 'hard-coding' must be combined with a no-robots meta tag on the page (or in the root directory). It is difficult to expect users to understand this issue and always add no-robots commands to their pages. Without such a guarantee, hard-coding is a dangerous option to offer.

How it works

This system will capture web-pages with any file extension: .html, htm, .php, etc.

Absolute/relative links

Can I use PHP?

Furthermore, if you currently have webpages ending in the standard .html or .htm file extensions, it may be possible for you to use PHP without changing your page file extensions to 'php', which would spoil all your incoming links, bookmarks, search engine listings, etc. Talk to your site host. If you are not already routinely using PHP, this represents an incredible increase in versatility for you, without any of your page URLs needing to change.

If your server cannot handle PHP, all may not be lost! Find a friend with some spare bandwidth, whose server does handle PHP, and ask if they can host the single PHP script required to make this system work. The script will still work with full paths specified. You can still use a single site-wide insertion code, modified by Javascript, as explained later.

The PHP code

• Using a text editor such as Wordpad, copy/paste the code below into a new page named getPageContent.php. Note – this code is the entire content of that page, which must not contain anything else such as head or body tags. Save the page in the same directory as your pages to be parsed, or anywhere else if you define the correct path to it. (It could even be on a friend's server if you do not have access to PHP.)

• Unless you are a PHP programmer and understand how to modify the script, only make changes to the coding in red. Hover your mouse for further information on these parts of the code, and see the notes below.

<?php

// this PHPtoJavascript converter is available from web-evangelism.com/resources/content-sharing.php

function getPageContent( $url ){
        return( implode( file( $url ), "" ) );
}
        function parseContentByTagName( $content ){
        preg_match_all( '/<div id="mycontentuniqueID">([\n\r\w\W.]*?)<\/div>/i', $content, $contentArray );

        return( implode( $contentArray[0], "" ) );
}

if( $pageID == "" )
        print( "You have passed an invalid page, please include the paramater: pageID" );
else{
        $pageContent = getPageContent( $pageID );
        $pageContent = parseContentByTagName( $pageContent );

        if( $pageContent == "" )
        print( "document.write( \"<ul><li><a href='http://www.yoursite.com/pages/$pageID'>Click here for Yoursite Name page: $pageID</a></ul>\" );");

        $pageContent = str_replace( '"', '\"', $pageContent );
        $pageContent = str_replace( "\n", " ", $pageContent );
        $pageContent = str_replace( "\r", " ", $pageContent );
        $copyrightDate = date("Y"); $pageContent = $pageContent . "<p><span style=\'font-size=80%;margin-left:3em;\'>&copy; $copyrightDate web-evangelism.com. Used by permission. <a href=\'http://www.yoursite.com/pages/conditions.php\'>Conditions for re-use</a></span><p><ul style=\'margin-left:3em;\'><li>Visit the <a href=\'http://www.yoursite.com\'>Yoursite Name</a> for more pages on the subject of whatever</ul>";

        print( "document.write( \"" . $pageContent . "\" );" );
}
?>

User-changable code elements

• This PHP code operates by searching for the opening and closing ID markers on the target page. It only parses the enclosed text into Javascript, not the entire page. If the specified markers are missing it will not attempt to parse the page, but will create a fallback visible link on the end-user's page to the target page, in the same way that a <noscript> link does.

• It is possible to open and close these markers more than once on the target page, so that only designated content will be parsed. Navigation elements, pictures, or any parts of the text, can be easily excluded as required. Obviously, there are some elements of your page which would be confusing or inappropriate if they appeared on the end-user's page – header graphics, navigation bars, etc. The script allows the insertion of any additional element of text at the beginning or the end, such as a copyright notice, plus what you will almost certainly require – a link to take visitors from the end-user's page to the rest of your site.

• The markers can in fact be anything. In the example above, the opening marker is div id="mycontentuniqueID" and the closing marker is /div. However, if the main content of your page contains other divs, the code will look for the first closing /div as an end marker. Therefore you would need to add further opening markers. But in fact, your markers can be anything. For instance span id="mycontentuniqueID" and /span work – though the same issue applies if you have closing span tags within the page.

  You can also use notional class tags <p class="start"> and <p class="end"> as markers.

  If all your pages have consistent coding, you can even designate existing elements of page code within them as starting and ending markers. This will save you having to add markers to all your pages. For instance, if you want your own header included, you can designate h1 as the starting marker, or any existing div class=" or p=class=" tag. Then choose some other consistent code element near the end of the page as a closing marker – for instance a href="homepage.html" or the opening code for any end navigation menu.

  If you are using CSS to specify several blocks of content on your page such as top navigation bar, main page content, and footer (for instance something like class="topnav", class="maincontent", class="footer", then you can use the class="maincontent" tag as your opening marker and class="footer" as your closing marker. (This is assuming that you don't have any elements of content within the "maincontent" text area you wish to exclude.)

• The appearance of your page will be controlled by the recipient's style sheet (if any). Therefore if there are specific elements within your page which are modified (on your site) by your own style sheet, you have three choices:
  1. Allow them to be rendered in normal default text
  2. Modify them using inline style coding, e.g.:
     

     <span style="color:red;font-size=80%;margin-left:3em;">page element here</span>

  3. Insert some style coding immediately above this line in the code:

     $pageContent = str_replace( '"', '\"', $pageContent );

     which the script will add into the body of the recipient's page, above the inserted text, thereby adding to the recipient's overall style sheet. Add the style elements in a single line like this example:
     

     $pageContent = $pageContent . "<style type=\"text/css\"><!--div.box { border: solid; border-width: thin; border-color: red; width: 30%; padding: 6px; font-size: 75%; color: red; float: right; text-align: left; }--></style>";

     Note how the style sheet has been placed in one line, and double quote marks are escaped with backslashes.

  Do not use more than the bare minimum of style necessary for correct rendering of your page content. The whole point of content-sharing is that the content blends seamlessly into recipients' pages, and follows the style they wish to set.

The page insert code

<script language="JavaScript" src="http://www.yoursite/pages/getPageContent.php?pageID=mypage.html" type=text/javascript>
</script>

<noscript>Click here for <a href="http://www.yoursite.com/pages/mypage.html">Name of page here</a> - short explanation about page
</noscript>

You will see how this site offers the insert code at the end of nearly every page, within a small textarea from which it is easy to highlight and copy the coding.

Note that the insert script will not operate on your hard drive. The page must be viewed online in order for the script to operate. You must do testing online, unless you have a PHP emulator on your hard-disk.

Automating the insert code for users to copy

Using PHP

src="http://guide.gospelcom.net/resources/getPageContent.php?pageID=<?php echo $file_name = basename($PHP_SELF); ?>"

Click here for <a href="http://guide.gospelcom.net/guide/resources/<?php echo $file_name = basename($PHP_SELF); ?>"><?php print $shorttitle; ?></a> a section within <b><?php print $subject; ?></b> subject area of the <b>Web Evangelism Guide</b>.

A second PHP way to grab the page title for insertion into the noscript text is demonstrated here.

Javascript method to grab the current page title and file name

Offering the code on a linked page

By PHP: Creates insert code by grabbing the both the file name of the referring page and its title, with PHP. This will automatically create a custom jump-code and <noscript> wording for users to copy: demonstration and code.

By Javascript: If you do not have access to PHP on your server, and have asked a friend to host your getPageContent.php file, you can also use a single site-wide explanation page, using Javascript to insert the file name of the page into the copy/paste jump-code, rather than PHP: demonstration and code.

Saying thank you

Iif you are using this script on a page intended for a Christian readership, please could you include a link to the Guide homepage:
http://guide.gospelcom.net/index.php

If you use this script on any other sort of site, please consider a link to this page:
http://guide.gospelcom.net/resources/content-sharing.php

If you use the system, we may be able to list your site here as demonstration to others. Please .

If you have never thought about the meaning of life before, why not investigate.