News Feeds
Subscribe to Minnetonka information
Would you like to know what’s new in Minnetonka without checking eminnetonka.com?
- Minnetonka news
-
The city has long been offering a weekly email update, Hot Topics, on what’s new in Minnetonka. Now, you can also learn about news stories as they are posted on the site by subscribing to our news feed:
News digest: We post a lot of news on www.eminnetonka.com, particularly at the end of each month, when we post articles from the Minnetonka Memo online as news items. If you want to reduce the individual feed entries you are receiving, you can sign up for our News Digest feed, which collects all the news items from the previous day as one entry. You will have to wait a day to get the news, but you will avoid having a number of news items show up all at once.
News by e-mail: You can also choose to receive news updates by e-mail: learn more on the MyMinnetonka News page.
- Minnetonka projects
-
Learn about new projects as they are posted on the site by subscribing to our new projects feed:
You can also receive updates on individual projects by going to that project’s page, clicking on the MyMinnetonka link, and signing up for its feed. If there is new information available on that project, it will be posted in the project’s feed. Start by visiting the projects page and finding a project you want to receive updates on.
Projects by e-mail: You can also choose to receive updates by e-mail: learn more on the MyMinnetonka Projects page.
- Minnetonka meetings
-
You can receive updates on meetings of the city council or boards and commissions by visiting the meeting page for any of these groups, clicking on the MyMinnetonka link, and signing up for its feed. If there is new information available on a meeting for that group, it will be posted in that group’s meeting feed. Start by visiting the meetings page and finding a group you want to receive updates on.
Meetings by e-mail: You can also choose to receive updates by e-mail: learn more on the MyMinnetonka Meetings page.
About feeds
What are feeds?
With a feed, you can automatically receive updates from a site without actually visiting that site. Feeds can provide the title of a news article, when it was published, a short summary of the article, and even the whole article itself, right in your feed reader. One of the main formats for feeds is RSS, Really Simple Syndication. Minnetonka’s feeds use a more updated, powerful, and standardized format called Atom. If you have a feed reader that can read an RSS feed, it can probably also read the format we are using, Atom 1.0.
What is a feed reader?
A feed reader is software that allows you to subscribe to a feed, checks with the feed’s Web site for new items on a regular basis, and then allows you to view those new items. Feed readers are now built into a number of web browsers, including Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2.0 (where they are called Live Bookmarks), Netscape 9, Opera 9, and Safari 3.0 (now available as a Beta for Windows, too), among others. Microsoft Outlook 2007 also has a built-in feed reader. Free readers are also available from Google and other sources. There are a number of resources out there to help you learn more about news feeds and how to find a feed reader. Try doing a search online for “feed reader,” “news reader,” “rss reader,” or “news aggregator.” There are many free feed readers available, but there are some that may be purchased as well.
How do I subscribe to a feed?
The standard logo indicating an available feed is displayed at right. This icon may appear in your browser in the bar where you type in your web address or in your bookmarks bar. Clicking on this logo will generally then show you a dropdown of which feeds are available on that page: clicking on the name of that feed will allow you to subscribe. If you do not see a logo in your browser, you may be able to subscribe by clicking on a link on the page with the feed logo next to it, like this:
If clicking on that link does not bring up a message asking if you want to subscribe, your browser may not support news feeds, and the content on the page may not look like a web page at all, due to the special formatting used to create a news feed. If that is the case, if you have a non-browser feed reader, you can copy the link to that news feed and paste it into the appropriate location in your feed reader where it asks you to add a new feed.
How do I read items in my feed?
Every feed reader is different, but most will at least show you the headlines of current stories. Some will show you the date that particular item was first posted, when it was last updated on our site, or when your feed reader initially downloaded that news item. Sometimes a feed reader may show just a short summary of that news item, and sometimes it will show the entire text of that news item. Generally, if just a headline or short summary is displayed, you can click on the headline to see the full story available on our site.
Your feed reader should update the news item in your reader if we update it on eminnetonka.com, but it never hurts to click on a headline to make sure you are seeing the most current information.
If you have been subscribed to a feed for a while, some of the older items listed in your feed reader may have been removed from our site because they contain outdated information, such as events that have already taken place. If you click on a headline for a news item that has become outdated, you should see a message explaining that item is no longer available.
Questions?
If you’re having any trouble subscribing to a news feed, please contact Marc Drummond, Web Technologies Coordinator, at mdrummond@eminnetonka.com or 952.939.8384.
While we can only provide limited support with explaining how to set up a feed reader, particularly if you are not using a browser that supports feeds, we would be glad to lend a little assistance in getting you started with this new way to receive information from the city of Minnetonka.
We will continue to add more news feeds in the future, so stay tuned!
