The web is a fantastic medium. You have a problem, you find a forum and ask for help; and if you’re lucky you get an answer.

I have been using XML feeds from Moreover.com for a while now to display news headlines on one of my sites (used to be 2, but one is now offline for good). Recently Moreover decided they wanted to stick adverts right at the top of the feed, which weren’t very useful to people outside of the USA – LowerMyBills.com and New York Times Subscriptions are useless over here!

I wanted these adverts removed if possible, and also to limit the number of items output from the XML. I had the limit working, but could not work out how to reject the first item. So I asked on the bit-tech forums hoping for someone who could help to reply.

I got a reply, in fact I got quite a few. Hwulex was the biggest help, and I owe him quite a few pints someday.

Thanks to Hwu, I’ve now got the news headlines displayed without adverts and limited to whatever number I wish.

The thread on bit-tech can be found here, which includes all the source code we have been working with.

I love the web.