Tutorial: how to create a RSS for Gmail Labs Random Signatures

Gmail just introduced a great way to have random signatures in gmail – using a RSS feed. I’ll show in this email a step-by-step solution for having random signatures in gmail (details on creating the RSS feed). Read on for details.

I’ve done a RSS file with my signatures that I wish to share with you. Also the method for having it online.

My personal observations:
Length of a line: 93 characters (with spaces included);
Maximum signatures in the file: 9.

Here’s how you do it:
First you might want to test my RSS file in your browser – set your signature RSS to this address:
http://fiieficient.com/gfic/wp-admin/js/zzztestsignature.rss
Press Compose once, then yet another time (Gmail first shows the original signature of yours; do a new compose, and another new compose)
If no change, try to reload gmail in browser (FireFox 2+ or Internet Explorer 7, right?)
After reload, try compose, then another compose. You should see the new 9 signatures randomly.

Did the test work? Now this is how you do your file by yourself:
1. Put the line below (via copy paste) in a new Notepad document and create up to 9 signatures in there, no signature exceeding the number of characters below:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 abcdefghijklmnopqrstu vxyz Semnatura 11 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 abcdefghijklmno

2. Update my file below to contain your up-to-9 signatures. Delete any extra blocks of data in it (so delete whole blocks of data; the blocks of data are 4 rows each)

3. Put your file in a freehosting service (try Google Pages for example, like in the example below):
http://cvolivian.googlepages.com/asig.rss

I’ve put the signature file in Google Pages also. Here’s Google Pages address:
http://pages.google.com/

4. Update Google Settings, click twice on Compose link and you’re ready to go. If errors occur, you might check the length of the signature line and reload the browser. Also pressing more than one time on Compose helps.

(oh, and i’ve done an error, there are 5 lines of text, not 4; whoops)

Here’s the file, below. If you have trouble creating it, any of the links above work fine – just download the file. If you can’t, for some reason, download RSS files, here’s two zip files with the archive (it’s the same file repetead, so only download once):
1. http://www.filebox.ro/download.php?key=0738ecdd49ea1a5de41b63a0bd8887a9 OR
http://tinyurl.com/6r4cb8

2. http://s4.transfer.ro/storage/asig-6107c.zip OR
http://tinyurl.com/553y2k

So, here’s the file you want to create by yourself:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”ISO-8859-1″ ?>
<rss version=”0.91″>

<channel>
<title>Gmail signatures (ignore this)</title>
<link>http://fiieficient.com/</link>
<description>My Gmail sigs</description>
<language>en-us</language>

<item>
<title>PUT IN HERE SIGNATURE #1 OR DELETE THE ENTIRE BLOCK OF TEXT (all 4 lines of text)</title>
<link>http://getaresultnow.com/</link>
<description></description>
</item>

<item>
<title>PUT IN HERE SIGNATURE #2 OR DELETE THE ENTIRE BLOCK OF TEXT (all 4 lines of text)</title>
<link>http://getaresultnow.com/</link>
<description></description>
</item>

<item>
<title>PUT IN HERE SIGNATURE #3 OR DELETE THE ENTIRE BLOCK OF TEXT (all 4 lines of text)</title>
<link>http://getaresultnow.com/</link>
<description></description>
</item>

<item>
<title>PUT IN HERE SIGNATURE #4 OR DELETE THE ENTIRE BLOCK OF TEXT (all 4 lines of text)</title>
<link>http://getaresultnow.com/</link>
<description></description>
</item>

<item>
<title>PUT IN HERE SIGNATURE #5 OR DELETE THE ENTIRE BLOCK OF TEXT (all 4 lines of text)</title>
<link>http://getaresultnow.com/</link>
<description></description>
</item>

<item>
<title>PUT IN HERE SIGNATURE #6 OR DELETE THE ENTIRE BLOCK OF TEXT (all 4 lines of text)</title>
<link>http://getaresultnow.com/</link>
<description></description>
</item>

<item>
<title>PUT IN HERE SIGNATURE #7 OR DELETE THE ENTIRE BLOCK OF TEXT (all 4 lines of text)</title>
<link>http://getaresultnow.com/</link>
<description></description>
</item>

<item>
<title>PUT IN HERE SIGNATURE #8 OR DELETE THE ENTIRE BLOCK OF TEXT (all 4 lines of text)</title>
<link>http://getaresultnow.com/</link>
<description></description>
</item>

<item>
<title>PUT IN HERE SIGNATURE #9 OR DELETE THE ENTIRE BLOCK OF TEXT (all 4 lines of text)</title>
<link>http://getaresultnow.com/</link>
<description></description>
</item>

</channel>
</rss>

<!–Optimal length for a signature (maximum length)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 abcdefghijklmnopqrstu vxyz Semnatura 11 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 abcdefghijklmno

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 abcdefghijklmnopqrstu vxyz Semnatura 11 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 abcdefghijklmno

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 abcdefghijklmnopqrstu vxyz Semnatura 11 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 abcdefghijklmno

–>