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How to interface YACS with AvantGo?

If you have a mobile device running PalmOs or if it is a PocketPC, you can now use it to access web content managed by YACS.

AvantGo is a free service that delivers thousands of mobile websites to consumers on their handheld personal digital assistants (PDAs) and smartphones. Thousands of companies and dozens of major brands, including American Airlines, CNET, GM, Rolling Stone and The New York Times, provide mobile website content on the AvantGo service. With more than 10 million registered subscribers all over the globe, AvantGo is the world's leading mobile internet service.

If you have subscribed to their (free) service, or if you intend to do so, then your AvantGo account can be used on each synchronization to fetch fresh pages from any YACS server.

No additional configuration is required on the server side. YACS detects AvantGo requests and provides adapted, streamlined content. Then the AvantGo gateway compresses this content and reduces the size of images before transmitting them to your mobile device.

The only thing you have to do is to create a customized channel for your AvantGo account, and to link it correctly to the YACS server of interest.

As illustrated below, this process is quite simple.

[title]Login into AvantGo[/title]

Visit AvantGo and ask for a login.

Provide your user name, password, and hit the submit button.

[title]Ask for a customized channel[/title]

Use one of the main links in the middle of the page (as shown), or use links in the sidebar (select the My Account tab).

[title]Configure a customized channel[/title]

A first page is displayed to explain each of the configuration parameters. Go to the bottom of the page to find the button to the next page.

Fill the configuration panel as shown.

The title should reflect the name of the server. For the location, use the most simple URL for the home page of your site. Please add a trailing slash character after the name of your server, this will save you a lot of troubleshooting time

Keep a size of 100k, except if you have a lot of graphics in your page.

The Link-Depth should be set to 1, in order to let AvantGo load the index page, plus listed pages.

Include images if you wish.

Lastly, ask for a refresh every 2 hours. This will speed the process if you are synchronizing frequently.

Then hit the submit button.

[title]Download pages to your mobile device[/title]

Once the channel has been setup, you just have access the service by syncing your device via a notebook or desktop computer.

The content is then viewed in "offline" mode. Launch the AvantGo browser on your mobile and tap on article titles. Isn't it funny to have your web site at hand in a so-little box?

Please note that the service provided by AvantGo is free only to the very first subscribers of a channel. To be clear, if too many people want to read your site through the AvantGo service, you will have to pay for that.

Therefore, you anly have two options. The first one is to keep it secret, and to be alone using your personal channel. On the other hand, you may think that mobile technologies in general, and AvantGo in particular, will be of great help to your business. Your YACS server is ready to support both scenarios anyway.