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Subject: RSS Feeds are now available
Posted by: Guru
- [330592710] Fri, Nov 19, 2004, 14:07
This forum has now been syndicated!
A bunch of RSS feeds are now available. If you have an RSS reader, you can now have it access whichever of these feeds is of interest to you.
There are three levels of feeds:
1. An aggregate feed captures all activity on all forums. The URL for this feed is:
http://rotoguru1.com/rss/combo.xml
2. A forum topic feed is available for each topic area. These feeds will only track activity within that forum topic. For example, the feed for the Politics forum is:
http://rotoguru1.com/rss/pol.xml
3. Each thread will have a separate feed. These feeds will only track posts to their corresponding thread. As an example, here is the feed URL for the current injury thread in the Hoops forum:
http://rotoguru1.com/rss/hoop/10781.xml
Each feed file will be updated every time an associated thread has a new post. Included in the feed for each item is the first 300 (or so) characters of the posted message. To avoid potential coding errors, embedded html tags are effectively disabled by putting them in brackets. HTML tables are not duplicated. One of these days, I may get more sophisticated and pass along valid html tags, but that's beyond the current project scope.
For the top two feed levels (aggregate and forum topic), only the most recent post for each thread will be listed. If your RSS reader has a memory, however, it may retain multiple posts for a single thread. For a thread feed, each post will be listed. A total of 25 items may be included in each feed, although your RSS reader may limit the number you can actually view at any time.
On each forum page with a feed, you will now find an orange link to its feed. For example, at the top of this page you will find a link to the feed for this specific thread. One each forum index page, you will find a link to the feed for that forum.
Thanks to those of you who suggested this idea to me, and who helped me set it up. I must confess that I have not used RSS feeds prior to this, but I can see the possibilities. I expect that most of you will ignore this opportunity for now, and that's fine. But at some point, if you wish to take advantage of it, the capability is now here.
Older threads will not necessarily have current feeds. Feeds began to be generated earlier this week, so any thread (or forum) without recent activity will not have a feed. Every new post will generate a feed, however, so if an old thread is reactivated, a feed will be created. The feeds will have no memory of posts prior to this week, however.
I've attempted to set up feed links so that they will only appear on pages which have a current feed. If you are reading a thread without an RSS feed link, there may not yet be an active feed for that thread. But there will be, once a new post is made.
Clear as mud?
Please report any apparent glitches. I've done fairly extensive testing, but there's nothing like going live to flesh out a few new anomalies.
I'd encourage those who are experienced users of RSS feeds to use this thread to provide tips and ideas on how these feeds might be used. |
| 1 | Motley Crue
Leader
ID: 439372011
Fri, Nov 19, 2004, 14:47
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Boy do I feel dumb!
I have no idea what any of this means. But it sounds quite ambitious. I clicked on the link and it works fine for me. I just don't have the higher brain power to imagine the possibilities.
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| 2 | Motley Crue
Leader
ID: 439372011
Fri, Nov 19, 2004, 14:50
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OK, well I just reviewed the other thread and I think I get it. Nice touch, Guru.
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| 3 | allhair allstars
Sustainer
ID: 50902421
Fri, Nov 19, 2004, 21:32
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Whenever I click on the link, a window-ful of XML opens up in IE, even though I was in Firefox. Is this as simple as somehow telling the computer that Firefox is my default browser? Seems it would be but I can't seem to figure out where to change that setting... been using Firefox or Mozilla proper for a year now and never changed anything that I can remember...
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| 4 | Ginobeldi
ID: 421050315
Sun, Nov 21, 2004, 17:13
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Use a great FF plugin called LiveBookmark Here, and you'll be able to add the rss feed to a bookmark.
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| 5 | Ginobeldi
ID: 421050315
Sun, Nov 21, 2004, 17:28
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Actually, it's called "LiveBookmarkThis".
Guru, would it be possible to get an RSS icon in the right low corner in Firefox, indicating that the thread has an RSS feed available. I don't know how that is technically done, but many sites have it. For example; MicroPersuasion or the Mark Cuban blog
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| 6 | youngroman
ID: 298482214
Sun, Nov 21, 2004, 18:06
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Opera can do this too.
it can be done with the HTML [link] tag, here an example:
[link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://rotoguru1.com/rss/dev/160.xml" /]
more details about the [link]-tag can be found in HTML-references. I only have a german one at hand.
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| 7 | Guru
ID: 330592710
Mon, Nov 22, 2004, 09:28
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I should be able to do this. Might not get done today, however.
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| 8 | Guru
ID: 330592710
Mon, Nov 22, 2004, 14:40
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I'm approaching this in steps. I believe the RSS icon should now appear in Firefox, but only for threads which have had a post since this moment. As other threads are augmented, they'll get their icon too.
As part of this process, I have changed the browser window title from the generic "RotoGuru Message Forum" to the subject title of the thread. I can't think of any reason not to do so, but let me know if it causes any problems. If you have multiple threads open, it might help you to identify which is which based solely on the title in the taskbar.
Assuming this works, I'll move on to the forum index pages, and also to the self-edit program. For now, if you self edit a thread, it will revert to the previous format - until the next new post is added.
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| 9 | youngroman
ID: 298482214
Mon, Nov 22, 2004, 14:54
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Guru - for me it works in Opera and Firefox.
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| 10 | Guru
ID: 330592710
Mon, Nov 22, 2004, 15:01
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Forum index pages should now also have the link. |
| 11 | KrazyKoalaBears
Leader
ID: 517553018
Fri, Dec 03, 2004, 10:36
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Guru, I loaded up the RSS feeds through MyYahoo. Baseball is working fine (shows most recent discussions), but Football is loading as "no articles in past 3 days." I thought maybe it was looking for new topics (not posts), but it's showing the Giambi thread from July in my Baseball section, so I think it may be something with the football feed.
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| 12 | Guru
ID: 330592710
Fri, Dec 03, 2004, 10:48
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The football feed looks fine.
When I was testing awhile ago, I did notice that Yahoo was showing that message occasionally when it wasn't true. It seemed to correct itself eventually.
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| 13 | youngroman
ID: 298482214
Thu, Jan 06, 2005, 14:54
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Guru - I noticed that deleted posts are showing up in the RSS feeds. look at this feed for an example. if there is no easy solution for this, forget it.
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| 14 | Guru
ID: 330592710
Fri, Jan 07, 2005, 08:26
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I am aware of that. There is no easy fix, and I never consider it worth pursuing.
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Post a reply to this message: (But first, how about checking out this sponsor?)
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