RSS Feeds Limits

digime2007 · Post by **digime2007** » 29 Oct 2009 15:04

Seems like the STF feed is limited to 15 messages max with a refresh interval of 1 hour.

Any chance of getting at least the message limit increased?

You can easily lose around half of those 15 messages with people arranging and then cancelling a game of footie. Means I keep losing the middle of ongoing threads.

Thanks.

Great site BTW. Much better than SE23.com (shhhh!)

leenewham · Post by **leenewham** » 29 Oct 2009 15:30

If you sign up to twitter you will get the same thing if you follow sydenham town.

digime2007 · Post by **digime2007** » 30 Oct 2009 08:52

But doesn't Twitter just give you a hundred or so characters of the post with a link to click through to see the whole message? That's a bit lame IMO.

The good thing about feeds (and the way this site has them set up) is that feed readers will download the entire posts at intervals ready for viewing.

Works great on phones this way. I can catch up on posts on train as all the messages are there waiting and you don't have the hassle of slow/dropped out internet connections on the way in to work.

I appreciate this has bandwidth issues but 15 posts just seems too small given the activity on this site.

Post by **admin** » 30 Oct 2009 18:21

The RSS feed is on the fly - there is no refresh. It looks like something is cacheing the pages for you. A forced reload should fetch the latest post.

Twitter does refresh - every 30 minutes so it is not so good but some people find it more convenient.

There is the feed on the frontpage which is also refreshed, but i can't remember how often. Its Friday night, pizza & plonk time so no way am I going to try decode my awful undocumented perl script before and hopefully I should be incapable after!

Admin

digime2007 · Post by **digime2007** » 30 Oct 2009 19:12

I use three different RSS readers - one on my phone, one in IE7 and one in IE8. All of these only ever download the most recent 15 posts regardless of how many new posts there are in total.

Seems like 15 is the most readers will ever retrieve from this site. I presume this is a property of the feed as different sites have different limits. Correct me if I'm wrong but it looks like a configuration setting at STF end.

It would be really useful if this could be increased.

Chazza · Post by **Chazza** » 30 Oct 2009 19:37

My RSS reader also only ever displays (15) new items on STF.

Post by **admin** » 2 Nov 2009 13:57

Yes - the RSS is set to 15 posts. It is an arbitary figure as some devices are using RSS because they don't want too much data (mobile phones with small screens and enormous data tariffs!).

I shall be changing the RSS feed script shortly. What feed shape would you like (message length x number of messages)?

Admin

digime2007 · Post by **digime2007** » 2 Nov 2009 14:33

For me the message length seems fine the way it is. Reading them on a mobile means it's much quicker and convenient to be able to read whole posts rather than having to click through to read items of interest.

I would prioritise that over the number of messages but would like to see more than 15. Could we double to 30? We're only talking text (I think images are downloaded when accessed?) so we're not dealing with huge amounts of data and mobile devices and tariffs have moved on in recent years.

The other point is that if messages aren't downloaded completely or if not all new items in a thread are downloaded you have to click through to the website to get to the info you want. A single click-through will cause the mobile to download the entire content of the relevant page - graphics, html, previous posts on the same page, etc. This will be far more costly in data terms than just having the text of the post in the first place. So restrictions can be a false economy.

These comments are made on the basis of my use of feeds on a mobile. On the desktop I don't have a preference because it's so quick to click through if I need to.

The comments are also purely my personal perspective based on the way I access the forums. I'd be interested in other peoples points of view.

digime2007 · Post by **digime2007** » 4 Dec 2009 09:10

Any progress or decisions made Admin?

digime2007 · Post by **digime2007** » 8 Dec 2009 13:36

Looks like you've increased the limit Admin.

Thanks - makes a big difference.

Post by **admin** » 8 Dec 2009 14:06

No I hadn't - but I have now. Your RSS reader should be getting 25 if pointed to: http://sydenham.org.uk/forum/rss.php

Admin

digime2007 · Post by **digime2007** » 8 Dec 2009 14:13

Yep, I was picking up 25. You're faster than you think!

Post by **admin** » 8 Dec 2009 22:28

Just to add today Google announced new versions of Chrome (my favourite browser) for Linux and with extensions. This includes a nice RSS reader here:
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/

Admin

Sydenham Town Forum

The Community Voice for London SE26 since 2004

RSS Feeds Limits

RSS Feeds Limits