Forum RSS Feed

Post by **admin** » 20 Jan 2005 14:08

I have put an experimental RSS feed at:
forum.sydenham.org.uk/bbs/rss.php

<<<IMPORTANT - this has moved to http://forum.sydenham.org.uk/rss.php >>>

I would appreciate any feedback.

For those as yet unfamiliar with RSS feeds - they are basically an easy way you can monitor new postings in the forum using what is called a news aggregator. This pulls headlines/previews from various websites and displays them in a concise way so you can click and read the full article on your desktop or even your palmtop!

You can find more about RSS and freeware RSS Aggregators here:
http://www.whatisrss.com/

I am using PocketFeed on my little IPAQ4150: http://www.furrygoat.com/Misc/Software.html

Post by **admin** » 25 Jan 2005 11:53

All the Forum's latest posting headlines with a single click - even while you are browsing another website....

Easy if you using the new Firefox browser - heavily recommended as a replacement for Microsoft's Internet Explorer see:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

Here is what you do to add STF as a 'Live Bookmark' in Firefox:

Go to the Bookmarks menu and select 'Manage Bookmarks'. Under the 'File Menu', select 'New Live Bookmark'. Put Sydenham Town Forum as the name for the Live Bookmark and add the URL as:
http://forum.sydenham.org.uk/rss.php

New postings from STF will appear as Live Bookmarks in Firefox. Just rightclick on Bookmark to refresh and the titles will all popup alongside. Click on the headliine of your choice and you wil be taken directly to the STF posting.

DaveT · Post by **DaveT** » 25 Jan 2005 15:21

Hiya,

this works a treat - nice one! lovely way of discovering new posts without the (not really) tedious following through from the forum home page.

Will be using this only from now on.

ta dude!

(and... never knew about pocket feed as well, gonna try that too)

algc · Post by **algc** » 17 Feb 2005 18:55

Hello:
I'm new in RSS business and all worked just fine until I reached the <link> subject. The fact is that I put an URL adress that contains MORE THAN ONE PARAMETER passed to the server side and FeedReader 2.7 Build 646 doesn't accept "&" character in the URL (after a lot of tries I discovered that). Can you help me please?

Post by **admin** » 18 Feb 2005 15:12

algc wrote:The fact is that I put an URL adress that contains MORE THAN ONE PARAMETER passed to the server side and FeedReader 2.7 Build 646 doesn't accept "&" character in the URL

That would appear to be a major shortcoming in FeedReader's functionality. The Forum is one of a million that uses the & character as part of its session information (the bit you can probably see in the navigation pane). This is very common.

I can only suggest you switch to a more fully functional RSS reader. Even Firefox Live Bookmark which has no pretentions to be a real reader can handle ampersands. There are many freeware readers to choose from - see the links earlier in the thread.

Good hunting!

back_ache · Post by **back_ache** » 8 May 2005 21:06

I use firefox and I think the RSS feed is great idea, how about putting a tag in the page so we can add a "live bookmark" (as firefox calls RSS) in firefox's standard way, I found an artical about it at http://johnbokma.com/firefox/rss-and-li ... marks.html

if I understand it correctly you would just have to add <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
title="Sydenham Town Forum" href="rss.php"> to bbs/index.php in the <head> section

Post by **admin** » 8 May 2005 23:17

Good idea backache - I'm trying to get my head around this.

You can't simply edit index.php. The <head> section is strapped into index.php 'on-the-fly' from a common template so it would appear on everypage everywhere no matter what the function or directory. I'll have a go one night when things are quiet and see if it works.

BTW for everyone else - you can still add STF as a Firefox Live Bookmark. Just follow the RSS link at the top of the page. If you have not yet switched from Internet Explorer to Firefox - read this:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

back_ache · Post by **back_ache** » 13 May 2005 16:59

I use my.msn.com as well as firefox for my newsaggragator (or however you spell it)

To add the forum to your my msn click the following link:
http://tinyurl.com/ahyjp

Post by **admin** » 14 May 2005 00:42

OK back_ache - I've done it and added the link tag. Behold the icon pops up for me. Looks and feels great here. Thanks for the tip.

Does it look/work OK for you?

back_ache · Post by **back_ache** » 15 May 2005 12:33

works great! thanks for doing that.

Cod · Post by **Cod** » 15 Jul 2005 22:51

Just like to say it's good to see a site with a proper RSS feed. I use the Sage extension to the Firefox browser to keep track of RSS and it works fine

michael · Post by **michael** » 10 Dec 2006 12:19

Is it just me or is there a problem with the RSS feed?

Post by **admin** » 10 Dec 2006 12:27

michael wrote:Is it just me or is there a problem with the RSS feed?

You may have noticed we switched servers yesterday. It was traumatic and I was not in a fit state to re-hack the RSS code for the new server. It is on the to-do list. Hopefully it will be back within 48 hours as I depend on it!

Apologies for the inconvenience.

Admin

Post by **admin** » 14 Dec 2006 12:57

The RSS feed is working again from a different location:
http://forum.sydenham.org.uk/rss.php

Admin

Sydenham Town Forum

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