RSS Feed From Board

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DrSpooky
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RSS Feed From Board

Post by DrSpooky »

I have installed an add-on to the Board so that it now supports an RSS feed. RSS is a neat features of some dynamic websites that allows you stay on top of posts without wandering around the site looking. For example, it is frequently supported by news sites so you can get the headlines as they change. It is in a special format which is easy for a program to read.

I have been using the program RSSReader on MS-Windows to experiment with the RSS feed from the board. With this reader running, we periodically get a "ding" to indicate a new post. We can then pop it up and see exactly what the posts where. Very much like being on an email list but still directly linked to the website. There are LOTS of RSS reader programs out there so I am sure you can find one that you like.

The Board has a few RSS feeds URLs available This URL has all recent posts from all topics.

http://www.elviscostellofans.com/phpBB2/rss.php will display all
recent changes across all topics.

You can filter it down to a specific forum (aka topic) by using a URL like this:

http://www.elviscostellofans.com/phpBB2/rss.php?f=1

Notice the addition of ?f=1 to the end of the URL to indicate the first topic/forum which is "From the management". The list of Topic numbers corresponds directly to their order on the top page:
  • * 1 for "From the Management"
    * 2 for "Elvis Costello General Discussion"
    * 3 for "Tin Pan Alley"
    * 4 for "Photo Gallery"
    * 5 for "The Annex"
    * 6 for "Trading Post"
There are two other arguments ?c=NUMBER where NUMBER limits the number of posts which will be returned in a single query and ?t=NUMBER where 1 indicates just topics that have changed and 0 gives you the whole post. If you leave off, it defaults to 0 and you get all of the post.

I was knew to RSS when I installed this and have played with it a little now. It is a neat way to get informed of when things are posted and provides a nice alternative view.

If you have questions, ask them. Hopefully someone on the Board is familiar with using RSS and can make their knowledge and experience available to us. :)
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Post by DrSpooky »

OK.. as best I can tell no one is using the RSS feed. :(

It is such a cool way to get notified of new posts. Surely someone out there would want to stay on top of new posts the easy way.

Come on folks.. give it a try. I am happy to help you get it going.
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Who Shot Sam?
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Post by Who Shot Sam? »

DrSpooky, as I understand it the new version of the Mac browser, Safari, which comes bundled with their Tiger operating system, has RSS functionality built in. So if I can figure it out when my new machine arrive next week, I'll try accessing the EC message board RSS feed and let you know how it goes.
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Post by DrSpooky »

I forgot that some browsers support RSS. Firefox has support for RSS and calls it Live Bookmarks. See http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox ... marks.html for details.
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Post by Who Shot Sam? »

DrSpooky:

I have been checking this out using Safari RSS. Very nice, but it's extremely slow to load. Also, Safari RSS is supposed to be able to detect when a site has RSS feeds and display an "RSS" icon in the address field, yet that's not happening for me on the EC Fan Forum. Not sure why. Any ideas?

PS, it's much faster now that I have it bookmarked. This is a great way to view posts without having to navigate to multiple pages. A little counter pops up in my bookmark list to tell me how many new posts have been added. You can also set Safari to check RSS feeds more often than every 15 minutes, which is the default setting. It would be nice if posts could be marked as read once you viewed them via RSS.
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Post by DrSpooky »

I don't know what can be done about being slow to load when you fetch it on demand. Getting nerdy here, the page is generated by running a query on the database containing the Board. The Board is running on a vintage 1999 333 Mhz Pentium II with 384 Mbytes of RAM that we bought to do my dissertation. It is running GNU/Linux Fedora Core 3 for those nerds who care. Importantly, the hard drive is brand new so the moving parts are OK. This computer is VERY slow in comparison to anything more recent and the query to generate the RSS feed is going to take some time.

Since you aren't waiting when you get the RSS as a bookmark, it can take longer and still be OK from user perspective.

At some point, we will have to run a telethon for a new computer for the site. :)
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Post by Who Shot Sam? »

Thanks Doc. I really do appreciate the RSS feed. Viewing posts is much easier and makes a whole lot of sense for a site like this. Nice feature and the effort is appreciated - at least by me! :D
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Post by DrSpooky »

I think it is a nice compromise between a mailing list and a board like this. When you look at the board stats, it is pretty clear RSS is not being used much. It only had about 200 hits last month.

Come on folks give it a try. All you Mac people have support for it built into Safari. All the people using Firefox/Mozilla have live bookmarks.
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Post by ReadyToHearTheWorst »

Doc

I've been using Mozilla Firefox a couple of days now, and have been playing with 'live bookmarks'.

This works fine with BBC news etc, but unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be working on this wonderful site.

The browser doesn't recognise that RSS is available (would be indicated in the bottom right hand of the window) and when I click the php link you give above I get a page of xml with the heading
This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.
Am I missing something?
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Post by Who Shot Sam? »

RTHTW:

I was able to just bookmark Dr Spooky's RSS link above and that seems to have done the trick, though it takes a while to load the first time (I am using Safari). Safari, like Firefox, should recognize the RSS feed by showing a little RSS icon in the address window but does not for some reason.
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Post by ReadyToHearTheWorst »

After furtehr attempts have concluded that Mozilla ain't v. good at this RSS mullarkey (it was giving plain XML @ Dima a Dozen as well).

Have installed RSSREADER instead, and it's working fine.

WSS - thanx for the help, and Doc - thanx for the great site & service.

Now I'll start looking at this wiki stuff ...
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Post by DrSpooky »

I was kind of hoping the Wiki would be a good place to capture lyrics and liner notes. They are "static" information which gets buried on the board as time passes.

FWIW this Wiki software has a cool way to draw a timeline. It would be nice to have an EC timeline with clickable links for each LP.
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Post by Poppet »

i'd like to use it. i'd likely read more often (can't manage to get here so much now).

i could add it to my yahoo page, or to my friends list on live journal.

i tried to add it to 'my yahoo' page, but it didn't work.

any chance for hand-holding for this one??
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