RSS Feed: Some suggestions on the Syndication Plugin

[matsch]

Hi,

I think there is still some place for little improvements on the RSS feeds s9y offers.

1. When selected to hide the email address in the Syndication plugin config no email address should be included in the author field in the feed (Currently you have "nospam@example.com (Author Name)" where I would prefer just to have "Author Name").

2. I would like to have the number of Comments shown in the RSS feed (Other blogging engines implement this using images they load from the server). To have additional links there like add to del.ico.us or digg etc. would also be nice).

3. Maybe not a s9y problem: In my bloglines entries with multiple categories are in fact only shown in one category.

Just some suggestions. Would be nice if someone picks it up!

Anyway, keep up the good work! I LOVE IT!!!1
matsch

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

1. According to the RSS spec, an email address is required. We can't just leave it out.

2. The number of comments are shown in the RSS 2.0 feed, just as the spec allows. Look out for the "wfw:comment" and "slashComments" attribute.

3. Which feed did you subscribe to? Actually RSS feeds just list multiple categories just with a "," seperator, so RSS feeds can't really make a distinction of categories.

HTH and best regards,
Garvin

[matsch]

Hi,

normally I base all my opinions on the RSS 2.0 feed since it's the one I normally use. Well, and bloglines my normal feed reader...

1. According to the RSS spec, an email address is required. We can't just leave it out.

It is required to be here?:
<author>nospam@example.com (Matthias Korn [matsch])</author>
That would suck and I don't see it in the feeds of other blogging engines...

2. The number of comments are shown in the RSS 2.0 feed, just as the spec allows. Look out for the "wfw:comment" and "slashComments" attribute.

Yeah I see. But bloglines doesn't show it. You are ahead of what's generally used as it seems.
Also bloglines is caching the feeds, so the number of comments won't get updated. Therefore the picture which is downloaded is a better approach to get the current no. of comments. Any chance in implementing something like it?

3. Which feed did you subscribe to? Actually RSS feeds just list multiple categories just with a "," seperator, so RSS feeds can't really make a distinction of categories.

The RSS 2.0 feed. I see you have the categories each in a <category> tag and also the tags are implemented like this. Unfortunately bloglines only shows the last category per item from the feed.

Which feed solves the most of my concerns?

Thanks a lot for your help Garvin and everyone else who is working on this great peace of software...

Regards,
matsch

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

1. Exactly there it is required: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss :

<author> is an optional sub-element of <item>.

It's the email address of the author of the item. For newspapers and magazines syndicating via RSS, the author is the person who wrote the article that the <item> describes. For collaborative weblogs, the author of the item might be different from the managing editor or webmaster. For a weblog authored by a single individual it would make sense to omit the <author> element.

<author>lawyer@boyer.net (Lawyer Boyer)</author>

So either we could leave it out (it's optional!), but if we keep it in, the e-mail portion is required there, because by definition the field is meant to be an email address.

Yeah I see. But bloglines doesn't show it. You are ahead of what's generally used as it seems.

Sadly I don't know bloglines, but we are displaying it according to the specification! You might need to ask the bloglines support of this, please. Also about the caching issue. And about the categories.

I would be interested in their response of course!

Best regards,
Garvin

[matsch]

Well,

I actually found out that the most important things I wanted where in fact services offered by FeedBurner - a really great tool!

So now I have a link with the number of comments, an add to del.icio.us and digg and an email this in the bottom of each post.

Additionally they offer some great feed statistics and many additional services - all for free!

Still bloglines only shows the last category, but other feeds solve this issue by manually including all categories and also tags in the bottom of each item (see TechCrunch).
And bloglines normally also shows a link to the comments by itselff, but without the current number of comments (I think it would be really pointless anyway due to their caching of RSS feeds).

Well, so everything is fine now - ehm... except the email in the <author> field! But hey - you can't have everything! (especially if it's in the specs *grml*)

So but now I have some new suggestions for the RSS Syndication Plugin:

4. Make the offered feeds sortable in the sidebar. I want to have my FeedBurner feed first and then the RSS Comments feed!

5. Why is it only possible to use an official FeedBurner icon for the FeedBurner feed? It would be better to be able to use a local icon (the default one or a customized one). I don't want to use a different icon for this feed.
(And why are both links differently styled? There should be a <span> around the FeedBurner title?)

That's it. Btw, I love the force option for FeedBurner - makes life so much easier!

Best regards,
matsch

P.S.: You should make the favicon for Serendipity with a transparent background. Looks much better!

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Hm, sortable RSS feeds would be nice, but much work. Instead I'D suggest to use a HTML nugget *g*

About the FB icon - you are right, you can now enter a full URL, I committed that to our 1.1 tree.

P.S.: You should make the favicon for Serendipity with a transparent background. Looks much better!

I wish I could, but the image files I have contain no transparency.

Regards,
Garvin

[matsch]

Ok. Thanks for the feedback..
matsch

[matsch]

Hm, sortable RSS feeds would be nice, but much work. Instead I'D suggest to use a HTML nugget *g*

Good point...
Done!

Maybe before you put all your effort on making them sortable just put the FeedBurner on top as it will make the other obsolete. You only need feedburner and additionaly maybe rss comments and opml(?)

About the FB icon - you are right, you can now enter a full URL, I committed that to our 1.1 tree.

Thanks!

I wish I could, but the image files I have contain no transparency.

Please find attached...
Erm. No attachments...: http://www.passeport-chine.com/s9y_favicon.ico

Regards,
matsch