RSS Feed?

[Daniel Widdis]

The FAQ mentions the ability for an RSS feed to be enabled but I don't see any links indicating that RSS is currently active. Is there any intent to activate RSS?

[Judy G. Russell]

Errr... once we have time to figure out how it works, I don't see any reason why the public sections can't be available through RSS feeds. We'd have to see about security issues for the private sections. (Can you tell I'm fumbling because we haven't had time to research this yet? Can you tell I have a feeling I know what I'm doing with much of my upcoming long Memorial Day weekend?)

[Daniel Widdis]

Originally Posted by Judy G. Russell

Errr... once we have time to figure out how it works, I don't see any reason why the public sections can't be available through RSS feeds.

Judy,

Thanks! The reason I'm asking is because I'm researching ways of posting some messages to an email list in an automated fashion. An RSS feed would simplify that process greatly.

Dan

[Daniel Widdis]

Originally Posted by Judy G. Russell

Errr... once we have time to figure out how it works

Try enabling external data provider for RSS. That will turn it on for all "guest viewable forums".

[Judy G. Russell]

I think it's been done. Let me know. (Lordy, it's good to have forum members who know enough to help us figure out the software!)

[Daniel Widdis]

Originally Posted by Judy G. Russell

I think it's been done. Let me know.

Good news: Yes, it's up.

Bad news: It doesn't do what I thought it did. It only displays the first message in a thread. Good for knowing when a woid is posted and put up for votes, but won't relay all the child messages to the email list. In order to do that I'd have to code a custom script. (Or hack the vBulletin code!)

[Judy G. Russell]

Let me check with the vBulletin support folks to see whether there is an existing hack.

[fhaber]

I think I noticed this on DTP. It does reduce the utility of RSS for accessing the board. If you see the first msg-in-thread, and are interested in many threads, there's almost no point in getting your RSS reader involved in the first place. (My preference is based on FeedDemon, the reader I use).

[Judy G. Russell]

Can you think of any other way of "echoing" messages to a Yahoo group, Frank?

[fhaber]

Not at the moment.

[Daniel Widdis]

Judy,

Could you also enable the XML and Javascript external feeds? I can look at them and see if they provide any more info.

Dan

[Judy G. Russell]

They're all turned on now for you to test, Daniel.

[Daniel Widdis]

Originally Posted by Judy G. Russell

They're all turned on now for you to test, Daniel.

Thanks. No additional info there.

A script to download them all is doable, although I'm still guessing there's some other configuration possible on the vBulletin side. I'll look into it.

Dan

[Judy G. Russell]

Just let me know what we can do to help. Making this work for everybody (or almost everybody) is our top priority.

[Daniel Widdis]

Originally Posted by Judy G. Russell

Just let me know what we can do to help. Making this work for everybody (or almost everybody) is our top priority.

See the new thread I started on "email mirror". That's the direction I'd like to go.

[Daniel Widdis]

Originally Posted by fhaber

If you see the first msg-in-thread, and are interested in many threads, there's almost no point in getting your RSS reader involved in the first place.

Well, the RSS "updates" and indicates there's a new message in the thread, so it can provide a quick link to new posts in that thread. It's actually pretty useful.

If I end up writing my own script (using wget and perl) I'll use the RSS feed to key me in to which threads are the new ones.

Dan