RSS for the 2+2 Forum

[ArthurD]

I could donate 100-200 gigs of bandwidth a month from my dedicated Linux box. Lemme know if you're interested - arthur@dantonio.info

[Liz L.]

Yes, RSS for 2+2 would be great.

For those who don't use it yet, something like Bloglines is as great for keeping up with your favorite websites as TIVO is for television.

[TheTROLL]

Right, then... we're in business. I've got a sample RSS file available that my app has just created from the Software forum.

I can't arrange hosting space until the weekend, so if anyone can host a static 130KB XML file for a couple of days to get some feedback/suggestions for improvements, PM me or post here.

Would really like to hear from anyone with RSS dev experience, as I just copied the structure from another feed, so there's probably a lot of improvements we can make to the XML.

[littledave]

The RSS feed from ITH is really sweet - not sure how long it's been available but it's so nice to be able to gather a lot of my reading into one place.

[TheTROLL]

Thanks to ArthurD, this is now available at http://www.dantonio.info/2p2/rsss.xml for feedback/suggestions. Note this is not updating at this location, just a sample as I said in above post.

Please post any comments/suggestions however minor. Only tested on
FeedReader so far.

Edit - corrected link.

[ohkanada]

I tried it with bloglines and it looks good. Hard to say if I would use it to view 2+2 but who knows. Would 2+2 really want to do this since you wouldn't see any ad's? Not that I see any now anyways.

Ken

[New York Jet]

It looks good with FeedDemon on the computer, but looks like crap on the BlackBerry using both Newsclip and FeedBurner MFR 2.
The page looks like this:
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>Title: Re: New Mouse

&lt;font class="post"&gt;
All kidding aside, I think the gun mouse
thing is great &lt;img src="/images/
graemlins/smile.gif" alt=" /&gt; I don't have
to keep leaning forward at my desk and
can just veg &lt;img src="/images/
graemlins/smile.gif" alt=" /&gt; Plus I can
shoot these fools &lt;img src="/images/
graemlins/smile.gif" alt=" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /
&gt;KC


&lt;/font&gt;</pre><hr />

I then feed it in to FreeNews on the BlackBerry and it looks great!


As for making it better, it would be nice to see the poster's name.

How much server space will this use?
How often will it update?
Care to make it open source?

[TheTROLL]

[ QUOTE ]
Would 2+2 really want to do this since you wouldn't see any ad's?


[/ QUOTE ]
I thought about this briefly. Maybe including the post text isn't going to be acceptable - perhaps just the poster name and the first few words then a link to the thread? Or even embedding the adverts into the feed? Will get in touch with the admins about this before releasing anything live.

[TheTROLL]

[ QUOTE ]
It looks good with FeedDemon on the computer, but looks like crap on the BlackBerry using both Newsclip and FeedBurner MFR 2.
The page looks like this:
Title: Re: New Mouse

&lt;font class="post"&gt;
All kidding aside,



[/ QUOTE ]

Ah, ok, perhaps could do a stripped-down (no HTML tags) version too.

[ QUOTE ]


I then feed it in to FreeNews on the BlackBerry and it looks great!


As for making it better, it would be nice to see the poster's name.



[/ QUOTE ]

Ahem... well spotted - that was intended to be in there - easily fixed, it's already in the data picked up from the threads.

[ QUOTE ]

How much server space will this use?


[/ QUOTE ]

What server are you referring to? The RSS file will probably be 50-100KB (one RSS file per forum). It won't demand much from the 2+2 servers, since the application will only read the forum periodically, not every time the RSS page is requested.

[ QUOTE ]

How often will it update?


[/ QUOTE ]

Whatever... my RSS reader is set to 10 minutes, 5-10 minutes per refresh feels about right, but depends how the 2+2 administrators feel about it - need to get agreement before actually launching this as an updating page.

[ QUOTE ]

Care to make it open source?

[/ QUOTE ]

Very much so. It's written in C#, and at the moment is a pretty scrappy PoS, but when it's written properly (probably this weekend) with a separate data access layer, I'm happy to share it.

[New York Jet]

[ QUOTE ]
Whatever... my RSS reader is set to 10 minutes, 5-10 minutes per refresh feels about right, but depends how the 2+2 administrators feel about it - need to get agreement before actually launching this as an updating page.

[/ QUOTE ]
I am not talking locally, but how often it would check the forum. Once a day won't cut it. Once a minute is too often. Just curious to how often you planned on doing it. Checking with Chuck is a good idea.

[ QUOTE ]
Very much so. It's written in C#, and at the moment is a pretty scrappy PoS, but when it's written properly (probably this weekend) with a separate data access layer, I'm happy to share it.

[/ QUOTE ]
Great! I recently took up C# as a VB.Net replacement. A little tough at first, but now I love it.