RSS Feed

[pippyd]

Just a thought..... Is there the possibility for an RSS feed to be generated from the forum (either the forum as a whole or 1 for each area)?

Would be easy to keep up to date with the new messages in threads when not actually on the forum and quickly be able to get to relevant areas by clicking on the feed messages.

Good idea?
Bad idea?

Cheers, Phil

[tomtom]

what is an RSS feed?

[Tiffers]

what is an RSS feed?


I'm glad you asked that :D

Tiffers

[Ross]

Really Simple Syndication - a firefox plugin which gives you the ability to receive updates from websites (I think). Perhaps the best example is I receive Sky News headlines in my RSS plugin.

[tomtom]

sounds interesting.. anyone got a link where i can get it as im using firefox? will this incrase my CPU usage much?

[Ross]

I use InfoRSS - http://inforss.mozdev.org/

No CPU load at all.

[pippyd]

Heheh, thought this might happen but I didn't go in to details in case everyone knew already... They're a feed, well actually they're just an XML file but you have a reader installed on your computer (some are built in to browsers, or you can install a program to read them). The file/feed is updated every X minutes, often quite frequently, it just contains the author/title and a brief description of the message/article.

The feed reader grabs the file off the server every X number of minutes then lists the new messages - just like you'd see in say Outlook when you get new mail. You could then see the title of each new post (can often pop up in the corner of you screen like outlook) and if you're interested click on the title and it loads the full article - in this case the BB forum taking you straight to the thread/message you were interested in.

If there were multiple feeds for the BB forum you could say sign up to say the scandinavian blades feed and see any new posts in that particular area as and when they arrive.

Used a lot in news site (bbc for example)


I tend to use sharpReader http://www.sharpreader.net/
Here's a bbc description of RSS - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/rss/3223484.stm

On the Mozilla (Firefox front) their Mail client - Mozilla Thunderbird reads them as well.

Cheers, Phil

[dataphage]

The best use of RSS or ATOM feeds is into a news aggregator like Google reader (https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=reader&nui=1&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Freader%2F).

News readers grap the content from sites remotely and pull them together into a single service (via the magic of XML). They are useful if you read a lot of different sites for news or updates. I don't know how that would work with forums like this, might be tricky.

In any case if you wanted to reply to threads or do anything more than just read the site you would still have to log in.

[pippyd]

In any case if you wanted to reply to threads or do anything more than just read the site you would still have to log in.

Well it depends. Most standalone feedreaders load the html page that the feed item links to in a window within the application that runs an embedded browser, this will display they BB forum exactly as it looks when you visit it normally and if you have your BB login remembered in the cookie you would read, post and respond to messages just like you would normally.

[PS_Bond]

RSS? May I just take the opportunity to say "aaaaargh"?

For the time being, please refer to the Duke Nukem Forever release date until further notice :biggthump

[pippyd]

Bit of digging.....

Looks like vBulletin (what this forum is based on I think) can generate RSS feeds if needed.

http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/vboptions_group_external

Cheers, Phil

[Martyn]

Yes it's possible, there are numerous hacks/plugins for vbulletin & RSS feeds. I'll look into what's involved. :)

[ris]

Yes it's possible, there are numerous hacks/plugins for vbulletin & RSS feeds. I'll look into what's involved. :)

I see BushcraftUK has surreptitously enabled RSS at the vBulletin standard URL

http://www.bushcraftuk.com/community/external.php?type=rss2

Maybe Tony could help you here.

[Prophecy]

Apologies for the grave digging folks, is it NOW possible to get the RSS feed for the main forum, or even better, a sales forum? All I can see is the feed for the Homepage, which isn't updated so often.

[Basemetal]

You want swamped? :X

[Prophecy]

Sorry? Genuine question, looking for a genuine answer if someone knows!