Hi users of our forums,

Since we moved over to our new forum, I have received tips and ideas how we can improve the forum feed.
There are quite a lot of factors that we have to consider when we creating a new forum feed. Some of the threads get new posts very often.

This is how the new RSS feed works: you will get the latest 30 active threads - showing the latest post in each, sorted by date.

http://your.sydneyanglicans.net/feeds/forum_latest

If you use Firefox RSS reader you will a list of the latest 30 active threads, with the latest posts. Good to have a overview of what is going on for the moment.

If you are active on our forums, you might use a RSS client like SharpReader, It will store every item loaded in, give you a good history of the latest posts.
Most of the RSS clients have a list of options longer than I have space here…

Just to make it easier to understand the feed:
- Every post that is a reply to the first post in the thread is marked: “RE:” in the title.
- I have also added the authors name in the beginning of the message.
- The maximum character is set to 250 for the message. Reason: Some posts can be quite long.

Some ideas:
- Add member name in the title, eg: “RE: Robert Moller: The Literal Adam”?

I would like to hear your opinion. Send me PM.

Robert

Robert,

I am a tad embarrassed to admit it, but I have not used RSS feed and so only have a rough idea of what it does, but think it’s about time I get with the plot on this one. Can you direct me to a page on this site (or elsewhere) which explains it for ‘dummies’ and gives us the various options for implementing it. It would be helpful to know also if there are any differences for Mac users (being a sometimes despised, and yet proud minority).

Sandy, Feedburner have a good ‘Feed 101’ page

http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/feed101

Good to hear from other Mac users.
Our forum RSS feed keep you updated on what is going on on the forum.

You can read more about RSS on our website

I just tested out NewsLife (shareware) on my Mac; easy to use. Recommended on Apple.com site.

Thanks David for URL.

I just use Safari’s built-in RSS viewer. It seems to work sufficiently well for my purposes.

Almost all new browsers (Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Opera) have built-in RSS viewers.
Safari’s built-in RSS viewer is pretty good if you are using Mac.

[quote author="Robert Moller"]Safari’s built-in RSS viewer is pretty good if you are using Mac.

Or you can try the new Safari beta on Windows as well…

Safari (BETA) on Windows is just sad (for the moment).

I guess Apple figured that they needn’t try too hard since most Windows users seem happy with IE…

... at least Win users have FireFox as an alternative.

Everyone has FireFox as an alternative (although on a Mac I prefer Camino)!

BTW, everyone ought to upgrade Flash Player to the latest version because there’s a serious security hole in most older versions. See this security advisory.

Robert, I know I’ve pestered you about this before but ... applying the squeaky wheel principle ... I’d really love to see your RSS link to the last post in the thread rather than the first. After all, surely the purpose of RSS is to keep up with the latest changes :-). Otherwise, IMHO the layout is just fine as it is.

ps: Perhaps I could plug RSSMate as another RSS reader, though I’ll admit to a personal bias there :).

The latest RSS, does exactly that: Show the latest post with link from the thread :-)

Robert Moller - 17 July 2007 06:05 PM

The latest RSS, does exactly that: Show the latest post with link from the thread :-)

Arh, you’re a champion! Many thanks!
(I failed to notice you’d also updated the rss feed link.)

Also, for RSS newbies ... would it be a help if I listed a few recommended RSS feeds (news, weather, & christian)?

No worries :-)

Robert, one minor issue with the new feeds ... it’d be great if you could strip out formatting markup since it doesn’t conform to the XML standard.