Feeds? My aRSSe

Posted on

Ohh yes, hitting top form with the witty post titles now!

Two posts today, both of which may hold limited appeal. First up, a few questions about my RSS site feeds, and later a nice tale about good customer service.

If you don’t use the RSS feeds, then I’d ignore this post.

Right, still here? Good, because I have a question for all of you who don’t bother your arse to visit this site every day, instead preferring to view my glorious content using some poxy news reader which will no doubt strip my delicately laid out prose and dump it into something akin to.. *shudders* plain text. Bloody heathens. Ehhhh… anyway.. what I meant to say was would you LOVELY people who are currently reading this site via an RSS feed be so kind as to pop along to the site itself? I’d like you to answer a quick question. Please?

And to my even lovelier readers (ohh yes, we grade our readership here, didn’t you know?) who value my site enough to visit it “properly”, you are more than welcome to read on and offer your opinion too.

And if no-one answers I’ll just do what I bloody well want!

I’ve been playing with the RSS feeds a little, some of you have already spotted some of the changes, and I am going to rationalise them a little. However, as I don’t really use them all that often, it’s really up to you to tell me what you want (would like).

The Question:

  • Which RSS feed do you currently use? (title or URL would be handy)

That wasn’t too painful, was it? Ohh but I’m not finished yet. Read on for some explanation and more options.

Why are you changing things again?!

The way I post to my sidebar (the miniblog on the left there, uh, unless you are reading this in an RSS reader, obv.) has changed. I used to use Blogger to publish there, but I switched to using a category of WordPress, which has brought it’s own set of issues, but I digress. Because of that switch the default site feed now includes miniblog posts as well (by default). However, as I don’t really use my own feeds that’s not really a problem.. for me.

So I’m thinking of tidying things up and offering only the following three feeds:

  1. Main Feed – the normal feed, as it is at the moment, with ALL categories of posts from the site. That gives you the main posts and the miniblog posts in one feed.
  2. Link Feed – Miniblog posts + del.icio.us links which would give you, in essence, my full “linkblog”.
  3. Super-duper trough of information feed – All posts + del.ico.us links + Flickr photos + anything else I can crowbar in there (recently played tracks from last.fm if I can get it to work).

How does that sound? (ohh, that’s question number two then).

I want something different!

Well tough.

OK, not really, I just love you guys and gals too much I guess. If you aren’t happy with any of the above options, you can also monitor all of the following feeds separately, although I won’t be offering them as default feeds from the site:

WordPress tip: Did you know you can monitor a feed for ANY category in a WordPress site? Just visit the category link in a post, and add feed/ to the end of the URL.

For example, here’s the feed for my “before blog” posts.

I’m confused!

Yeah me too.

Basically, of the three options I gave you —Main Feed, Link Feed, Super Duper Trough of Information— I just wanna know which one you’d prefer.

The comments await, have at it.

Comments

  1. Google Reader, and the “Super-duper trough of information feed” feed. And I actually don’t want something different, it’s great.

    I do visit your site and see your fantastic design at times when I want to comment though, such as now.

  2. I currently subscribe to your main feed and your miniblog separately, which suited me fine because I have different folders in Bloglines for Blogs and Linklogs, so I’d appreciate you stripping the Miniblog out of the main feed once again to get rid of the duplication. I’ll be happy with just the Main Feed and Link Feed (Miniblog + del.icio.us).

    I have to ask though, would you actually subscribe to someone else’s last.fm info? For what reason? The “new item” updates would be near continuous some of the time.

  3. I use Google Reader, and I’ll have the full bhoona feed, please. Though I’d agree with David there that the Last.fm bit might be too much.

  5. NewFire reader and the “Super-duper trough of information feed” feed for me as well. I do visit as the site as well.

  6. OK.

    Last.fm idea ditched for the obvious reasons that others have pointed out.

    So far the only change is to remove the “miniblog” posts from the “Main Feed”. Which is easy enough to do.

    Note: the Super Duper Trough of Information may be changing URL. I’ll try and get a re-direct in place though.

  7. i subscribed to the main posts in one feed and the links in another which has worked well, but if they were in one that’d be fine. carry on, boss!

  9. I use Bloglines and the Super-duper…….

    I visit the site regularly to see comments though. It would be great if all blogs rss’d their comments and even better if there was a way to comment on a blog from within an RSS reader. Or am I asking too much?

    Saying that, I would still visit the site anyway just because I like to see what people have done to their sites.

  13. Main posts plus mini-blog posts together, please – i.e. the “Main Feed” as you described it, i.e. the one I’m getting right now in Bloglines. Sorry, don’t know the feed URL – once you’ve subscribed, Bloglines doesn’t tell you that.

  14. Sarah, of course you can!

    mike – nae bother at all.

    Looks like a new feed is required here folks, giving you four choices:

    – Content Feed – main posts only.
    – Main Feed – main posts + miniblog posts.
    – Link Feed – miniblog posts + del.icio.us links
    – Super Duper… – main posts + miniblog posts + del.icio.us links + Flickr photos

    Phew.

  15. Can you feed me grapes whilst I recline on a lounger surrounded by naked handmaidens?

    Oh, not that sort of feed.

    And I really shouldn’t write these things down.

  17. I want the sooper dooper all in one job please, which will look just fine in my Google Reader widget on my Google homepage.

    I thank you.

  18. I read your feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/gordonmclean using NetNewsWire. My preference would be for your Main Feed option, but I can live with any of the options you’ve outlined except the Super Duper feed.

    (For what it’s worth, I usually open any post I’m interested in reading that’s longer than a single sentence in Firefox anyway, so I get to see your spiffy site design even though it doesn’t affect your feed’s appearance.)

Comments are closed.