Ask Dr Plokta

[drplokta]

I have set up a new blog, Ask Dr Plokta. It has a full RSS feed, so paid account users should be able to add it as a friend, if they are so inclined. Those who dislike technical neepery are unlikely to enjoy it.

"Why not use LiveJournal?", I can hear some people asking. I don't much like LiveJournal. It has a few nice features, but its usability is not all it might be, its default templates are pretty ugly, and its support for the latest bloggy features such as RSS and Trackback is poor-to-nonexistent. Also, since I'm already paying for a fully featured web hosting account, this way I get to have full control, not to mention useful things like backups.

Comments

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

what extra RSS features do you get over the simple feed like marypcb.livejournal.com/rss/?

[drplokta]

Both RSS 0.91 and 1.0 feeds (index.xml and index.rdf respectively), the 1.0 version includes things like dates, subjects and authors, there are configurable templates to generate the RSS, excerpts from the articles are included in the feed rather than just headlines (your choice of how many words to excerpt; I've got it set to 40 at present).

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Assuming neither bohemiancoast nor drplokta would mind, I'm sucking their RSS feeds into my friends list. If any paid users would like to do the same then go to this LJ page:

http://www.livejournal.com/syn/

and at the bottom ("add other feed") subscribe to askplokta and kittywompus. (It wouldn't allow the names Macadamia and Drplokta).

And if you guys DO mind, then, uh, sorry and apparently you can break it by blocking the LJ servers or I could go and try to figure out how to undo what I did.

[drplokta]

If we minded, we wouldn't have RSS feeds. Allowing people to syndicate content elsewhere is what RSS is for, and I would certainly assume that anyone who provides an RSS feed is happy for you to add it to your friends page.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Good points - I was largely going on "It's polite to ask first" and acknowledging that I hadn't bothered.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Actually, I tend to think that if you have RSS, you don't really have to ask: it has no use other than to allow people to suck your content away. Though with Macadamia, you won't get the entire article because I only extract a certain number of words. Not because I don't want to syndicate the whole thing (I do), but because I thought some people might be offended by getting great long posts. I'd actually like two RSS feeds; one with a headline and brief extract, and the other with full text. So that people could choose.

I should point out that my blog does have some content that's not in the main feed -- especially comments.

[drplokta]

You can do that, you know. Make yourself a new template creating a file called something like fullfeed.rdf, then copy the index.rdf template to it and make whatever changes you want. See my notes above about Movable Type having better RSS features than LiveJournal.

[redbird]

Apparently there are lots of Movable Type users who don't realize they have RSS feeds. Some of the have objected to syndication.

Argghhh!

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Did Kittywompus really post umpteen articles at 3.26am? I've added the feed and I've most of a page full of articles now all with the same date/time.

Re: Argghhh!

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

I wondered about that. I'm hoping it will settle down.

Re: Argghhh!

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Er, no. There are oddities in the LJ syndication of Pepys' Diary, too. I do very regularly edit my articles slightly after sending them -- could this be having an effect?

Re: Argghhh!

[neilf.livejournal.com]

The first time LJ is told about a feed it goes and grabs everything and sticks them in it's system all with the same date. Hence the effect you saw. Shouldn't happen again.