RSS feed

How can we turn on the RSS feed for this website?

Well, it is currently turned on.  Only I don't see anything that makes me think it is on. 

It is possible that in the hundred modifications I have made to the source that I somehow carved that bit out.  Or maybe there are other things I need to fiddle with.

I dunno. 

Do you see anything in the profile stuff about RSS?

since this website derives from simplemachines.org

and their RSS feed URL looks like

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?type=rss;action=.xml

perhaps we can derive the RSS feed by using a similar URL directly and manually:

https://permies.com/bb/index.php?type=rss;action=.xml

and sure enough, it works albeit apparently limited to the last 5 posts

however it is a proof of concept

Perhaps, you could program a link to the above on the frontpage and label it RSS ? (for those who do not stumble on this thread)

Where would you like me to put this sort of thing?

Is five posts okay or is that a problem?

Come to think of it, a good location would be in the footer which appears on all pages

and although 5 is adequate, i think 10 is better personally

Does that link work for all of the forums, or does it have a forum/thread focus?

the RSS link https://permies.com/bb/index.php?type=rss;action=.xml
shows the latest postings in the entire permies forum, all categories included, sorted in reverse chronological order.

Based on your knowledge of other sites, are there other URL's that might work for us that are, say, forum based?

to answer your question, I went to the source: the software which permies.com is based on (called simplemachines)

and found this page in the online manual which explains how we can tweak the URL parameters to get RSS feeds for individual "boards".   In simplemachine terminology, a forum is composed of boards which are composed of posts

it also shows how to change the limit from 5 to whatever

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=25009.0

so for example, the "tinkering with this site" board is number 11.0, so this URL will extract the RSS feed just for the tinkering board and changes the default to showing the last 10 postings

https://permies.com/bb/index.php?action=.xml;sa=news;board=11.0;limit=10

So here is what I am thinking of doing:  I will add one to the forum home page and I will add one to each forum. 

What I would like to know from you (as the first RSS user) is:  how many should I put into the one for all forums, and how many should I put into the one for each forum?

that number is really only the initial "seed"

in other words, the very first time I used that RSS link, my RSS reader (called google reader) displayed the latest 5 posts

but after that, all the posts are extracted continuously by google reader so that I am seeing ALL the posts since the day and hour i first subscribed.  (which is exactly how i want it to behave)

FWIW, i personally prefer an initial default set to 10 for all RSS feeds

and I really like your solution :  a global RSS feed on the frontpage and individual RSS feeds for each board

thanks

I now have an rss feed set up on the main page - does it work okay?

Now exploring the per-forum stuff.

yes! it works
thank you

I think I have it cobbled together per forum now.  Does that work okay?

beautiful work!  i tested 3 of the boards and each had its own appropriately customized RSS feed

thank you on behalf of all RSS users

hallelujah!  Finally I can keep track of threads I'm interested without trying to mark everything read and then scanning for new stuff since I've logged in.

Paul, have you looked into feedburner service?  You can offer the feeds via email as well as some other useful tools you may want to look into.

link?

feedburner.com

FYI - setting up another link to your feedburner email version allows those who do not use or know about feed readers to simply subscribe to the feed and receive email updates once every day.  So instead of individual emails it's more like a daily digest, which works better for some.

Your feeds included any changes to pages, not just posts, and you can edit your feed pages directly to send out messages not posted on the website proper.  Lots of cool stuff to play with.

Here is a RSS feed info page I was hired to put up a while back for a website.  If you have questions you may find the answers there - http://www.garycarpenter.org/RSSinfo.html

Is the RSS feed busted?  I've had no updates.  And when I deleted the feed and added it again Shredder (Ubuntu Thunderbird) couldn't verify the feed.

Added: Appears to be OK now.