RSS Feeds

[AlanH]

You may be interested to know that a well-hidden feature of these forums is an RSS feed capability. Get a simple digest of new posts in the forums of your choice in NetNewsWire, or in Safari v.2.0 for Mac users.

Some examples:

feed://forums.civfanatics.com/external.php gets you a feed for all forums.

feed://forums.civfanatics.com/external.php?forumids=49 gives you just the GOTM forum.

feed://forums.civfanatics.com/external.php?forumids=49,55 would give two forums - GOTM plus Strategy Articles.

 

[DaveMcW]

Would it be possible to add a <link> tag to the forum index? This lets a browser with RSS capability auto-detect the feed.

Example:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="GOTM RSS" href="feed://forums.civfanatics.com/external.php?forumids=49" />

 

[AlanH]

I was about to send Thunderfall a PM to suggest just that. Note that there's a downside with this, that you may finish up with lots of separate feeds - one per forum of interest. I have mine set up with just two feeds - one for the top level and one that includes both the forums I have moderator interests in.

 

[THEMike]

When you subscribe to a page with rssbandit or bloglines (the tools I use) it will auto discover all options in a page, and you choose which you want to use. For example, Livejournal feeds offer Atom and RSS feeds, you pick what you want.

So if in the forums it has the link for the master and one for each forum, it won't be a problem for any half decent feed aggregator software.

(I code syndication sources and aggregators on a far too frequent basis...)

 

[ainwood]

IE doesn't support this, does it? Can't use a different browser at work, unfortunately.

 

[AlanH]

IE is a dead browser. Please advise your IT department that they'd better get used to this fact and move on.

 

[solenoozerec]

IE doesn't support this, does it?

What does?

 

[Methos]

What does?

IE=Internet Explorer [I think]

 

[solenoozerec]

IE=Internet Explorer [I think]

According to Ainwood, it does not.
Does Netscape support it or smth. else?

 

[Methos]

According to Ainwood, it does not.
Does Netscape support it or smth. else?

My mistake solenoozerec, I misunderstood your question. I thought you were asking what IE referred too. My apologies.

 

[AlanH]

Lots of RSS applications exist, such as NetNewsWire. Just Google RSS for lots of links to free RSS readers. I've checked Firefox and Mozilla and can't see any options to display RSS feeds. The only web browser I *know* of that supports it natively is Apple's Safari 2.0, but there may be others.

 

[Gyathaar]

there are several RSS plugins for firefox.. just go to tools->extensions->get more extensions , and then search for RSS

 

[THEMike]

Lots of RSS applications exist, such as NetNewsWire. Just Google RSS for lots of links to free RSS readers. I've checked Firefox and Mozilla and can't see any options to display RSS feeds. The only web browser I *know* of that supports it natively is Apple's Safari 2.0, but there may be others.

Firefox supports RSS feeds.You get a square orange icon in your status bar with an option to subscribe to the RSS threads in a bookmark folder, then in your selected bookmark folder, each item for that RSS feed is displayed as a bookmark.

There is also Sage for a full blow RSS aggregator extension, or Feedview which just formats the RSS to a nice readable version. There are many other aggregators that integrate to FF, but Sage and Feedview are two of the better ones. There are also ones that install as a local web service so you can view in either browser.

However, if you can't install firefox at work that doesn't help. If you can't isntall firefox or any other software (RSS Bandit seems to be the best Windows standalone client) then use Bloglines It's a web service, you subscribe to feeds and you can visit them from anywhere in any browser and see what's updated.

Bloglines is my prefered solution. My public list of feeds I read is here to see an example of how it works (no CF subs yet sorry!) but you can always visit bloglines.com/myfeeds and login and view all your feeds (and it remembers what you've seen so you only see the new ones that way, the public list doesn't remember who you are).

 

[THEMike]

IE doesn't support this, does it? Can't use a different browser at work, unfortunately.

And minutes later I found this post:
Thin Firefox

It's a distro of firefox that runs from a USB key chain drive. You know, those little memory stick things every self respecting geek has? You could carry your firefox instance, plus your civ save games to and from work ;-)

 

[Methos]

I have subscribed to bloglines but can't seem to get my TGOMTG to work. I'm using Mozilla Firefox now, though am still not entirely comfortable with it. Any help would be great. Thanks.

 

[AlanH]

feed://forums.civfanatics.com/external.php?forumids=67 gives me a feed in Safari that includes all SG threads with new posts, including TGOMTG. I've never tried www.bloglines.com, but it gives a database error if I enter this feed. As indicated by previous posters, the forum pages don't have the <link> tags that help an aggregator to find the RSS feeds on the site, so maybe this is what is upsetting bloglines.

I tried installing an RSS reader extension in Firefox, but if I enter the above url Firefox still seems to insist on using Safari to open it. So I can't advise on Firefox's built-in RSS reader abilities. Gyathaar may be able to help you as he raised this option.

 

[Methos]

www.bloglines.com[/url], but it gives a database error if I enter this feed.

Yes, I've found if you remove the feed:// it works just fine. The problem is I was hoping to only get the one thread.

Guess I need to learn more about RSS feeds and these different programs.

 

[AlanH]

The forum FAQ confirms that there is only an option to receive a feed for one or more forums, not for individual threads.

If I use the url without 'feed://' in Firefox I just get raw XML source, which is just about readable if you like that kind of thing. I don't know how to persuade Firefox to display it sensibly. It's not just this site, either. Other feed urls that work fine in Safari don't seem to mean a thing to Firefox and the NewsFox extension.

 

[THEMike]

allanH: get feedview from here installed into firefox and they become much more readable.

 

[AlanH]

Thanks, but I don't need to. Safari does all I need, out of the box, with no extra fiddling. I was only trying to help Methos. Maybe Methos can use this.