Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with blog and rss

What are my options for RSS Readers that are text only?

Anonymous — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:13:53 -0800

What are my options for RSS Readers that are text only? I use Bloglines to read my RSS feed, but I'm trying to find a reader that can strip away all the images and display only the text. The reason is that a lot of the blogs I like to keep up on tend to post a lot of NSFW pictures and I do most of my reading at work. The mobile version of Bloglines worked for awhile, but lately has started displaying pictures too.

Anyone have any recommendations on how I can keep up with my literary porn while working for an ever watchful boss?

How to get an RSS feed from a website that doesn't have an RSS Feed.

gm2007 — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:40:39 -0800

Setting up an RSS feed for a job board that does not have an RSS feed subscription. Is there a way to do this? I would like to add an RSS feed to my iGoogle pages for USAJOBS.GOV searches that I have set up. USAJOBS.GOV allows you to subscribe to searches and receive them by email, but does not have a way to subscribe via RSS.

I went to feedage.com, which has a tool that they call HTML2RSS, which is supposed to convert any HTML page to an RSS feed, but it doesn't work very well on USAJOBS.GOV.

ANy ideas

"Just add RSS"-type instablog needed

ignignokt — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:47:40 -0800

Recommend a free blog provider that can use an RSS feed as a source for content, but also has a decent comment system. I know Tumblr can create blogs that translate RSS feeds into Tumblr blogs, but - by design - they don't have a robust comment system. You can try to drop in something like Disqus, but I've tried that before, and the results are ugly.

Why I'm looking for this: A friend of mine would like to take his Google Reader shared items feed and present it as a blog that strangers can comment on without too much trouble.

What should I be reading?

csjc — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 03:33:11 -0800

I ask you, educated and oh-so cultured MeFites, what should I be reading? Everything's in order, except for my RSS feeds. I'm in need of a good mix of wit, news, and good ol' amusement from the world over to serve as nothing less than my daily reading material. Help me stock that RSS reader. A little background on myself: I'm a 15 year old, suffice to say "linguistics junkie" from Vancouver, Canada.

As far as news goes, I like to have a variety of angles, political and geographical. Whatever you think would leave me with the most accurate and comprehensive knowledge of world news. Locally, if any Vancouverites could oblige, please do.

Otherwise, I'm open to anything. I haven't done well keeping up with all the news lately, but a couple places I enjoy visiting, are, for example: languagehat (of course), and The New York Times book review. I'm generally a big fan of book reviews, interesting short fiction, food, design, geography, history, travel, theoretical physics, photography and anything linguistics-related. I'd like to have a couple links under each of those headings, at least to peruse during the day.

I know there's a lot out there, but I'm only asking for the bare essentials, or at least your personal favourites.

Anything in French or German would be appreciated too, even Swedish/Danish/Norwegian... if you have anything in mind.

The worst of the human condition, delivered right to your inbox!

backseatpilot — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:13:30 -0800

Looking for some RSS feeds with heavy doses of schadenfreude. My guilty pleasure lately has been Texts From Last Night, and I want more. What are some good RSS feeds that will complement my current collection? Currently also following Overheard In X and Passive-Aggressive Notes. What am I missing out on?

Who's reading?

pseudostrabismus — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:06:40 -0800

How can I juice up a foo.wordpress.com site? Specifically I want a better statcounter, but any other cool stuff you recommend would be nice, too. I have a blog at nameofblog.wordpress.com. I'm planning to move it to nameofblog.com, but that's not high on my priority list at the moment. In the meantime, I'd like to know more about my stats, but I'm not sure which is the best free stat tracker for a Wordpress.com site. Right now all I see on the default tracker are pageviews, referring links, and the posts that get the most clicks. But those "most clicks" numbers only add up to about 20% of my daily pageviews, which... huh?

Specifically, I'd like to know:
How many people are following on RSS
Stats by city & country
Average length of visit
Any other stats you'd think I might find interesting.

All this stuff used to be easy to track on Blogger blogs with StatCounter, but I don't understand how to put a different stat tracker on Wordpress (I'm using the Contempt template, and I don't know how to edit CSS). Anyone have a suggestion of an easy, free way for me to satisfy my stats curiosity until I have time to customize the whole site? Ease of use is key, though- my knowledge of programming is scant, by which I mean I know maybe 10 HTML tags and that's about it.

While we're at it, I guess I'd also be interested in hearing about any Wordpress.com site goodies you know about that are cool & easy to use, but not widely known.
Thanks!

Facebook + Organization Page + Import blog

exhilaration — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:02:55 -0800

Facebook + Organization Page + Import blog. Is it possible? So I built a fancy Wordpress-based site for a local non-profit and I want to give them a Facebook presence as well. I created a page for them on Facebook which is what you're supposed to do for organizations or businesses. Now how do I import their blog into the page? I saw this previous AskMe, but that doesn't seem to apply to organization pages, at least I can't find an Import Blog option. Is there a way to do this? I was hoping they wouldn't have to even log into Facebook - just updating their blog would trigger an update on Facebook.

How to edit feeds in Wordpress 2.7?

kmel — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:57:07 -0800

I use Wordpress 2.7. How do I edit the RSS feed(s)? Please help me troubleshoot my situation ... Please help a gal out! I want to insert ads into my feed -- direct ads, not Adsense ads -- ideally every nth post but I'm having trouble getting them to show up at all, so that's my question for now.

I'm using Wordpress 2.7, and OpenX to serve ads. I also use Feedburner Feedsmith to redirect my feeds to Feedburner.

I tried to insert an html ad invocation code (built using these instructions from OpenX) using the Better Feed plugin (which you can use to add various things to your post footer), but all that ended up showing up in the feed was the code. Better Feed does successfully display tags and categories for each post.

I tried to go into the feed template according to these instructions, but they all seem to be redirected elsewhere. But if Better Feeds is inserting tags and categories, doesn't the feed template live somewhere on my server? If so, where? Do I need to get rid of Feedburner to make this all work?

Please let me know what other info/code/etc I can provide.

(Yes, I tried the wordpress forums, but didn't have any luck getting a response.)

Why are there no items in the category feeds of my self-hosted WordPress blog even though my overall feed is fine?

raddevon — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:01:10 -0800

Why are there no items in the category feeds of my self-hosted WordPress blog even though my overall feed is fine? I have a self-hosted blog at raddevon.com. My overall feed updates normally with all my posted items. I am using my categories in my posting, but all my feeds for the three overall categories on my site are empty.

The category feeds:
http://raddevon.com/category/gaming/feed/
http://raddevon.com/category/tech/feed/
http://raddevon.com/category/internet/feed/

I'm running WordPress 2.7. I would really appreciate any insight you might have. Other resources have failed miserably to answer this question. Thanks!

How can I set up my own 'lifestream' site that I control?

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:20:38 -0800

I'd like to set up a 'lifestream' on my website, logging all my online activities automatically and in real-time, similar to Friendfeed but that doesn't require me to be part of someone's idea of the perfect social network. Is this possible and if so, how? For example, every time I comment on someone's blog, upload to Flickr, favorite a MeFi post, etc., I'd like a post to be automatically generated on my site, with a time-stamp. Ideally, the content of the post would also be mirrored on my site, so at a glance a visitor could see everything I've done on the web recently.

I know Friendfeed and other 'life-streaming' sites have similar functionality, but they all seem to be locked-in walled-garden social networks, online communities I don't want to be a part of, run by people I don't know working at companies I frankly don't trust. I want my lifestream to be one-way and output-only, and while for simplicity's sake I want to continue to use other sites like Facebook, Flickr, Youtube for entering my content, I'd like to be able to mirror that content on my own site. Is there such a system out there, web-based or even a local application, that would fit my needs?

Anonymous only because I'm not sure if I'm being very naive!

Why aren't my images showing up on my (drupal powered) RSS feed?

serial_consign — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 14:38:23 -0800

Why aren't images showing up in my blog RSS feed? (Drupal CMS question) I'm using the Drupal image module for a blog project. No images are showing up in my RSS feed. I know this module creates a separate node for each image and "attaches" it to the related post.. is there a drupal (6.x compatible) image module that will allow users to upload images AND have them included in the post/node proper (and in turn, my RSS feed)?

need a library for text classification

chexov — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 16:17:29 -0800

I need to be able to automatically identify language (English, Japaneese, Russian, etc ... ) in which a particular blog-post has been written. (lang attribute might or might not be available). Few years ago I came across a library for RSS feeds that was doing roughly what I need - can not find it anymore though.

How do I create a page full of feeds?

joshnunn — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 14:22:19 -0800

Are there any simple sites that will help me combine a bunch of (RSS) feeds into a new page? I'm gonna be teaching my mother (and eventually other teachers) how they can blog and use wikis etc. I'll also be teaching her how quickly share links with others using del.icio.us or Google Notebook, and share interesting items from Google Reader/Bloglines. The problem is that all these things produce different feeds, and it'd be nice if she could have a page that she can set up that combines all the feeds into a single dynamic page that's constantly updating as she tags new stuff. All the different tools are useful in their own way - a blog for her own thoughts/opinions, Notebook for sharing pages and snippets, Reader for sharing other blog posts, but none have a simple way to combine together to form a 'super-feed'.

I realise there are many many ways to do this:
yahoo pipes
feeddigest
simplepie

But I need something with the simplicity of all the other tools I've mentioned. There has to be no setup, it's got to be free, and hosted. I thought I might be able to use Google Pages, or blogger, but neither let you pull in a feed and combine it with other feeds as new content.

I look forward to hearing if anyone has found something like this - I don't even know what phrases to Google with.

Pull a single blog post from one of my blogs into another?

tamjl — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 12:28:25 -0800

Very occasionally, I'd like to be able to pull a **single** post from one of my blogs into another. In other words, not just link to it, but actually have the post in Blog A show up as a post in Blog B, without having to re-type it and duplicate content. Does anyone know a way to do this? I don't want to scrape the entire feed for all posts in Blog A into Blog B. Thanks!

How can I make an RSS-like feed that is publishable by the public?

itchi23 — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 16:48:08 -0800

How can I make an rss-like feed that is publishable by the public? Maybe there's a better way to do this, but here's what I'd like the end result to look like Ideally, I'd like to have a subscribe-able public feed that can be published by anyone interested in a very niche topic. It would be a one-way type communication where the publisher would post tiny news items to a feed, but no dialog would occur between publishers of the "news" items... It might be similar to Twitter, where there's small one-line items, but they would include html links. No login or registration should be required, as I'd like publishers to remain anonymous if they'd like. Maybe it could be a webpage where the anonymous comments would then go out into a feed? Does this make sense, and how might I be able to do it? Thanks!

Experiencing technical difficulties

clubfoote — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 05:50:51 -0800

Please Help, I'm having problems adding a feed to my google reader. I'm trying to add this blog's feed to my google reader: http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/.

The link, "subscribe to this blog's feed" just gives me a download of "index.rdf". What am I supposed to do with this? I'm used to just clickig the rss button, selecting my reader and presto, I've got the feed.

Breaking up with MySpace, and I want my stuff back.

doift — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 08:46:47 -0800

Canceling my MySpace account. Is there a way to save/export/preserve the content of my MySpace blog? Coming to my senses and canceling my MySpace account. However, my MySpace blog has turned out to be a concise and amusing record of the last couple of years, and I'd like to preserve it in some form. Is there a relatively easy way to do this, or am I looking forward to interminable copying and pasting? It's mostly for me, but bonus points if friends could also save it easily if they wanted to.

I tried subscribing to the the RSS feed, thinking I could just save it in the reader, but it only "fed" the last 10 entries, and I suspect it would disappear once I cancel the account. Also, the links in the blog postings don't show up as links in the reader. So that doesn't seem like the best solution.

I'm relatively savvy about such things, but I'm drawing a blank here and it's embarrassing. I blame the user-unfriendliness of MySpace.

blogging / pinging / rss / publishing

reflexed — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 13:36:03 -0800

Can I use a desktop blogging client to upload posts but keep them 'Unpublished' in Movable Type? What exactly happens when Movable Type publishes? I'm looking for a desktop / browser blogging client to use with Movable Type 3.34 that will give me WYSIWYG editing, and I've got a couple questions about how Movable Type works.

I'd like something that will let me upload posts to the server but keep them with an 'Unpublished' status so that I can choose when to publish them later.

So far I've tried BlogJet, BlogDesk, ScribeFire, Ecto, and Windows Live Writer.

All (but Windows Live Writer) give you the option to upload post as a draft, but then within the Movable Type interface the post appears as published (however, it doesn't actually show until the site is rebuilt). If I actually publish the post in one of the clients, it appears on the front page.

So--a couple questions about how Movable Type works:

1. Is this behavior to be expected? (Someone was recently explaining to me that when you schedule a post to go up later, there's a bug in Movable Type and it won't actually appear until the site is rebuilt--this 'post as draft' behavior would seem to go along with that.)

2. As long as I post as draft and then switch to 'Unpublished', I should be fine as far as my posts not going out, right?

3. If I forget to publish as draft, and the post goes live, but then I immediately change it back to unpublished, will it still go out in my RSS feed? What's the time delay? (Or am I fundamentally misunderstanding the way RSS works--is the post only accessible if the person loads the feed that second it's live, but if they check later it won't be there?)

4. Same with the servers I'm pinging--if something goes live and I unpublish/delete it, does the ping still go out and just point back to nothing? Or does the ping die/negate itself?

5. And finally...which desktop / browser blogging client do you prefer?

Basically I don't want to pre-publish / annoy my readers when I use something other than the standard Movable Type interface to put posts on the server. I'm relatively new to Movable Type and blogging in general, so any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks hive mind!

How do I integrate my existing blog with my MySpace blog?

bamassippi — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 15:01:55 -0800

How do I integrate my existing blog with my MySpace blog? Is there anyway to set up an RSS feed to post items from my personal blog to post within my MySpace blog? If not, does anybody have any suggestions as to code I can use to have my blog posts appear within my MySpace profile?

How can I subscribe to an MP3 blog as if it was a podcast?

unformatt — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 14:23:17 -0800

I'm in search of an application that can subscribe to mp3 blogs via rss (or even better html scrape). Any suggestions? I recently discovered the wonderful program Songbird. It's focused around finding new music from mp3 blogs and subscribing to them so that it [attempts to] downloads new tracks that are posted. I don't believe it relies on rss at all, just html scraping. The program is great in theory, but at this point its a bit immature and has some nasty bugs.

Now I'm hooked on the mp3 blogs for getting fresh music. Essentially what I'm looking for acts exactly like a podcast utility. So I tried some podcast syncing apps (like Juice and iTunes) and these don't do the job since an rss feed with mp3 links in the body is not the same as a rss podcast. So basically, I'm looking for a utility that will auto-download new posts from mp3 blogs that I subscribe too. Maybe I could mash together a few open source utils, or maybe a Python script will do the trick. Any suggestions before I go down the home-made road?

How to set up an RSS feed for my old-fashioned site?

clairezulkey — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 09:01:10 -0800

How to set up an RSS feed for my old-fashioned site? Please know that I only sort of know what I"m talking about in this post, so if my verbiage is off, don't hurt me.

Everyone is telling me that I need an RSS feed in order for my blog to keep up with readers and aggregators and whatnot. I wish I could just ignore the whole thing, especially considering the PITA that this is turning out to be.

I started my site in 2002--it was designed and edited via Dreamweaver, and my host is XO.com (the site is Zulkey.com.) My boyfriend tried to help me get an RSS set up by getting me on Dreamweaver 3, which apparently has RSS capabilites, but the problem is my four years' worth of archives.

I can go without setting up a feed for my old stuff, but I still have no idea how to do it currentl. It probably doesn't help that my site is text-driven and has one long post a day as opposed to several smaller ones.

Is there any way to set up a feed for this puppy that's not going to cause tremendous amounts of time? Would it be best to just transfer the whole thing to a new platform like Moveable Type? And if so, how can that be done? I wish I could just throw some money at the problem and buy some magical program that takes care of this for me in a relatively simple way.

If you want to tell me not to worry about it, that not having an RSS feed isn't hurting me tremendously in the long run, then I'll listen to that as well.

Thanks for reading this damn-long post.

How do I redirect an RSS feed for my podcast?

YoungAmerican — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 12:17:08 -0800

How do I give my domain's URL as my podcast feed, but route it to an autogenerated feed elsewhere? I'm setting up a new podcast. I'd like to use (generic example) http://www.mydomain.org/podcast.xml as my podcast feed. I'd like to have that feed refer users to my feedburner feed, which would refer to a feed automatically generated by my media host.

This is possible, right? What do I have to do, as someone who's never created an RSS feed by hand before?

My RSS feed is fried...

afx237vi — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 05:31:45 -0800

Why does my Wordpress RSS feed only show one post? I have a Wordpress blog that only shows 1 post in the RSS feed, despite that fact that I have specified it to show 12 posts in the Options -> Reading part of the control panel.

The feed validates, albeit with 2 warnings, but I simply can't get it to show more than one post. The "live bookmark" feature in FF also shows just one post. Curiously, the comments feed is working fine.

Best strategies for defeating sploggers who are lifting my content.

IndigoSkye — Tue, 23 May 2006 10:08:46 -0800

I've had a couple smaller splogs that gave up after a period of time. However, one splog has persisted and, through volume, is showing up higher in searches than my original posts. What can I do? It's not the lifting of the content that I have problem with, I publish an RSS feed that others pick up with a credit link back to my blog. It's the wholesale reprinting of articles without even so much as a link back to my blog.

Besides ignoring them and hoping they'll go away, what are some good strategies for getting them to stop republishing my posts? Also what ways of contacting RSS aggregation sites (like Technorati) and asking them to drop the splog feeds have worked for you?

Formatting Combined Feeds as a Daily Link List

0bvious — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 21:49:31 -0800

I have been using reblog to combine two feeds (for a blog and a forum) which I then publish through Feedburner. What I want to do is have the blog part of my feed update normally (i.e. individual posts) and the forum part of my feed compiled into a daily link list (which itself is published as if it were ONE feed post each day)... What ways exist for me to do this? I have already devised a simple way to do this, but I cannot edit the output.

At the moment I have reblogger publish my forum feed to a delicious account. Then using the feedburner link-splicer, delicious posts are called up at the end of each day and compiled as a daily link list in my feed.

Problem is I can't edit the title, format etc. of the output. (I'd like to change the title of this daily post to read something like 'Forum Activity for 30th March 2006')

Any other methods to do this? (my knowledge of PHP and the like is slim, so be gentle).

Thanks a lot