Can you enable your RSS feed?

[John37309]

This board is an SMF board so it includes a feature where you can enable RSS news feeds from this website.

I believe you can do this from the board admin panel.

Read this about how to do it; http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=25009.0

Should be like this;

First, make sure you've enabled the feeds:

Admin -> News and Newsletters -> Settings
Check the box next to "Enable XML/RSS News".
The "Maximum post length" value determines how many characters of a post are output in the feeds. The default value (255) is fine for now

This would make it easy for more people to read your news and updates about the opp apps.

John.

[Gecko_R7]

Thanks for the tip John! 
I'll discuss w/ Admin.

[John37309]

Yep, let me know if you need any help!

Not sure what version of SMF forum you have, it might require an update or an extra module added, i don't know.

John.

[John37309]

I see you guys enabled the rss feeds from your forum, well done!

To complete this properly, you need to do one more thing. To produce an rss feed that might be considered the "News about latest opp apps" from this forum, you need to create one new forum that is specifically for posting your "News items". The only messages posted in the new "News and announcements" forum would be by the people making the opp apps and officially making the announcement.

The reason you need to create a new forum specifically for this is because if you try to take an rss feed from any of the current forums, you get all the general chat mixed into the feed. So as a result, its not really news, its just chat which you can read on the forums anyway.

Current example, with the general chat that can't be removed; http://lunatics.kwsn.net/index.php?action=.xml;op=News;id=3

That example is this forum with all the important sticky news and announcements about the opp apps. But the real news just gets burried.

It would be cool to have rss news about the latest opp apps, it would be great for everyone!

John.

[Gecko_R7]

I see you guys enabled the rss feeds from your forum, well done!

To complete this properly, you need to do one more thing. To produce an rss feed that might be considered the "News about latest opp apps" from this forum, you need to create one new forum that is specifically for posting your "News items". The only messages posted in the new "News and announcements" forum would be by the people making the opp apps and officially making the announcement.

The reason you need to create a new forum specifically for this is because if you try to take an rss feed from any of the current forums, you get all the general chat mixed into the feed. So as a result, its not really news, its just chat which you can read on the forums anyway.

Current example, with the general chat that can't be removed; http://lunatics.kwsn.net/index.php?action=.xml;op=News;id=3

That example is this forum with all the important sticky news and announcements about the opp apps. But the real news just gets burried.

It would be cool to have rss news about the latest opp apps, it would be great for everyone!

John.

John, I activated RSS feeds in forum admin., but I haven't any indication that it's actually working.
For example, I do not get the RSS icon via Safari or IE browser. 
Are you seeing an RSS feed for this site?
What browser are you using?

[John37309]

John, I activated RSS feeds in forum admin., but I haven't any indication that it's actually working.
For example, I do not get the RSS icon via Safari or IE browser. 
Are you seeing an RSS feed for this site?
What browser are you using?

No, my browser does not detect the rss feeds either, its not going to. SMF designed this mod as an add-on or as an after thought, so its not hard coded as part of your SMF framework.

But the feeds are there, you just have to know how to get the feed. So Gecko, you, as the forum admin have to understand how it works. Then you have to decide if you want people to know that this new "Opp App news and announcements" rss feed are available.

So its up to you to place links where people will see the new rss feed is available, and get a nice rss icon. Get an rss icon here; http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/RSS

This is what you need to do;
1. So first you need to create the new forum that will only be used to post news items about whats happening with the latest opp apps.

2. You should probably move all the current "Stickied" news announcements into the new forum. Then you just have news in that forum.

3. Write a forum description saying that this new forum is only for news, its not for chatting.

4. Then you need to read the SMF announcement message and figure out the URL to use for getting the rss feed for that new news forum. This is the SMF message that explains how it works; http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=25009.0

5. This is an example rss feed from this forum, the general chat forum; http://lunatics.kwsn.net/index.php?action=.xml;op=News;id=3

6. Once you have the new forum and the URL to get the rss feed, then you can place that link on the front page of the website where people will see it.

7. This bit is optional, but not nessary. Just because you add the new link and an rss icon to the front page here does not mean that browsers will detect this automatically. If you want browsers to automatically detect that you have an rss feed from a particular page, you need to edit the template for your website and add the following code in between the <head>  tags of your page;

This code;

  <link href="http://lunatics.kwsn.net/EDIT-THIS-FOR-YOUR-FEED-URL" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0" />

I think in your case, you would be editing the "index.php" page of your forum and adding the new bit of code there anywhere inside the <head> tags. But as i mentioned, this is just so browsers auto-detect the rss feed.

I will be back to check if you have any questions or need help.

John.

[Gecko_R7]

Thanks John!  This is new territory for me & hugely helpful!!
I'll start playing w/ it! 

[John37309]

Thanks John!  This is new territory for me & hugely helpful!!
I'll start playing w/ it! 

Create the new forum, move all the current news messages in there and i will help you with any questions you have. Once you have the new forum, i will make sure you have the correct rss feed url for the forum.

John.

[Gecko_R7]

Thanks John!  This is new territory for me & hugely helpful!!
I'll start playing w/ it! 

Create the new forum, move all the current news messages in there and i will help you with any questions you have. Once you have the new forum, i will make sure you have the correct rss feed url for the forum.

John.

I'll create the new forum & move posts etc. this eve.  Easy enough.
Will have to wait until tomorrow to finish re: RSS feeds.  (need sleep....dozing off).

[arkayn]

To make it work correctly, you might have to split out each post into it's own thread.

That way there will be a list of the news release instead of it only showing one.

[Gecko_R7]

Progress....

http://lunatics.kwsn.net/index.php?action=.xml;type=rss;sa=news;board=15

EDIT:  Shows the FIRST post in the Topic.  Each release will need to be it's own topic, not all contained w/in 1 thread? 

[John37309]

I think arkayn is correct, but you might have to play with it just to test it out!

This is what i have so far;

You have 4 forums, all of them have an rss feed. Each of them have a number.

Linux
Windows
Discussion Forum
Optimized Applications Release News

There forum numbers seem to be like this;

Linux - 3
Windows - 12
Discussion Forum - 1
Optimized Applications Release News - 15

So having read the SMF explanation message, i am adding the params for "XML feed", and "rss2" and "recent posts" and "Limit to 15 most recent posts". This gives me the following URL for each forum to get the rss feed from that forum;

Linux - http://lunatics.kwsn.net/index.php?action=.xml;type=rss2;sa=recent;limit=15;board=3

Windows - http://lunatics.kwsn.net/index.php?action=.xml;type=rss2;sa=recent;limit=15;board=12

Discussion Forum - http://lunatics.kwsn.net/index.php?action=.xml;type=rss2;sa=recent;limit=15;board=1

Optimized Applications Release News - http://lunatics.kwsn.net/index.php?action=.xml;type=rss2;sa=recent;limit=15;board=15

Using those url's, i can get and read the rss news from the original 3 forums, they work fine. But i cannot see any news items on forum 15, the new "Optimized Applications Release News " forum?

You might have to do what arkayn suggested and split the forum posts into individual news items. But i would test it first by posting a few test forum posts to see if they appear in the new forum, you can delete them later.

I can't post messages in the new forum so i can't test it. But maybe that is why i can't see the rss news items for that forum also.

You will have to play with it and test the url's i have given you.

John.

[Gecko_R7]

But i cannot see any news items on forum 15, the new "Optimized Applications Release News " forum?

John.

I know why.  Will take some more reorganization, but I know "what" & how to fix this.

[Gecko_R7]

Try this:

http://lunatics.kwsn.net/index.php?action=.xml;type=rss;sa=news;limit=15;board=15

[John37309]

Try this:

http://lunatics.kwsn.net/index.php?action=.xml;type=rss;sa=news;limit=15;board=15

Gecko,
You done a wonderful job, its working great with that url! , well done!

You just need to post news items as new messages when you have a new release. I suppose tomorrow you can try add the rss icon to the front page and the extra bit of code for the browser auto detect if you like!

Looks good!

John.