Sun, November 21st, 2004 by pixpop
I've had a few requests to add RSS or Atom to my site. I notice these are far from universal out there, and wondered if folks in general think it's a worthwhile feature to add.
Also, can anyone recommend a good RSS/Atom client for Mac OS X? I tested a few, and they were not wonderful.
November 21st, 2004 at 11:26 am
I do find RSS newsfeeds useful in that I can check for new photos on a photoblog in my bookmarks list without having to load up the website itself. I use Mozilla Firefox to read news and my own photoblog is RSS/Atom enabled too.
November 21st, 2004 at 11:35 am
The use of RSS change my life! Well... almost. It is the best way to keep track of photos, news, blogs, etc. Otherwise it is very tiresome to go to each photoblog to check for new stuff. And I think that most of the people who come to see my site use RSS.
Bernard
November 21st, 2004 at 12:19 pm
re client for Mac OS X.
I am using NewsFire (http://www.newsfirerss.com/) but there are plenty of readers out there.
November 21st, 2004 at 12:37 pm
use firefox. you can add rss/atom/whatever feeds as bookmarks and jump directly to the content.
November 21st, 2004 at 12:45 pm
If your site doesn't have an RSS feed I won't visit it. Period. It's gotten to that point. RSS is the only avenue to a site these days. For sites with RSS feeds I end up on the sites frequently but the feed is the only way that I can monitor the ever increasing list of blogs that I monitor.
November 21st, 2004 at 12:46 pm
Definitely a worthwhile feature. I didn't realize how big the whole RSS/newsfeed phenomenon was until I added one to my site as an experiment, and before long it represented about 20% of my incoming traffic. They're not hard to set up, and you don't really have much to lose by doing it. If you get stuck send me an email.
Also, there's a couple web-based readers that are pretty good. I use bloglines.com. Also, I heard a rumour that Apple is going to add a reader into Safari, but take that with a grain of salt. Firefox's implementation is decent, but it has some major limitations (it only grabs headlines) and it seems to choke on some feeds for no reason (including my own!)
November 21st, 2004 at 12:52 pm
Sub-question: how do you add an RSS feed to your photoblog?
November 21st, 2004 at 1:30 pm
Try http://www.bloglines.com . It is a web-based RSS client, so you can use the same set of feeds wherever you go.
November 21st, 2004 at 2:44 pm
Both as a blog reader and publisher, the RSS feed has the most practical application in that sites can be added to 'MyYahoo' pages. Both being able to tie into their multibillion dollar branding as well as not having to install anything outside the viewers normal paradigm. They simply click on a link and we're there on the page for them.
I have to agree with Thomas that I'm much more likely to return to your site if I can see updates right on my home page. The 'Random' thing is fun for about 20 min.
The downside is you have no idea how many folks have added you to their 'MyYahoo' page.
November 21st, 2004 at 3:44 pm
Joe,
I think standard blogging software (e.g. MT) has built-in mechanisms or plug-ins that provide RSS. Since my site is home-brewed, I'll need to provide a URL that generates the RSS/Atom content. I don't think that's very complicated to do. But then, I haven't done it yet
Thomas, David,
OK, I get the message. I'm adding RSS as soon as I can get it figured out. Sounds like folks think MyYahoo and Firefox would be important clients to work with.
November 21st, 2004 at 4:32 pm
I also use bloglines - it has literally cut my surfing time considerably. I added RSS 1.0, 2.0, and Atom feeds to my site as soon as I saw how easily other people can get to my site.
Here are some good resources to get you started on how to customize your rss feed:
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/2175271
http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/spec
Also - on my feeds I usually have a thumbnail to view. Other blogs such as Chromogenic do this. Others show the full photograph so I never really visit their site - DDOI is an example of this one. Even others don't show any sort of photo at all. I would consider all of these when you're creating your feeds.
November 21st, 2004 at 4:34 pm
I have heard good stories about NetNewsWire (http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/)
November 21st, 2004 at 4:34 pm
I should have included these resources also:
http://blog.photoblogs.org/2004/05/to_rss_or_not_r.html
http://mezzoblue.com/archives/2004/05/19/what_is_rssx/#000587
November 21st, 2004 at 4:52 pm
Justin - Firefox might not like your feed because in the section of your page you've got a tag to 'index.xml' when your feed is actually at 'rss.xml'. Hope that helps.
And it's so true - once I got a newsreader I pretty much stopped visiting non-syndicated sites. I have to go back to my bookmarks every once in a while and do some catching up.
November 21st, 2004 at 5:02 pm
damn html filter... that should have been the head section and a link tag.
November 21st, 2004 at 5:31 pm
I use Shrook for my RSS feed reader on OS X and enjoy it quite a lot.
Syndication is important as it's a lot easier visiting 100 or so sites that you enjoy with semi-regular/daily/non-daily updates only when they have new content. The ones without feeds tend to get visited a lot less frequently because the feeds are a lot more convenient.
November 21st, 2004 at 6:56 pm
Whoa... looks like feeds are a lot more important than I originally thought!
Well, I actually knew they were important, but considering I update my site manually (ie, with Notepad) it's kind of hard to do it. I don't know how to use any of the publishing scripts out there (MovableType, Folderblog, Wordpress, etc) and as such, no feeds.
I have no clue how to code any of this RSS stuff. It would be cool if there was some kind of script in itself that would scan your HTML code and server logs and automatically make/convert the RSS by itself.
Anyone want to help me with MovableType?
November 21st, 2004 at 8:23 pm
Something that may help those of you that manage your own content rather than have MT do it for you...
RSS 2.0 spec explained...
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
How to write RSS 1.0 (also known as RDF):
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2000/08/25/magazine/rss_tut.html
Most newsreaders should cope with both these formats, I use FeedReader and it can read RSS 1.0, 2.0 and Atom. It's pretty straightforward to write a PHP script that will update your xml files when you publish new content, although I'd imagine doing it yourself with Notepad would get mighty tedious after a while.
November 21st, 2004 at 8:31 pm
Joe, as you use MT, it's already set up an RSS feed by default. In fact, I and eight others at Bloglines are already subscribed to your feed... This is because MT and Blogger (and other blog software) have their own default URLs that (usually) provide a feed. Just put a link to [your blog]/index.xml or [your blog]/index.rdf for MT, and [your blog]/atom.xml for Blogger.
IMO, every blog should have a feed, ESPECIALLY if you don't update daily. (And when you move sites, addresses, or even change blogging software, you might want to leave a note so people who mostly follow your blog via the feeds notice and know to sub to the new feed...) Photobloggers who don't tinker with the MT defaults usually have headlines and text but no image; other feeds have thumbnails of the image or even full images. Depends on taste, I'd say.
Bloglines has been very helpful in my blog-reading experience.
November 21st, 2004 at 11:36 pm
NetNewsWire is the hands-down best for OSX.
A quick and dirty solution would be to get a free flickr account, get the free *easy* utility to automatically post to your account, and set up flickr to provide an RSS feed.
November 22nd, 2004 at 2:55 am
Also, try TickerShock for OS X. It's a ticker tape, different from the apps where you're browsing a list. The ticker just plods along, like CNN, at the bottom of my screen. Nifty.
November 22nd, 2004 at 4:18 am
If you use Firefox for RSS, get the Sage extension: http://sage.mozdev.org/
November 22nd, 2004 at 5:32 am
Well, this all looks very nice, but totally confusing to my dumbass brain, and I suspect many non-programmers. I've followed the links but still can't see an easy way to include rss on my photoblog, and reading all the gobbledegook has given me a headache. Not everyone understands this stuff. I mean I'd like to learn it all, but life gets in the way! Personally, I like taking PHOTOGRAPHS. At the moment my photoblog creation php app does not have rss intergration but the developer is talking about including that, but until then I just do not have the time to hand code an individual rss feed each time I update, so it looks like my site will be overlooked by those who state they don't bother with non-rss photoblogs (not that I get that much traffic anyway ho-hum) so, this begs the question - is it my loss, or theirs?
;-)>
November 22nd, 2004 at 6:51 am
Cameron - it's not the we 'boycott' sites for not supplying RSS, it's just once you start using RSS it's easy to forget about sites that don't provide it. Like I say, I do try to go through my bookmarks about once a week to catch up with non-rss sites. And point taken about 'PHOTOGRAPHS', but to be in this game you've got to be something of an html geek to start with
The easiest way to think of XML (the language RSS feeds are written in) is that it's like HTML, but you can call the tags anything you want. It's a way of marking up data, basically. RSS specifies a set of tag names that newsreaders will understand, eg item defines one news item in your feed. Look at a few other people's feeds and look for common structure between them; this should help you understand how it all works.
November 22nd, 2004 at 8:09 am
Sorry James, I didn't mean to suggest anyone was boycotting non-rss sites, I can understand how it would be easier to use rss to quickly see what sites are updated rather than clicking through a whole lot of bookmarked links. I am probably more just really frustrated with myself for not seeming to be able to organise myself enough to do all the things I would like to do (like work out how to parse my php blog into rss automatically to name just one of many) I will take your suggestion and look at the source of other peoples feeds, thanks!
Cam (the 'wannabe' geek lol)
:-)>
November 22nd, 2004 at 10:52 am
can i ask everyone a question? (please pardon my ignorance if i ask something stilly).
are your photographs seen in the reader? if so, are you at all concerned that they're being veiwed out of the context of your web site? does this limit browsing? how does the reader handle large images? is it a thumbnail?
or are the feeds just a link back to the site, alerting people that you've updated?
while i understand the need for some sort of way for people to steamline their process given our busy lives and can appreciate feeds for more text driven sites, i'm somewhat confused how feeds are working out for photo driven sites.
i didn't have feeds for the longest time as my sites were hand coded. i got mail from people saying that i "would be left in the dust" because i wasn't delivering content in the desired fashion. with a switch to mt at the beginning o the year, rss and atom were part of the package, but with help, i've tweaked the feeds (or i think i have) so that they only show that i've updated.
awhile ago i wrote an offhand comment about web standards killing web design (web standards people are passionate -- talk about hate mail). perhaps i should correct myself to say that rss is killing design.
November 22nd, 2004 at 11:47 am
>> are your photographs seen in the reader? if so, are you at all concerned that they're being veiwed out of the context of your web site? does this limit browsing? how does the reader handle large images? is it a thumbnail?
Heather, this varies depending on how people have set up their feeds. On my site the feeds contain a thumbnail, while on others (ddoi for example) the feed contains the full size image. I went for a thumbnail for precisely the reason you mention; i.e. I didn't want my images to be viewed outside the context of my web site.
November 22nd, 2004 at 11:55 am
Seeing that people like this rss thing, I've setup one for my site at:
http://www.fotografist.com/feed.php
November 22nd, 2004 at 11:57 am
djn1, can i ask another stupid question of you? how did you do thumbnails in your feed? is it via mt?
heather, i agree completely about the killing design part, not that i would even flatter myself with the title 'designer'. it seems we are all just sound and image bites these days. i offer a feed, but don't use a newsreader personally. my hope was that the feed would entice visitors to well, come visit, but i'm not sure if that is happening. i actually like visiting web sites! call me crazy.
November 22nd, 2004 at 12:06 pm
your_waitress: yes, I use a customized MT feed. If you're interested in seeing the template drop me an email at djn1 AT chromasia DOT com and I'll send you a copy.
November 22nd, 2004 at 12:16 pm
i prefer feeds. i also prefer full size images in the feeds. ahem, david.
November 22nd, 2004 at 1:07 pm
My feed only has thumbnails. I agree with you completely, Heather: I really want my pictures viewed in context. I see the feed merely as a hook to draw people into the actual site and let them know I've updated. That how I use other sites' feeds, myself.
November 22nd, 2004 at 2:11 pm
I use full text updates for my non-photoblog posts, but thumbnails for my photoblogs. For me, it was more of a theoretical bandwidth consideration than anything else.
November 22nd, 2004 at 2:56 pm
i like feeds a lot. i prefer full images. thumbnails are ok too. feed me.
November 22nd, 2004 at 3:04 pm
btw mostly i look at feeds only when not at home, and i use the web-based bloglines.com
at home, i have all my faves bookmarked and use thunderbird to open them all up in tabs. tabbed browsing is great.
November 22nd, 2004 at 4:10 pm
Why doesn't email work for weblog/photoblog updates? It's easy to keep a mailing list, and send email updates to everyone on the list. It has the benefit of being more of a 'push' model than RSS, so a lot less wasted bandwidth. And you don't need any special client.. you just use your regular email client.
But it seems that folks don't like that for some reason. I originally offered email updates on my site, but nobody ever signed up, so I removed the feature.
There's probably an obvious reason, but I just don't see it at the moment.
November 22nd, 2004 at 6:07 pm
If a site isn't one or two clicks away from a feed in my newsreader, I'm not likely to find it.
The suggestion for NetNewsWire is a good one. Good software; the version that is currently in beta is even better.
November 22nd, 2004 at 7:41 pm
I would LOVE to have thumbnails in my feed but my ISP does not seem to have the ImageMajik perl module available. So that option does not seem to be in the cards for us at the moment.
November 22nd, 2004 at 10:32 pm
Pixpop, I use email notices and have had about 25 people sign up. Not a lot....but since I design my own web page without help from blogging software, I'm afraid I fall into the group that thinks feeds are above their heads.
November 23rd, 2004 at 8:26 pm
"If your site doesn't have an RSS feed I won't visit it. Period."
And I wouldn't add an RSS feed. Period. It eats bandwidth. There are many improperly designed feed readers that hammer webservers with requests in an attempt to stay up to the minute. Slashdot Slashdotted itself once it added RSS.
Do you really have nothing better to do than be up to the minute on every single website you read?
November 26th, 2004 at 7:24 pm
Well, thanks everyone for all the advice. I went ahead and added an RSS feed to my site, so it will be interesting to see what difference it makes.
For those interested, the feed is at:
http://www.pixpopuli.com/index.xml
November 27th, 2004 at 6:38 am
Hey, I just installed sage into firefox, and I must admit it's pretty cool - thanks Ade. It's the first time I've actually gotten a newsfeeder to work properly for me...
I'm still trying to work out how to generate my own rss feed for notreality however!
November 27th, 2004 at 7:00 am
Chris: I actually think that readers are a pretty good idea, and I believe they may SAVE you bandwidth.
I just started getting into it because of this post. Before, I had all of my favs in my browser's favorites folder. Good and all, but there are some sites that update whenever they'd like. Sometimes everyday for a week. Then no postings for two weeks. Very sporadic. Yet there I am checking it out daily, eating up bandwidth daily. With a reader, bam, I never check out that site until there IS something.
Secondly, it would probably be a good idea to stick to the thumbnail or text system in the feeds, rather than posting the full image. That would probably eat up some more bandwidth, and it's a little annoying considering most people still have small resolutions or like checking out images in their browsers.
I wish I had an RSS feed. Pretty cool stuff, but there's got to be an easier way that doing it manually.
November 28th, 2004 at 6:00 am
Well, I have decided to go for the manual solution for the moment as I love a challenge. If anyone thinks 'notReality' worth syndicating in their favourite feed browser here is the link:
http://www.notreality.org/feed.xml
I must honestly say that since installing sage into firefox I have become a convert.
:-)>
November 28th, 2004 at 10:30 am
Jessyel, I do it manually (using WordPerfect, like all my coding) and it's not bad. Really pretty easy, once you've got your set up done. You can download mine and look at it as a text file and you'll see how easy it is...
http://www.samueljohnson.com/blog/feed.xml
It's all just cutting, pasting, and editing for me a this point.
November 28th, 2004 at 8:17 pm
Frank, thanks so much! That file is perfect. After examining the file, it doesn't look so hard to update. Just another copy/paste job. If anyone's interested: http://www.dailysnap.com/rss.xml
January 29th, 2005 at 9:01 am
I admit I haven't been using and providing RSS for long -- only since about the time this thread started, but when it comes to photoblogs I'm disenchanted, and while I'll continue to provide RSS on my site, I think I'll abandon it for much of my photoblog viewing.
This is because not enough of my favorites have RSS; I *really* like to see their work; and it's difficult to keep in mind who's on which list in order to remind me to return to my photoblogs list.
I have the feeling that some blog programs automatically provide feeds (joe's nyc has a feed, but he doesn't link to it on his page, so he may not be thinking about it), while it seems the "myexpressions" family doesn't.
So I'm going to be using my favorites here at Photoblogs.org here *more* and my RSS reader less. Brandon, I'm *so* glad the fund drive was successful!
February 26th, 2005 at 4:47 am
RSS is fun, especially for those on the go or using PDA's. I was going to ask a similar question, to see how important RSS would be, since i was considering adding it to my site. Well, since i have seen this thread yesterday, i've done it; complete with thumbnail preview in the feed. One thing you'll miss though, if you'll only check the thumb, is nice website interface :P...