What's wrong with the RSS?

Anonymous · Guest

The home page now points us to the RSS to be notified of changes, but according to my reader (Flock), the last update was March 10, 2008 and references a page posted April 2, 2009. This entry reads "The very first page to appear on the rss feed! Woooo...? lol...".

I'd like to keep up, but the RSS isn't helping.

Tinalles · Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 9:44 am Post subject:

I suspect Lady just forgot to update it -- it's not automated like most RSS feeds. She writes the code for it by hand. And since (as far as I know) she doesn't actually use RSS for anything herself, I imagine it's fairly easy to forget or put it off.
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YatesOfYore · Site Admin Joined: 27 Dec 2006 Posts: 853

I've updated it every time I've put up a new page. If it's not working, I have no idea why. Any one else have this problem and/or an insight on how to fix it?
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PS: Don't panic! I changed my username - I'm not an impostor!

Tinalles · Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 4:21 pm Post subject:

I stand corrected (and should have just looked at the RSS feed before replying, to see that it is in fact up to date).

Lady hasn't included a pubDate field in the item entries to indicate when each item was published. Perhaps Flock expects that to be there, and malfunctions if it isn't. Can any other RSS users weigh in? Does it work with other RSS reader software?

[rant]

Since we're on the topic anyway ... Lady, you really need a content management system. A well-configured CMS would make your life a lot simpler. A CMS would let you instantly change the look of the entire site just by switching to a new theme. It would let you post your updates from any computer, no FTP required. It would take care of RSS feed generation automatically, in the background. It would probably even make it possible for you to post updates in advance so that if you go on vacation you could post a few updates with specified future release times so that they'd show up magically whilst you were lolling on the beach somewhere.

Continuing to maintain a site this size as a collection of static HTML files is crazy.

:-Þ

[/rant]
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Keeper of The Remnant Minuon (cognomen Lucy, the Eaten One) and the Emissary Caeli

Nem · Joined: 14 Apr 2008 Posts: 2108 Location: England

Seems to work with Opera's one:

It dated all the bits before I signed up to the time I did but that's not really a bother.
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Gazing at flowers.
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Tenshi · Joined: 18 Apr 2008 Posts: 2594 Location: Star Stuff

Works fine for me, with Google Reader.
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Tyris · Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2009 6:05 am Post subject:

Tinalles · Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2009 6:27 am Post subject:

Wordpress could probably do a decent job of it. Drupal certainly could (since Drupal can do essentially anything with enough configuration). If you wanted to get a bit more exotic, Omeka might do too, though I haven't spent much time studying its internals so I don't really know for sure. Or one could run up a collection of scripts in PHP or similar to at least partially automate stuff -- that's how Sarah Ellerton does it.
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Ravenna · Joined: 22 Mar 2008 Posts: 637 Location: Toward The Terra

I have to be honest, I subscribed to the Earthsong RSS feed when it first started, and it's only now I realise that it's never updated once for me. I think I subscribed when I didn't really know how to navigate the RSS, and didn't pay attention to it until I saw this thread...
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YatesOfYore · Site Admin Joined: 27 Dec 2006 Posts: 853

So I tried adding a pubdate. Lemme know if this works for you now or if it's just borked everything entirely.

Wouldn't be surprised if it were the latter.
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Keeper of Nanashi's Vambraces and the Amethyst Trees.

PS: Don't panic! I changed my username - I'm not an impostor!

Ravenna · Joined: 22 Mar 2008 Posts: 637 Location: Toward The Terra

It's definitely not appearing in my list of RSS feeds, and Phoenix Requiem and Evil Diva always do.
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Bernard [about the job]: The pay's not great, but the work is hard.
~ Black Books ~

Tinalles · Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2009 10:55 pm Post subject:

I get a "server timed out" message when trying to access the file. Which is weird.
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Keeper of The Remnant Minuon (cognomen Lucy, the Eaten One) and the Emissary Caeli

YatesOfYore · Site Admin Joined: 27 Dec 2006 Posts: 853

*sigh*

Anyone want to tell me what I'm doing wrong? 'Cause I've got noooooo idea.
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Keeper of Nanashi's Vambraces and the Amethyst Trees.

PS: Don't panic! I changed my username - I'm not an impostor!

Tinalles · Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 2:11 am Post subject:

I ran it through the W3C's validator service:

validation results

The error messages that W3C validators produce usually aren't very helpful to mere mortals. So, in my capacity as tech guru, I shall translate.

The first error is:

YatesOfYore · Site Admin Joined: 27 Dec 2006 Posts: 853

Eeeeexcellent. Thanks Tin, I'll have that fixed up for the next update... unless I do something stupid like forget to change Mon to Wed again.
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Keeper of Nanashi's Vambraces and the Amethyst Trees.

PS: Don't panic! I changed my username - I'm not an impostor!