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Scott Tichenor
Nov-05-2008, 8:13am
I'm happy to announce we're now pulling in mandolin related articles from The Bluegrass Blog (http://www.thebluegrassblog.com/) into the News Feed section (http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=68). By the end of the week we expect to add mandolin related news from Cybergrass (http://www.cybergrass.com/).

I've explained this previously, but for those of you that didn't see it or didn't understand what this was, sites like the Cafe, JazzMando.com, Mandolin Archive, mandolin.org.uk and many others have a way of sharing articles through some technology called RSS - Really Simple Syndication. This forum software can auto-fetch and post that news from those sites when it's made available and that's exactly what we're doing. I think it provides news and information from different perspectives and it's all good and healthy for us. :mandosmiley:

Also, when I set this area up initially I removed it from the "New Posts" search because I was concerned about these potentially overwhelming the regular discussions. May reverse that decision soon. If anyone has an opinion on that be glad to hear from you.

buddyellis
Nov-07-2008, 12:36pm
Instead of 'new posts' can you set it up on a per-section basis? That might limit the load a little. That said, RSS is pretty light. It has the potential to actually lessen load on the server, as people don't have to load the site to see if there are new posts. Now from a hit/ad perspective, that's a negative, but *shrug*

I'd love to have RSS access, because I typically setup all my 'must read' materials in Google Reader, and have it monitor newness, from which I generally then 'open' the site up normally.

Scott Tichenor
Nov-10-2008, 7:22pm
Instead of 'new posts' can you set it up on a per-section basis? That might limit the load a little. That said, RSS is pretty light. It has the potential to actually lessen load on the server, as people don't have to load the site to see if there are new posts. Now from a hit/ad perspective, that's a negative, but *shrug*

I'd love to have RSS access, because I typically setup all my 'must read' materials in Google Reader, and have it monitor newness, from which I generally then 'open' the site up normally.

Not sure what you mean by per-section basis, since there's a dedicated area for all feeds here (http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=68). If you can explain what you're looking for I'm happy to help.

You don't have to visit another site to see the headlines on these unless you wish to. I'd initially removed these from 'new posts' searches as I was afraid there'd be too many, but there are only 6-8 a day on a heavy day it seems which isn't very much content. Some of these feeds are new and would not be familiar to users because they didn't exist until this past week. The Bluegrass Blog and Cybergrass were both very kind in working with me in developing their own new custom feeds that focus more on mandolin content. Doubt they've even published those feed addresses.

Lots of folks don't use news readers or portal services, so this is an opportunity to present that news that otherwise might get bypassed. The goal of this entire site has always been to improve communication and to get the word out about what's going on in the community and this is simply an extension of that.

Ted Eschliman
Nov-10-2008, 9:58pm
Just a public note of thanks to Scott and the community for indulging my JazzMando RSS feeds. I have two, the every other day "What's New (http://jazzmando.com/new)" news feed and the weekly Tips and Tricks (http://jazzmando.com/tips) articles. If anyone has any suggestions how I can tweak these to better fit the Cafe format in the future, I'd be open.

buddyellis
Nov-11-2008, 2:26pm
Specifically, I'm talking RSS feeds for each 'section' of the forum (i.e. Builders, etc) so you can get new post notification in an RSS aggregator.

Scott Tichenor
Nov-11-2008, 3:32pm
Specifically, I'm talking RSS feeds for each 'section' of the forum (i.e. Builders, etc) so you can get new post notification in an RSS aggregator.

Buddy, good point/question. Each forum sub-section does have its own unique RSS/feed and its been that way since we launched. Depending upon what kind of browser you use, it will auto-detect and show you the options. In FireFox it's viewable in the URL bar. In IE there's an RSS icon and if clicked (or do Cntrl + J) will show you the global RSS feed and then the feed just for that sub-section.

Examples
Builders feed: http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/external.php?type=RSS2&forumids=45
Vintage Instruments: http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/external.php?type=RSS2&forumids=58
E-bay, Craig's List, etc.: http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/external.php?type=RSS2&forumids=60

The confusion may be that the individual forum feed is always second, with the global board feed first. I'm happy to discuss this further if you or anyone else would like. It's a foreign language to some but sounds like you're already using these so you probably understand.

buddyellis
Nov-11-2008, 9:49pm
AH I notice it now. I was hunting in the forum page itself, and didn't even bother to check the URL bar. Conventionally, those feeds are in the header of a blog or forum. At any rate, that is a LONG awaited feature (unless the old forum handled it too, and I just missed it!)