Tags: | blog improvement | atom | feed |
2007-09-09 22:50
Fixed Up My Atom Feed
For the past six months I have been using a very primitive technique to update my blog atom feed, and it has been somewhat of a hassle; tonight I finished coding a much better solution. Previously I would manually edit an xml file and input any new posts in the atom format, save it, and upload it to my server. The new solution is a php script that builds an xml file dynamically from database queries each time the feed URL is accessed. This way, if I make a new post to my blog the feed is updated automatically with the new post information immediately, and without need for my intervention. This has been on my to-do list for a very long time, and I finally got the inspiration and time to sit down and do it tonight. In addition to saving myself quite a bit of time, the new feed solution has also fixed a problem I had when updating manually. Before, I wouldn't take the time to escape my html tags, so they weren't being interpreted correctly by feed readers, and instead I was just letting the tags go ignored. This led to problems with designating new paragraphs, displaying images, and providing links within the feed posts. This step was one of the big hurdles I have been ignoring on this project for quite some time, and it feels great to be over it. Hopefully no bugs surface, but if you notice anything funny please let me know! Also, now that it's new and improved, this is the perfect time to subscribe to my feed if you haven't already :)
Now, I just need to continue work on the control panel, and once I am finished with it, posting will be a quick and painless process, as it should be in any blogging software. In addition to the control panel I still have so much to do before this software can be considered "done" - but I am making steady progress. I apologize for the two "blog improvement" posts in a row, I just seem to be on a roll recently.
- Kevin
Kevin (at) Upcsite (dot) Net
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Related Entries:
- Improvement to Comment Code (2007-09-06)
- New Blog Feature, "Newer Posts" and "Older Posts" Links (2007-07-23)
- What's Next for my Blog Software (2007-07-12)
- New Feature, More Confidence (2007-06-25)
- Should I Add a Sidebar? (2007-05-01)
- Five Things I Want to Add to This Blog (2007-03-28)
- Google Buys Everything! (2007-06-06)
Comments:
Hi!
Wishing you all the best in the success of this website
!!!Cheers!!!
Posted by: bloggergabby | 2007-09-11 12:11:49
Kevin, Glad to see the comments space has been expanded, and let's see if it remembers my info next time I comment.
As a non-techie, I read this wondering, why you are reinventing the wheel, when I can get my feeds up automatically through blogger. Of course, I understand you want to do it yourself and learn as you do it.
But this leads to a question I've had with the blogger labels. At first I thought they would be a good way for people to find topics on my blog, and I have them listed. For that use, I wanted to limit how many different labels I used so it wouldn't get so cluttered. But it looks like for web-crawlers, it makes more sense to put whatever is important in the post into the labels.
What's your advice there? Also, I did a couple more posts thinking about blogging you might want to check.
Posted by: Steve | 2007-09-14 1:48:10
Kevin,
It cut off the following in the last comment:
Posted by: Steve | 2007-09-14 1:53:31
It cut this off again. I put in html code to make a link to the blogging posts I referred to. It stopped at that point in both the previous posts. So, I'll try a third time to get you the rest of the post, but without the html.
http://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/search?q=Blogging+is+like+fishing
Other suggestions for the comments:
1. I can only see three lines at a time in the box (I'm on a Mac using Firefox)
2. I can't preview. I put in a link, but I'd like to see if it works in preview before posting. If it doesn't work, go to my blog and use the search blog in the upper left for "Blogging is Like Fishing"
3. And let's see if it does my name right. [It did] I definitely only have Steve in the box
Posted by: Steve | 2007-09-14 1:58:57
Hey Steve, glad to hear from you again. I am re-inventing the wheel for three reasons, one is that it is a huge opportunity for me to learn web technologies such as PHP programming, CSS, expand my HTML skills, learn XML formatting, etc. I have learned so much from this blog project. Secondly, by doing it all myself, I am allowed a tremendous amount of customization - the blog looks and feels exactly how I want it to, without having to learn template building for an existing blog software. Lastly, I am having fun in the process.
As for 'labels' - or what I call tags, I find that you should usually put tags that indicate what content will be found in the entry. What you really need is tags/labels, and then a separate categories property where you can assign each entry to one or more categories that fit your topic. Categories is on my to-do list for this blog, but I'm not sure if there is a way to implement them in blogger.
Sorry about the link not working, I still haven't figured out a good way to securely allow linking and other formatting html to be used in the comment section, I am working on it though. I can easily make the comment box bigger, if it's too small - I'll add it to the list. I will work on a preview option.
Thanks for the feedback and suggestions Steve.
Posted by: Kevin | 2007-09-14 20:02:43
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