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Author Topic: RSS Feed  (Read 18405 times)

Graham Berks

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« Reply #20 on: November 20, 2005, 01:33:29 pm »

francois,

thanks for the link.
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jdemott

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« Reply #21 on: November 20, 2005, 02:05:05 pm »

Quote
Thank you, thank you, thank you Michael,

Thank you for providing me with a great forum at no cost.

When someone offers me a free ice cream cone I do not like to insist on a cherry on top but accept gratefully what is offered.

I don't feel at all strongly about the RSS feed, but I do feel fairly strongly that I am entitled to voice my opinions and suggestions concerning the site.  

In the beginning, Luminous Landscape was a completely free website and at that time I would have agreed whole-heartedly with Robert's sentiments--don't look a gift horse in the mouth.  About three years ago, Michael announced that the principal support for the website would be provided by his new venture, the Video Journal.  He made it quite clear that he was asking regular users of the website to subscribe as the way to financially support the website.  I signed up for the Video Journal and have been a subscriber since Issue 1.

Don't get me wrong.  I enjoy the Video Journal, just as I do the website.  But I do view myself as a paying customer of the Luminous Landscape and entitled to voice my opinions.   Luminous Landscape is a business, not a gift.   If Michael is half as smart a businessman as I think he is, then I expect he will welcome all reasonable comments (even if he doesn't always agree with them).
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John DeMott

Jay Kaplan

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« Reply #22 on: November 20, 2005, 02:39:23 pm »

Maybe I am a little slow, I know what RSS feeds are, but how do I get them to my desktop?

Right now, I have a direct link to the site on my desktop that seems to work fine, so what benefit would a RSS feed do for me? Also, I do not think my employer would like me having one at work, so what would be the advantage.

I check the site daily when I am at home or during my lunch break at work.
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jani

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« Reply #23 on: November 20, 2005, 03:16:00 pm »

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Maybe I am a little slow, I know what RSS feeds are, but how do I get them to my desktop?

Right now, I have a direct link to the site on my desktop that seems to work fine, so what benefit would a RSS feed do for me? Also, I do not think my employer would like me having one at work, so what would be the advantage.

I check the site daily when I am at home or during my lunch break at work.
If you use a modern web browser such as Mozilla Firefox or Opera 8, then the browser already has built-in RSS support. There is no need to fetch extra software. RSS support is also built-in with Mozilla Thunderbird.

A single RSS feed in your browser or mailreader may not give you a lot of added value, but for several sites, it can be a nice way of scanning for interesting stuff.

For instance, I have an RSS feed from the BBC, allowing me to check the latest news headlines at a glimpse. I similarly have one from Slashdot, just in case they have something vaguely interesting there; it happens a couple of times in a week.

It saves me oodles of time instead of going directly to the web pages in question, and it allows me to do so without actually disrupting my work.

Now I'm quite lucky in that I have a work situation where it's absolutely okay to spend some time during work hours to browse places like the LL (and the forums!), but for those who can't, I imagine an RSS feed would make it easier to keep up and look at what interests them.
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Jan

Madness

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« Reply #24 on: November 20, 2005, 04:40:12 pm »

Think of RSS as a delivery service saving you the time and effort of visiting various sites to see if there's anything new. Feeds are like a mailman who delivers newspapers and magazines so you don't have to go out and buy/look for them every day. Think of the time you save because of your mailman, now think how much you could save by subscribing to a feed and let the publisher of a website deliver the news to you.
And unlike email subscriptions there is absolutely no possibility of spam mail or unwanted virus attacks since you are in full control of the content being delivered to you. You cannot unsubscribe spam mail, you can unsubscribe a feed.


I have roughly 200-250 feeds in my aggregator (possibly even more). Everything from general news to specialist news (scuba, photography, advertising, design etc.) and interesting personal blogs. Some people automatically associate RSS feeds with personal blogs but the concept goes waay beyond that single purpose. It can be used for any content that is updated regularly (or not).
I have a feed that tells me when someone commented on a photo in my gallery or a blog post or a forum post or when someone edited a group project at work/class... whatever basically.
I've set up a feed for a small business website where hardly anything changes over time. But I've put it there anyway in case someone wants to be notified when it does.

The point is - I don't have to search for new content, the content comes to me and all those feeds take me just 15min to browse every day. Compared to how many hours/days if I'd visit each site individually??



to Michael

Nobody is saying you should start writing a personal blog. I don't think anyone cares what you ate for breakfast. Everything stays the same as it is and to be honest - what you're doing now could, in a way, be identified as a blog.   There are many different types of blogs out there. What differentiates yours from other more common types are just optional technicalities (blog engine, feed, permalinks, comments).

There's absolutely no need for you to change your style of writing just because there's a feed and/or blog engine present. Even if you decide to edit/publish a feed by hand... this is all you'd have to copy/paste each time you update. That tool I linked to earlier would simply do the "coding" work for you

<item>
  <title>L-L now has an RSS feed!!!</title>
  <link>http://www.luminous-landscape.com/new/index.shtml</link>
  <pubDate>Mon, 20 Nov 2005 18:46:53 +0000</pubDate>
  <author>Michael</author>
   <description>
     With winter coming on, at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere... it is the time when site updates happen and I decided to start a feed!  :P
  </description>
</item>



I also don't understand why you're affraid of losing visitors because of a feed? Several studies and real world examples show that a feed actually acts the other way around. It generates more traffic, attracts more visitors. I could do a search for you but not today, I'm about to fall asleep any second.  
People would still visit you website to catch up on the forums and/or read the new essays, reviews etc. It would act the same way as the "what's new" page does. If you don't care, you don't read it. If you do, you click on the link.


Enough for now but I'll be happy to answer any other questions.
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Jay Kaplan

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« Reply #25 on: November 20, 2005, 06:46:58 pm »

I use Outlook Express v6x. Does it have an RSS feed, and if not what do I do?
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jani

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« Reply #26 on: November 20, 2005, 07:31:38 pm »

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I use Outlook Express v6x. Does it have an RSS feed, and if not what do I do?
It most likely doesn't. That product comes from the end of the last century, before RSS became popular among geeks.

And I'm not saying that just to be mean; Outlook Express is that old, feature-wise.

If you aren't forced into using Outlook Express by your employer, but are allowed to use alternate software, my recommendation is to download one of several free alternate programs on the net; they can import your address book, your messages, etc. and let you move on.

But if you have to keep on using Outlook Express, then you probably just have to Google for "rss-reader" (and find products like RssReader[/i], and if you're on a Mac, check out [url=http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/]NetNewsWire[/i].
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Jan

usrbingeek

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« Reply #27 on: November 20, 2005, 11:54:55 pm »

There are also several free web based RSS readers such as Bloglines.com. Very convenient if you want to keep up at your feeds at work and home or on different computers.
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DarkPenguin

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RSS Feed
« Reply #28 on: November 21, 2005, 10:25:17 am »

I think you should do it.  With ads.
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61Dynamic

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« Reply #29 on: November 24, 2005, 04:24:00 pm »

Ah, yes, the old RSS topic is back!

I too am a big fan of RSS and implementing it would take no more than two hours from installing the RSS software to integrating it to the sites design (I know because I did it once before the last time tis topic emerged).

The simplest that I know of is Wordpress which take no HTML knowledge to install (just to design) and can be up and running in literally a few minutes.

Michael, the ease of posting to the LL with WP would be well, easy. Especially is you pick up MarsEdit to help out. I personally use it for a couple of websites and it makes the whole ordeal easier than it already was.


The whole point in RSS is not to post a lot or tell stories of your cute kitty pooping on your grass. Nor is it only used for personal journals. you can find RSS everywhere used in advertisement, news, forums and more. It is a means to make content easy for the reader to obtain and follow.

An example, in a ten minute period I could check out the newest bits from a few website such as DPReview, Rob Galbriath, and PhotographyBLOG. Using RSS however, in half the time it would take to see if anything interesting has been posted by visiting each site, I can check 70 sites in NetNewsWire.

Naturally, I don't have to read everything. I just read what I want to (That may seem a bit obvious but you'd be amazed how many people argue against RSS for that reason). It is extremely convenient allowing me to visit the sites only when they have something new going on.

If you don't want to pay the costs of the bandwidth for RSS, which could be considerable for a site like this, then just out-source the feed to FeedBurner. They'll suck up a vast majority of the bandwidth for free and offer basic stats. The payed for service gives more detailed stats.


RSS Forums: I don't know how to do this specifically but I know it can be done. Back when RSS was kicking off, LockerGnome added RSS to their Invision board and was even selling the ability as a plug-in for $50. I don't know if they re still selling it or not but they'd be a place to start for RSS forums if you wanted to go that rout...
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