Comments on: Using Magpie RSS to Read News Feeds

By: Tom K.

Tom K. — Mon, 02 Jun 2003 22:20:51 +0000

Dean, I’m dying to play with this stuff, but I need to see a good “less is more” implementation that impresses me. I have enough background from your blog on how to implement it six different ways, but I stil haven’t had anybody tell me why I should care! Someone needs to answer these questions for me:

1. My users don’t run RSS aggregators/clients for their own use, and they won’t even if I ask them to. What content can I offer them through this technology that they won’t have to set up a new program on their machines to use, but will be a value-add to them? Show me an example of a well-syndicated calendar, events announcer, or other small-church communication that is well done.
2. Where can I get a good directory of Christian RSS content available to integrate into my own site? I would like to offer a few different daily devotional choices from our page so our members can bookmark it and visit daily. How do I find these?

I can implement it, and I want to, because it looks cool. But I don’t know where to find anything worth syndicating in, and I don’t understand the client burden of syndicating out. I need to see some well done examples.

~Tom K.

By: matthew irvine

matthew irvine — Mon, 02 Jun 2003 18:00:57 +0000

i’m very interested in reading over your post. i’ve been working with the web, html, perl, and “programmatically shooting myself in the foot” for more than half my life (i’m 20). i consider myself advanced in web technology… but xml is difficult. i don’t even bother learning it, because to me there is no use for it. (how about a post convincing me otherwise dean?)

I wanted to respond to the following part of your post: “David Couchman over at FtC, who like myself, is frustrated ‘apparent reluctance of Christian webmasters to use RSS feeds – either by providing one from their own sites, or by incorporating feeds from other sites, such as ours.’” As for me, a simple church website, there is a lot to consider. We don’t use RSS feeds for a number of reasons. 1) No way to ensure quality daily content, 2) No control over content, 3) We don’t want to confuse our users with dozens of links to outside sites — this is my biggest concern. I always get a little ticked when I go to a web site, click on a link and get transported to another web site. Most won’t even tell you that you’re clicking on an external link or give you so much as new window. As a web guy, I want to respect my users’ intentions, and not whisk them away to other sites without their express consent. Also, selfishly, it’s better for me to keep them on the site longer… providing tons of content within the site so they won’t need to go to another site. So, I’m not giving you an amen, yet at least.

Sorry for being so long winded.

By: Josh Woodward

Josh Woodward — Mon, 02 Jun 2003 17:14:35 +0000

I'm using PHP + Cron as my primary feed reader. It's a part of a large CMS I've built, so it's not quite as easy to share as it could be, but the source code for the reader is here: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/entropy/entropy/ See the "/mod/rss/" directory from the root. You can try out a live version on http://www.fruhead.com/ .