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Feed Publisher
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Comments
Some people don't know anything about feeds, and just click on the links. The base behaviour of the browser is "let's display this xml tree that someone sends me". This is ugly and tends to tell some visitors that something is broken.
solution #1 (like in a basic DokuWiki install) a link to a stylesheet just after the xml declaration, nice and simple, but could be better.
solution #2 (like in FeedBurner
- one for the css to link to (I could provide a simple one),
- one for the url of the page with the explanations
If they are left blank, everything behaves as before.I know, it's not very simple...
As for soltuion #1, only users of IE6 and old versions of Firefox (and other old browsers) ever see the raw XML. And those browsers are being phased out (probably not fast enough, but they're still EOL.) So, I really think this is a non-issue. The two solutions aren't really necessary for the newer browsers anyway since IE7, Firefox, Opera and Safari (and just about every other new browser) can all automatically handle the feeds on the fly.
(I wouldn't focus on the non-critical enhancements just yet. Maybe save them for version 2.0? Just a thought.)
As far as I can tell, the biggest issues with this Add-On that really need to be addressed are getting HTML formatter to actually display the HTML (if that's possible) and authenticated feeds seems to be a big request as well. Full FeedBurner support for Comments feeds and Search feeds would be cool too, but not as critical.
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Speaking of which, I think I've figured a way to activate feedburner for all feeds. I'm not sure if it will work or not because I haven't signed up for a Pro Account yet. So I can't test it at the moment. But, I know that FeedBurner Pro is supposed to let you use your own subdomain for your feeds (like: feeds.yourdomain.com). So, here's one way to make all of the feed links point to a different subdomain:
function GetFeedUriForFeed( &$Configuration, $Parameters ) { if ( $Configuration[ 'URL_BUILDING_METHOD' ] == 'mod_rewrite' ) $Parameters->Remove( 'DiscussionID' ); // force page 1 at all times $Parameters->Remove( 'page' ); $Parameters->Set( 'page', 1 ); // build Uri $Uri = GetRequestUri(); // change $Uri to point to a feedburner subdomain $Uri = str_replace("www.yourdomain.com", "feeds.yourdomain.com", $Uri); $Uri = explode( '?', $Uri ); $Uri = $Uri[ 0 ]; return $Uri . '?' . $Parameters->GetQueryString(); }The actual URL of your feed stays on your regular domain. All this code does is point your HTML RSS links to where the FeedBurner feed URLs are expected to be (which, in turn, point back to your real feeds on your regular domain). At least that's how I think it's supposed to work. The trick is going to be finding out whether or not Feedburner just looks for the exact same URL on your regular domain. If so, then it should work. I should be able to test it out in a few weeks.
yes, your link seems to be the explanation page I meant. Yes, they are no critical enhancements, but are really easy, we just need to find a common ground. I'll investigate about the html formatter next week. About authenticated feeds, I can't do anything without some help of some people here.
@ Ø
I let the webmaster edit easily his explanation at some url, on a page he will build on his own, or maybe at some external url. I find it clear and simple like that. Or maybe I could investigate a bit to be able to display a configurable message like you seem to say, in an elegant way...
Also, if I can imagine how to manage with the user agent or something (HELP NEEDED HERE!!! I couldn't find any info on this yet) I really don't know if I will be able to make it popup.
I've tried Firefox RSS-Syndication, Alnera FeedBuster, and Newsgator, none of them worked with authentification.
Tschüss
Tiggr (aka Marcus)
The feed would have to contain either the user's name somewhere, a hash-value added for security, or possibly HTTP authentication built in.
Ok, so those three softs don't work with Feed Publisher, but could you give me authenticated feeds urls that work well with them (I don't want to read your feeds! but just to know how they are published, by who...) ?
@ Dan
These are (again!) good references and thoughts. Sorry, but I'm quite knew to Vanilla, the core code is still a bit cryptic to me sometimes. I'd like to understand how to cleanly make an "enhancement Add-On", and why it's better to do this way (I guess the code is lighter for people that don't want my "explanation page" thing).
@ #4
Not today! If I understood correctly, we'll need to make authenticated feeds work before.
Could you give me full access on your server so I can check some things ?
Kidding...
Don't know how we could proceed.
Could you give me the list of extensions you use, and anything that could help me to track the bug ?
- AddOn History
- Add-on Integration
- Google Adsense
- Troubleshooting Tab
that I couldn't find. I even enabled friendly urls, but I could not reproduce the bug, sorry.I could be wrong, but it's possible that Mark didn't go through the motions of manually reconfiguring the categories_config.php file for each category. Even if he did, he may not have noticed that categories_config.php, by default, sets the directory of the feed URLs to be...
/search.php?PostBackAction=Search&Type=Comments&Feed=RSS2...but we know that this Vanilla forum isn't installed in the root directory of Lussumo.com. So, it's likely that's why the "All Comments" feed went blank.
He would need to change it to...
/community/search.php?PostBackAction=Search&Type=Comments&Feed=RSS2...for the Add-On to work properly.
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As for the enhancement add on, I've never done one myself, but if you're interested you should take a look at the Attachments Add-on and the Multi File Uploads Add-on. I would also imagine there are other approaches that could be taken.
The reason why I'd recommend looking into the enhancement approach is to keep the Add-On simple and focussed on just publishing feeds. It will make the core of the Add-On easier to support down the road. Also, it will require fewer revisions to the core of the add-on as minor issues are discovered in the non-essential enhancements.
And the stylized feed-page "enhancement" will eventually be phased out when IE6 becomes obsolete (say, in about two years). My gut feeling is that it (and other non-essential enhancements) could bog down the Add-on for people who only want it to publish feeds.
But, I think you should take my advice with a grain of salt. You could probably also include the enhancements in the Add-On — as you originally intended — in a way that could easily be disabled and doesn't bog down the core of the Add-On. I'm sure you'll do fine either way.
I just learned (while writing this comment) that some people even use xsl instead of css, nice (see this example and have a look at the source).
Now I just have to create a nice (and light) way to configure the links from the config file (css AND/OR xsl).
For the 'detect if a human is clicking', I now know that it was a personal fantasm since FeedBurner uses xsl to produce the nice page with the explanations.
UPDATE:
One could even use
:root:before{content:"notice to the visitor...";background:#000;color:#f00;}in the css to add a little sentence.