Is RSS working for latest version?

che

Hi gang, I installed the notify extension and it freaked out my Vanilla completely, so I had to delete teh database and reinstall. I need someway of notifying my clients when a new post is posted, but I don't want to get burned again if I can avoid it. How well does the RSS add on work? And are there any other add ins I might have missed that would do notifications for me in some manner? Also, if there are multiple versions of RSS add ons what would you all reccomend? I have looked at the add ons, but I am blind and going through all of them with a screenreader is a very time consuming process. Thanks much for any advice, this is by far my favorite forum software I have used so far. Che

russlipton

RSS isn't working at all right now unless your forum is open to guests as well as members - not private. Notify is flaky.

che

Ok, so right now there is no way of notifying members of new posts then? Do you know of anything in the works? This would force me to change forum software if not unfortunately and I really don't want to do that if at all avoidable. Thanks for the info.

russlipton

Not that I know of. It's a very regrettable situation and is causing me to turn to other software for a new project as well.

Vanilla is thoroughly wonderful, but some sort of stable notification and feed flow is required for it to be considered a usable platform, imho. I wish I knew enough to fix it myself. I'm puzzled as to why no one among so many ace Vanilla developers hasn't either. Perhaps it is a more difficult problem to solve than I realize.

Vincent

At some stage i can remember someone offering a paid possition for a vanilla developer to take on this role and make a large project that might be given to the community. Unfortunately this has become mute and i havent heard about it for a while and i'm not aquainted with xml because i too would use it with many of my vanilla clients because it's an essential feature of the forum.

Maybe we could ask Mark or someone else of us vanilla devs politely (or plead :P ) to put aside what they're doing and see if we can get this done.

Vincent

Here's the thread i was talking about

http://lussumo.com/community/discussion/2968/rssatom-to-thread-creation-extension-fundraising-campaign-started/

russlipton

@Vincent - I had forgotten about that thread .... that is close to what would be killer for me too - not only solid RSS from the forum but also posting to the forum from feeds drawn elsewhere. None of this in lieu of the core simplicity of Vanilla but layered as an extension, as described.

I could put a small amount of money towards this; held in account against its completion.

Again, I'm curious why it (feeds in general; not necessarily features I want personally) is not of more interest or a higher priority to our hackers.

Perhaps it is because there is a philosophical fork between the notion of forums as something people 'go to' (pull) rather than receive information from (push). I'm all over that too, but the non-hyped value-add of Web 2.0 is all about bi-directionality of information flows.

Done with as much panache as Vanilla itself, surely slick feeds and notifications would bring members back to their forums to post more frequently ...

Without bi-directionality, I'm afraid that most (smaller) private forums are out-of-sight, out-of-mind even for people who genuinely like a particular forum.

If we had the option to pull feeds into Vanilla as well as allow our admins and/or users to select their own granular feed views (whether simple notifications; excerpted discussion-content notifications; digests ...), I think it could only be a win-win for Vanilla.

Meanwhile, though, for people like me, time won't allow the luxury of doing nothing. My several small communities consider notifications a higher priority than nearly all the cool extensions which I personally love here ... this is already several months too late, alas.

Stash

Russ, you're right on just about everything there. I can't code it, I can only hack together other people's work. This really is something for a more capable coder such as Mark, SirNot and Jazzman. (if you're capable and I didn't mention you, sorry - just prove me wrong by coding it )

Vincent

soz guys, i've got some kinda bad news. that project has currently been suspended for who knows how long so someone would have to write something up. I'd be happy to work on making something like this cos i'm getting really good at the extensions i've been working on for people, though i'm not acquainted with xml so i'm kinda out of making this extension.

Stash

From that thread there's a useful looking page from the Magpi RSS thing (which hasn't been updated in 18 months or so) http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/links.shtml This may be helpful?

russlipton

I should add that, in a step-wise process, simply getting HTTP authentication to work on simple RSS/ATOM for private forums would be a big win. That is the immediate need.

Chris Miller

We, too, are suffering without private RSS or e-mail notification. I'm not picky. I'll take either one. Lack of private RSS or e-mail notification seems to be the biggest missing piece of puzzle here. If someone get this working, I'd defintely give it a thorough test on my install.

che

Well, I for one would be willing to donate to a pool to get this code written, as I love Vanilla, and it is painfully close to being the perfect forum system for the blind computer user. How about it coders? What would it take dollars wise to get this done? I would be happy to manage a donations thread to handle getting the money up for this if necessary. If this needs to go to someone off thread here, please let me know and I will be glad to email them about the possibility. ALso, feel free to email me off list at che@tridigitalbb.com THanks all, Che