RSS syndication - 1.0 & 2.0

[admin]

Hey all,

Just a quick note for the bloggers & RSS gurus out there: this forum software has built-in RSS/XML syndication abilities.  If you use the Firefox browser, you can add what's known as a "live bookmark" to your client by click the orange rectangle at the bottom right side of the site.  From there, visit the Bookmarks dropdown menu of FireFox and you'll see a Berwyn Community Forum item with the latest 20 posts syndicated through your web browser.

If you wish to access the RSS stream directly, for blogging syndication, etc use the link http://berwyntalk.com/smf/index.php?type=rss;action=.xml;limit=20  Change the "limit=" section of the URL to change the number of syndicated posts.  By default, 20 shows the latest 20, 10 will show 10, etc.

Info for advanced users below --

All of the XML content is accessed via the ".xml" action... To get RSS or RSS2 out of that (not viewable in most browsers), add ";type=rss" or ";type=rss2" to that URL.

The default feed is the 5 most recent posts:
http://www.berwyntalk.com/smf/index.php?action=.xml

There are several "sub-actions" available to this action, specifying exactly what to display:

Recent Posts (displays the most recent posts that you can see)
"Sub-action": recent
Default: Shows 5 most recent posts
Available options:
limit=x - display the "x" most recent posts (if number is less than 5, it will display 5. If number is larger than 255, it will display 255).
board=y - display only the recent posts from board "y"
Example: http://www.berwyntalk.com/smf/index.php?action=.xml;sa=recent;board=2;limit=10

Board Breakdown:

Terms of Service - Board 3 (board=3) http://www.berwyntalk.com/smf/index.php?action=.xml;sa=recent;board=3;limit=10
Announcements - Board 4 (board=4) http://www.berwyntalk.com/smf/index.php?action=.xml;sa=recent;board=4;limit=10

General Discussion - Board 1 (board=1) http://www.berwyntalk.com/smf/index.php?action=.xml;sa=recent;board=1;limit=10
Political Discussion - Board 2 (board=2) http://www.berwyntalk.com/smf/index.php?action=.xml;sa=recent;board=2;limit=10

Churches & Other Religious Institutions - Board 12 (board=12) http://www.berwyntalk.com/smf/index.php?action=.xml;sa=recent;board=12;limit=10
Schools - Board 13 (board=13) http://www.berwyntalk.com/smf/index.php?action=.xml;sa=recent;board=13;limit=10

Sports - Board 5 (board=5) http://www.berwyntalk.com/smf/index.php?action=.xml;sa=recent;board=5;limit=10
Books - Board 6 (board=6) http://www.berwyntalk.com/smf/index.php?action=.xml;sa=recent;board=6;limit=10
Games - Board 7 (board=7) http://www.berwyntalk.com/smf/index.php?action=.xml;sa=recent;board=7;limit=10
Movies - Board 8 (board=8) http://www.berwyntalk.com/smf/index.php?action=.xml;sa=recent;board=8;limit=10
Music - Board 9 (board=9) http://www.berwyntalk.com/smf/index.php?action=.xml;sa=recent;board=9;limit=10

News (displays the first post from the most recent topics that you can see)
"Sub-action": news
Available options:
limit=x - display only "x" items
board=y - display only news topics from board "y"
Example: http://www.berwyntalk.com/smf/index.php?action=.xml;sa=news;board=2;limit=10

Members (displays most recent members)
"Sub-action": members
Available options:
limit=x - display only the "x" most recent members
Example: http://www.berwyntalk.com/smf/index.php?action=.xml;sa=members;limit=10

Profile (displays the "profile summary" data in a nice XML feed for the specified user)
"Sub-action": profile
Required option:
u=x - display the profile info for user whose ID is "x"
Example: http://www.berwyntalk.com/smf/index.php?action=.xml;sa=profile;u=2

Now - you're probably wondering what you can do with this. Quite a bit actually.

You can syndicate this stuff by giving people these URLs to use on their sites (they will need to have their own RSS parser to deal with it though - CaRP is a good free one (requires PHP)). You can also use PHP's XML Parser Functions to format the output the way you want it (although you can also do this using SSI.php).

You can also subscribe to these feeds through an XML reader, Firefox, Thunderbird or any other software that supports XML or RSS feeds (note - Outlook and Outlook Express do not support this...) - you will need to have either "type=rss" or "type=rss2" somewhere in the URL for it to work. If you would like to know how to set this up in Firefox or Thunderbird, let me know. Enjoy!

[jqpublic]

I use the Sage extenson for RSS with Firefox. Very nice.

http://sage.mozdev.org/