Playing with RSS, plus an important question for YOU

Okay, so.

I spent … too much time … working on getting the RSS templates for all of Modern Evil and Darwin’s Complex updated, and getting an RSS aggregator online and working to parse the files together and put it int he format you are familiar with. But it is working now, and as soon as I can get in touch with Mo, we’ll get his RSS 1.0 template updated and his blog will be integrated properly again, too.

I did make a mistake or two, though. First, I forgot that standards-compliant (even loosely-compliant like the RSS I’m using) RDF files do not pay attention to “Most Recently Commented On”, which … I believe (with no evidence) is a popular part of Modern Evil’s core functionality. So, actually, right now Modern Evil is doing … twice as much on the back-end as it used to. Oh, and the second thing, which is that the “cache”-ing code isn’t quite working properly, so … it’s using more bandwidth than it needs to. Though I’ll be working on that… in time. Sigh.

I may just … form invalid RDF files to get the Comments thing working. BUT, I’d like to see what you think of that functionality, first. According to my current webstats, an average of around 1000 unique visitors come to Modern Evil each day. If, say, 2% of that many people comment on this that they’d like to see the “Most recently commented on” functionality remain a part of the site, I’ll work on that. For now though, I’m only going to focus on getting the cache working.

Sigh.

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Teel

Author, artist, romantic, insomniac, exorcist, creative visionary, lover, and all-around-crazy-person.

14 thoughts on “Playing with RSS, plus an important question for YOU”

  1. I have updated Teel, so I hope it works. I will post just to make sure. I have to go with Iain and the others who think that the most recently commented on section is a big one.

  2. I have updated Teel, so I hope it works. I will post just to make sure. I have to go with Iain and the others who think that the most recently commented on section is a big one.

  3. Okay, I determined it was easier to integrate comments than try to figure out how to manage them separately without violating RSS Specifications too much, and I’ve set the cache up so that it only checks everyone’s sites every five minutes. That means that … until I figure out how to fix it, it could be up to but no longer than five minutes between when you save a post or comment and when it appears on the main Modern Evil page.

  4. Okay, I determined it was easier to integrate comments than try to figure out how to manage them separately without violating RSS Specifications too much, and I’ve set the cache up so that it only checks everyone’s sites every five minutes. That means that … until I figure out how to fix it, it could be up to but no longer than five minutes between when you save a post or comment and when it appears on the main Modern Evil page.

  5. I’m sure it will just take some getting used to, but it hurts my eyes right now. I liked the two sections separated, and I’m not sure about the brownish color. But I guess you’re running out of colours, right?

  6. I’m sure it will just take some getting used to, but it hurts my eyes right now. I liked the two sections separated, and I’m not sure about the brownish color. But I guess you’re running out of colours, right?

  7. Well, recommend a different color, one not used by or easily confused with the six main sections’ colors, and I’ll switch post-haste.

    The only other one that occurred to me is the grey that the leftmost tab and top bar on the main page are.

    But suggestions are welcome.

    Personally, I like them integrated like this, because I can see if comments are new or not; they are sorted in time with the posts, so that if a particular comment section is getting lots of comments in a day, it will keep popping to the top of the list, getting my attention.

  8. Well, recommend a different color, one not used by or easily confused with the six main sections’ colors, and I’ll switch post-haste.

    The only other one that occurred to me is the grey that the leftmost tab and top bar on the main page are.

    But suggestions are welcome.

    Personally, I like them integrated like this, because I can see if comments are new or not; they are sorted in time with the posts, so that if a particular comment section is getting lots of comments in a day, it will keep popping to the top of the list, getting my attention.

  9. Like I said, it will just take some getting used to. As for color…I would’ve picked white except that that’s now Darwin’s Complex…

  10. Like I said, it will just take some getting used to. As for color…I would’ve picked white except that that’s now Darwin’s Complex…

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