Forum Improvement: RSS

[xaotik]

Could we please have RSS enabled for this forum?
I tried the usual "external.php?type=RSS" but it's apparently disabled.

[speedfreak227]

for those of us (mainly me at the moment) who don't know what RSS is could you elaborte please?

speedfreak227

[xaotik]

Here's a definition at wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_Feed).

And here is what you'd use in Firefox (http://sage.mozdev.org/) (if that is your browser) to access it as a user. The end result in the browser would be getting the newly posted threads, etc in a browser panel, without having to visit the forums.

[al heeley]

Well I didn't understand too much of that! I get the feeling it treats a forum like an email-based newsgroup. Is that the gist of it?

[xaotik]

Is that the gist of it?

To quote Cicero and countless other magnificent personalities: no.

What it does is provide the "headlines" in XML (a data structure that computers can parse easily).

Go to this with your browser:
http://forum.rscnet.org/external.php?type=RSS

It's racesimcentral's forum's RSS feed output. Notice that it's basically a broken-down description of data? Now, if you were a program you'd be able to read that because you'd know the structure it was in (it's predefined by the RSS specification) and you'd be able to output it anywhere your programmer told you do (in the above example of the Firefox browser's Sage extension it would be in a browser panel - you could even incorporate that data in a website).

[the_angry_angel]

RSS: Really Simple Syndication.

The only reason you'd use the RSS feed is to read it in something like Klipfolio (windows), or some other RSS aggregator. In short you'd beable to read the forums, without openning up your browser and going to it.

The thing is you dont get it in a usual forum style :( (unless youve got a clever feed manager)

[xaotik]

The thing is you dont get it in a usual forum style :( (unless youve got a clever feed manager)

Not such a terrible thing really - a simple list of latest posts is enough.

And if it's there, then other community websites like LFS-News could use it to get feeds from the "Leagues & Events" subforums and such.

[DeXteRrBDN]

i want to do another forum suggestion, and i think i don't need to start a new thread:

i visit this forum so often using a PocketPC. At RSC Forum, i used to have a PDA theme. So I could read all perfectly. Here I cannot choose a PDA theme and it's a bit more difficult to read the forum.

[xaotik]

Try this:
http://www.lfsforum.net/archive/index.php/

Found at the bottom of the forum as "Archive"

[the_angry_angel]

Not such a terrible thing really - a simple list of latest posts is enough.

And if it's there, then other community websites like LFS-News could use it to get feeds from the "Leagues & Events" subforums and such.
Good point! :)

[DeXteRrBDN]

thx xaotik, very useful, more easy to read. unfortunately, i cannot know which threads have new posts from my last visit using this view