Updated RSS feed
For those who are interested, I’ve updated my full-text RSS 2.0 feed to include comments. To use this in Movable Type, open your template-editing screen. Click on “RSS 0.91 index”. Rename that to “RSS 2.0 index”. Replace the contents with this file. The output filename should still be “index.xml” unless you have a good reason to change it to something else. You may want to change lastn="10" to some other number–this shows the last 10 posts. The comments section is set off by blank lines, and can be tweaked.
This is based on the template provided by Mark Pilgrim at feeds.archive.org, but removes your e-mail address (which spambots might find) and adds the comments. It still validates.
[Later] Made a slight change to make the RSS feed friendly to foreign scripts: my template now uses the tag, which I believe is new to MT 2.6. For this to make a difference, you need to be using MT 2.6, and edit your mt.cfg file: de-comment the line containing PublishCharset and
set the appropriate charset (I’ve set mine to “utf-8″–unicode); also I think you need to de-comment the line NoHTMLEntities 1. This only matters if you use non-Roman script (Japanese, Cyrillic, etc).
[Later still] Fixed a few more minor things, including a link to extended entries (tip o’ the cap to David Nunez).
NICE! I’m doing this through my news reader. I’ll be updating my rss feed very soon with full text and comments via this tip!
Thanks!
Updated RSS
Taking a cue from Adam Rice, I’m offering an RSS 2.0 feed at http://www.al3x.net/index.xml. The current RSS 1.0 feed that most of you are subscribed to will continue to exist, but if you like the latest and greatest you’ll wanna…
web serviced
What woke me up from a depression-induced nap? The fear that the dozen or so people who read this weblog might not be seeing it in its best light. Leaping from bed I hastily followed the instructions here and turned my worthless RSS 1.0 feed into an am…
The problem that Phil Ringnulda pointed out to me with including comments is that every time your post updates with a new comment, the person receiving your site in their news reader will be notified as if there is a new post - increasing your bandwidth and making me backtrack (as a reader) to figure out what is different.
It’s a nice feature to have in a way, but if I offer it on my site I will do it as an “extra” feed option, keeping the one without comments available too.
Actually, I view that as a benefit, not a problem. But I make it easy to remove from the template.
As to extra bandwidth…I suppose, although I don’t think that’s been a problem for me so far.
full entry on RSS? Almost, but not quite.
I just noticed that my RSS export does not include extended entries for my post (and no link or indication to get the entire text). I will fix shortly. If this is babble to you, kindly ignore….