I'd like to thank everyone who's sending me bug reports, "stupid" questions (they're not), and requests for features. I need your feedback! Keep it coming please.
-------- AUTHOR: David P. Janes DATE: 2:44 PM ----- BODY:
This is the first in a series of of entries that will be explaining some of the technology behind Janes' Blogosphere. I may edit these from time to time, as my understanding (or ability to explain) improves over time. There is no particular order to how I'm adding theses to the news blog, except to note that it's generally user question driven.
The Template Rewriter adds two lines (among many others) to your Blog's Template, the first one generally directly after the "<body>" tag and the second one just before the place where your blog's entries go:
The purpose of these tags is to indicate to scrapers (such as Janes' Blogosphere) where the blogroll is in your blog. What your blogroll is is entirely up to you, but generally
Merci à Emmanuelle qui m'a fait connaître le site de Jane's Blogosphere. Les outils de David Janes m'ont enfin permis de créer un fil RSS, ce qui n'était pas facile auparavant avec Blogger. Je l'ai placé sous la rubrique "Veux-tu" dans la colonne de droite de ce blogue/carnet. Je n'utilise pas ces fils moi-même, mais si vous vous servez du mien, faites-moi signe pour me dire si j'ai bien fait ça!
Here's Kevin Steel's RSS feed. You'll note that there's nothing in it. Why, you ask? Because my RSS feeder only shows the last 48 hours of entries. I may adjust this to be 24 hours + guaranteed one entry, just to show that it's working.
I was talking about my weblog, on the way home from work, with Kevin Steel, and for some reason I happened to mention that I didn't expect I'd have to add too many bells and whistles to my hand-coded site. Approximate quote: "By the time XML/RSS becomes essential for weblogs--or indeed acquires any observable importance at all--I'm sure someone will have figured out a way to automatically translate my source code into RSS output. Figuring out how to add RSS to my site would be a source of great grief and annoyance to me, and of none at all to some clever coder. So I'll wait for that."
Approximate length of wait: five hours. Now that's Internet time! I just now discovered, by chance, that David Janes' Blogosphere is offering RSS feeds for the weblogs it "scrapes", including my site. If you want yours added, all you need to do is follow his instructions. You can view the Janesian RSS output for ColbyCosh.com even with a regular web browser. It's a bit clumsy: Janes' code hasn't learned to tell my entry titles apart from my body text. But that's a lot to ask, and I can't imagine who'd complain (plus it sounds like I could solve it myself with an HTML tweak--maybe I'll look into that on some day when I'm feeling customer-service-y). Some aggregators may only read RSS feeds, but I doubt any actual humans limit their weblog-viewing in this way. Thanks to David for the free benefit; I'll add the appropriate button to my sidebar shortly.
My first bilingual endorsement. Thanks, Emmanuelle!
Merci, Dave. Pour ceux qui veulent installer un bouton feed RSS sur leur site, fastoche, grâce à David Janes' blogosphere. (Via the Volokh conspiracy) / Thanks, Dave. For those who want to put a RSS feed button on their site, in two seconds, thanks to David Janes' blogosphere. (Via the Volokh conspiracy)
Emmanuelle Richard, emmanuelle.net
New Blogosphere Feature. From the hard-working operator of the Ranting and Roaring blog: "(David) Janes' Blogosphere is now providing RSS feeds for all ... "
Izzy Lyman, icky.blogspot.com
Janes' Blogosphere is now providing RSS feeds for all the blogs it scrapes that don't have already provide an RSS feed (over 900). Why do you care? Because many folks out there, such as Radio Userland, AmphetaDesk, and other aggregators, only read blogs that provide RSS updates. Unfortunately, many blogging programs -- particularly Blogger and Greymatter -- don't provide RSS feeds. Blogger Pro provides the ability to do this but is incorrectly implemented -- i.e. it doesn't work.
To get your RSS feed, complete the following steps:
Your blog's not listed? Do the following:
We'll be adding a "http://www.weblogs.com" like page soon, which we'll announce here when it's ready (probably by the weekend).
-------- AUTHOR: David P. Janes DATE: 5:17 AM ----- BODY:Janes' Blogosphere is now number 5 in Google listings. It's some pretty good competition ahead of me, so moving up's going to be a little tough. We'll do our best though!
-------- AUTHOR: David P. Janes DATE: 9:17 AM ----- BODY:The "all blogs" listing function (from BlogTrack, especially) now moves "The" and "A" to the end of the blog's title, so too many entries don't collection under "T" and "A".
-------- AUTHOR: David P. Janes DATE: 8:58 AM ----- BODY:If you select "Custom Blogroll" from within BlogTrack, the blogs will now be listed in the left frame. This is the first step in a reformation of the Blogroll functions. We are also going to add the ability to add your own, non-Blogosphere blogs into the list.
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