4 ms·

RSS Feed Best Practice #1: make sure your service/site/resource has a feed. Am I missing something or is this site missing one?

mdp2021 4y ago
> is this site missing one Which site? For the submitted one, you have to search for 'atom' in the source markup; for HN, for 'rss'. -- kevincox.ca <link href=../../../../feed.atom rel=alternate title="Blog Posts" type=application/atom+xml> HN <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="rss">
kevincox 4y ago
The site definitely has a feed. Although I don't have a visible link to it. I am sort of intentionally ignoring my recommendation to provide a link and RSS icon as an experiment to see how well feed discovery is supported and used. I wouldn't recommend this but I've been going back and forth with this on my personal blog as it isn't very important if the maximum number of people can find the feed. If you just paste the page into your feed reader it should find the feed for you.
- rainworld 4y ago
  NetNewsWire seems to have a problem discovering the feed from index pages (e.g. https://kevincox.ca/2022/05/ https://kevincox.ca/2022/05/).
  - kevincox 4y ago
    Weird, the link is the same as the other pages and it on other sites: https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkevincox.ca%2F2022%2F05%2F https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=https%3A%2F%2Fke... https://feedmail.org/subscriptions/new?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkevincox.ca%2F2022%2F05%2F https://feedmail.org/subscriptions/new?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkev... However I noticed that this site also has trouble: https://discovery.thirdplace.no/?url=&q=https%3A%2F%2Fkevincox.ca%2F2022%2F05%2F https://discovery.thirdplace.no/?url=&q=https%3A%2F%2Fkevinc...
- leephillips 4y ago
  Vivaldi discovers the feed.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  By the way, Kevin: it may seem overly picky, but would it not be cleaner to have <link href=/feed.atom rel=alternate title="Blog Posts" type=application/atom+xml> instead of <link href=../../../../feed.atom rel=alternate title="Blog Posts" type=application/atom+xml> ?
  - kevincox 4y ago
    It could, but my site is available via IPFS so I use relative links everywhere in case a gateway is used. For example https://ipfs.io/ipns/kevincox.ca/2022/05/06/rss-feed-best-practices/ https://ipfs.io/ipns/kevincox.ca/2022/05/06/rss-feed-best-pr.... That being said with subdomain gateways being widely available now it is pretty safe to go back to absolute links as https://kevincox-ca.ipns.dweb.link/2022/05/06/rss-feed-best-practices/ https://kevincox-ca.ipns.dweb.link/2022/05/06/rss-feed-best-... handles absolute references just fine. And of course none of this matters much if you have a non-IPNS reference because the feed will never change making it mostly useless.
leokennis 4y ago
This is indeed the first rule. And offer useful feeds too. If you’re a newspaper, hardly anyone will be interested if you offer just one “firehose” feed of everything you publish. A nice example on how to do it is The Guardian. Basically any category page you can visit is also a feed.

mdp2021 4y ago

> is this site missing one Which site? For the submitted one, you have to search for 'atom' in the source markup; for HN, for 'rss'. -- kevincox.ca <link href=../../../../feed.atom rel=alternate title="Blog Posts" type=application/atom+xml> HN <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="rss">

kevincox 4y ago

The site definitely has a feed. Although I don't have a visible link to it. I am sort of intentionally ignoring my recommendation to provide a link and RSS icon as an experiment to see how well feed discovery is supported and used. I wouldn't recommend this but I've been going back and forth with this on my personal blog as it isn't very important if the maximum number of people can find the feed. If you just paste the page into your feed reader it should find the feed for you.

rainworld 4y ago
NetNewsWire seems to have a problem discovering the feed from index pages (e.g. https://kevincox.ca/2022/05/ https://kevincox.ca/2022/05/).
- kevincox 4y ago
  Weird, the link is the same as the other pages and it on other sites: https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkevincox.ca%2F2022%2F05%2F https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=https%3A%2F%2Fke... https://feedmail.org/subscriptions/new?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkevincox.ca%2F2022%2F05%2F https://feedmail.org/subscriptions/new?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkev... However I noticed that this site also has trouble: https://discovery.thirdplace.no/?url=&q=https%3A%2F%2Fkevincox.ca%2F2022%2F05%2F https://discovery.thirdplace.no/?url=&q=https%3A%2F%2Fkevinc...
leephillips 4y ago
Vivaldi discovers the feed.
mdp2021 4y ago
By the way, Kevin: it may seem overly picky, but would it not be cleaner to have <link href=/feed.atom rel=alternate title="Blog Posts" type=application/atom+xml> instead of <link href=../../../../feed.atom rel=alternate title="Blog Posts" type=application/atom+xml> ?
- kevincox 4y ago
  It could, but my site is available via IPFS so I use relative links everywhere in case a gateway is used. For example https://ipfs.io/ipns/kevincox.ca/2022/05/06/rss-feed-best-practices/ https://ipfs.io/ipns/kevincox.ca/2022/05/06/rss-feed-best-pr.... That being said with subdomain gateways being widely available now it is pretty safe to go back to absolute links as https://kevincox-ca.ipns.dweb.link/2022/05/06/rss-feed-best-practices/ https://kevincox-ca.ipns.dweb.link/2022/05/06/rss-feed-best-... handles absolute references just fine. And of course none of this matters much if you have a non-IPNS reference because the feed will never change making it mostly useless.

leokennis 4y ago

This is indeed the first rule. And offer useful feeds too. If you’re a newspaper, hardly anyone will be interested if you offer just one “firehose” feed of everything you publish. A nice example on how to do it is The Guardian. Basically any category page you can visit is also a feed.