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Speaking of advocating RSS, I was trying out Nikola [0] for static site generation and found that they have a really nice-looking RSS end-point [1] that is view

Speaking of advocating RSS, I was trying out Nikola [0] for static site generation and found that they have a really nice-looking RSS end-point [1] that is viewable both from the browser and an RSS reader. Looking into the XML, it turns out it's called xml-stylesheet: <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="assets/xml/rss.xsl" media="all"?> And I would argue that this is an excellent way to introduce new readers to RSS: instead of the browser popping up a download prompt, you can make your RSS feeds themselves a dedicated page for advocating RSS, in case an interested reader is browsing through the links on your site. [0] https://getnikola.com/ https://getnikola.com/ [1] https://getnikola.com/rss.xml https://getnikola.com/rss.xml (Open it in your browser!) [2] https://github.com/getnikola/nikola/blob/master/nikola/data/themes/base/assets/xml/rss.xsl https://github.com/getnikola/nikola/blob/master/nikola/data/...

christkv 2y ago
Man what a blast from the past. There was a moment in time where xml and xlst was considered the bright future of webapps
- phh 2y ago
  I remember writing a blog with xml + xslt and thought it was very cool. Retrospectively, writing code in XML, eewwww, but back then I liked writing XHTML by hand
  - christkv 2y ago
    I mean it was fine but debugging it was a pain.
  - fak3r 2y ago
    +1 on XHTML by hand, I'd always have the XHTML 1.0 badge up to brag about it too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Valid_XHTML_1.0.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Valid_XHTML_1.0.svg
PeterStuer 2y ago
My suggestion for best practice would be to have a feed endpoint that is as minimal and clean as possible, and provide a separate endpoint (can be the same base url but with a parameter) for human consumption. This ensures maximal compatibility and ease of consumption for both machine and human.
- alifeee 2y ago
  I disagree, you can have an XML feed that does both For example: https://andrewstiefel.com/feed.xml https://andrewstiefel.com/feed.xml
  - yakshaving_jgt 2y ago
    This is brilliant. Thanks for sharing.
  - PeterStuer 2y ago
    Yes, and if everything is properly configured that is great. Where is falls apart is when your site host/admin slaps Cloudflare protection on the domain and forgets to properly exclude the RSS pages, then programs can't fetch the feed without resorting to anti-bot evasion tech scraping, and are left with rendered HTML instead of the actual feed and have to deal with that. Niche? It happens far more than you think.
darekkay 2y ago
I've once blogged about this technique, in case someone wants to learn more about it: https://darekkay.com/blog/rss-styling/ https://darekkay.com/blog/rss-styling/
- pl4nty 2y ago
  thanks, really appreciate that your post was concise and included examples/followups. only needed 10 minutes to style my own rss feed

christkv 2y ago

Man what a blast from the past. There was a moment in time where xml and xlst was considered the bright future of webapps

phh 2y ago
I remember writing a blog with xml + xslt and thought it was very cool. Retrospectively, writing code in XML, eewwww, but back then I liked writing XHTML by hand
- christkv 2y ago
  I mean it was fine but debugging it was a pain.
- fak3r 2y ago
  +1 on XHTML by hand, I'd always have the XHTML 1.0 badge up to brag about it too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Valid_XHTML_1.0.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Valid_XHTML_1.0.svg

PeterStuer 2y ago

My suggestion for best practice would be to have a feed endpoint that is as minimal and clean as possible, and provide a separate endpoint (can be the same base url but with a parameter) for human consumption. This ensures maximal compatibility and ease of consumption for both machine and human.

alifeee 2y ago
I disagree, you can have an XML feed that does both For example: https://andrewstiefel.com/feed.xml https://andrewstiefel.com/feed.xml
- yakshaving_jgt 2y ago
  This is brilliant. Thanks for sharing.
- PeterStuer 2y ago
  Yes, and if everything is properly configured that is great. Where is falls apart is when your site host/admin slaps Cloudflare protection on the domain and forgets to properly exclude the RSS pages, then programs can't fetch the feed without resorting to anti-bot evasion tech scraping, and are left with rendered HTML instead of the actual feed and have to deal with that. Niche? It happens far more than you think.

darekkay 2y ago

I've once blogged about this technique, in case someone wants to learn more about it: https://darekkay.com/blog/rss-styling/ https://darekkay.com/blog/rss-styling/

pl4nty 2y ago
thanks, really appreciate that your post was concise and included examples/followups. only needed 10 minutes to style my own rss feed