Keeping up to date with the Domino Blog scene
As promised I have a Christmas present for you all. By now I hope you've all got yourself a "news reader" program. Be it FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, AmphetaDesk, BlogLines or whatever. All you need then is a list of all the Domino sites out there with RSS feeds and their URLs. This is your present.
Last week I mailed Christopher Arras of news4notes.com and asked if he was interested in creating a Domino OPML directory. He already had a database of all the sites and knew the sites that included RSS feeds. All he had to do was create a view to show them and deliver the correct XML syntax for your news reader to be able to add them all. Being the generous type, he agreed and you can find the OPML here:
http://news4notes.com/lotus-links/domino.opml
Without worrying what OPML is, let's see how we can use this "directory" in FeedDemon (Note: If you're readng this from within FeedDemon, all you need to do is click the above link!). Get yourself a trial copy, install and launch it. Now add a new "Channel Group" using the File > New menu option. Select to "Create a new channel group from an OPML newsfeed directory". On the next screen, paste in the above link and press next. You should see something like this:
Select as many of the sites as you'd like to subscribe to. All of them if you have a lot of spare time. Click next and give the channel a name like "Domino". You now have an auto-updating list of new additions to all the Domino sites you're interested in. Magic!
I hope you all have excellent holidays and celebrations, wherever you may be. CodeStore will be quiet until the new year although I may pop in from time to time and will be answering any mail you send, as usual. Merry Christmas and a happy new year.
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Very cool, Jake. Thanks for my holiday gift! Now I'm going to have to buy FeedReader (you should try to get a commission...).
Did you know that your articles freak out when opened inside of FeedReader, though? Margins are the problem, 'cause the browser window is extremely narrow. I know I can make it bigger, but I doubt I would want to do that all the time.
Any ideas on how to solve that issue? Maybe a custom CSS file for that user agent to pull out the menus and just show us the article? Or does it use IE internally?
Oops, I meant FeedDemon - temporary brain freeze...
No worries Rob.
You should be able to fix the problem by changing the position of the browser within FeedDemon. From the menus: View > Browser Position > Browser on Bottom.
Have you got it on the right? This may be the default but doesn't make sense to me personally...
I noticed that my outdated RSS feed was listed in that screen shot (with no checkmark). It no longer works because I have password-protected my blog (got a stalker). If any Domino bloggers want the new feed (includes password in the URL), just send me an e-mail with your name and web site and I'll send you a link.
Chris. I actually sent Chris Arras a list of sites I suggested he remove from the list, for various reasons. Mainly because there were a lot of "dead" sites in there. Sorry to say that I asked him to remove yours as well, for the obvious reason.
Isn't password protecting it a little OTT? What about IP blocking?
He was on the same ISP as I was and they assign IP addresses dynamically. So, IP blocking didn't work. Plus, there was a really nasty comment on a post that said I was going out of town. I would like to be able to post things like that without having to worry about who is reading it.
dear Jake,
the link's I cant getin,
or something I missed?
Happy new year to you to. Thank you for your lovely present. This will certainly save me a lot of time and will broaden my body of knowledge.
@Chris King. Could you just password protect the submission of comments in stead of blocking the whole site? And add comments of people without a password only after your approval.
Laurens has a very good point there Chris. Sounds like the perfect compromise to me...
Thanks for the present Jake, gives me lots of reading during Christmas ;)
@laurens But what happens when I post about being gone for the weekend and he decides to make a visit to the house? One of the posters claimed to be a recently released prisoner. I don't want to put my family in harm's way.
@Chris King. Personally I would never post such information on the net, though I see many people doing so. It is like leaving a note for the milkman you are on vacation, an invitation for burglars. Also, you could make some of your entries only visible for authenticated users. I use cookies and subforms to hide certain information from unauthenticated users.
@laurens That's the best idea I've heard so far. I need to try that. Maybe Jake can work it into the next version of DomBlog. The only requirement that I'd have is that I'd need to be able to set that flag from wBloggar as that's where I blog from now.