Thursday, March 03, 2005

RSS Feeds

Did you know that, by default, Blogger creates an XML file of your blog every time you republish it that allows people to subscribe to your blog via an RSS feed?

You can subscribe to any RSS feed if you have a feed reader, or if you use My Yahoo!. I just created a new My Yahoo! page with subscriptions to all the Blogger whatsits that I know about. You need to know the URL of the XML file that houses the RSS feed, but if it's a Blogger blog, you can guess it, unless the author of the blog has changed the location of the file somehow.

For example, this is the URL of my feed:
http://lostonpurpose.blogspot.com/atom.xml

You can replace the first part of the URL with the URL of the blog you wish to get the feed for to see if there is an XML file being published for it.

In My Yahoo!, all you do is go to Add Content on a new or existing page, then click Add RSS by URL link. You paste in the link, and blammo! It creates a module that will show you the last few posts of that blog. This would allow you to create a page where you can see quickly if any of your pals have gotten off their duffs and written anything new.

Any of you LJ denizens, can you poke around in your settings and see if LJ also auto-publishes an XML file with an RSS feed of your blogs?

Update:

I have found the feeds for LJ journals. They follow this naming convention:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/exampleusername/data/rss

(Of course, replace exampleusername with the username of the journal you want the feed for.)

Does anyone give a rat's about this geeky shit other than me?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I *do* care, but you know that it would require you popping on IM with me to explain exactly, in detail, how it really needs to be set up.

You can read my LJ! I'm trying to keep the friends-locking to a minimum.

The big news today is that I became an aunt last night. Little boy named Tucker. I hear he has enormous hands and feet, but haven't yet seen pictures.

Shocho said...

That rocks! Now I can keep watching some LJs and some blogger stuff too.

Amanda? Is that the Amanda we met? Quintuplets four babies? Hi, Amanda! :)

This is Kathy's friend Chuck, who works with Tom.

Shocho said...

Here's something else: On wonkette.com (for example), she has a little button that says "+ My Yahoo!" and you just click that and it adds her site to your RSS junk on Yahoo. Pretty slick.

I think it's great that My Yahoo! treats your site and Jason's (for example) just like it treats Reuters feed. Looks just the same.

Anonymous said...

Hey, Chuck! I AM the quintuplets Amanda. I can't believe you remember that. I have now owned 25 Words Or Less for four years, and have never had a moment as glorious as that one.

Anonymous said...

Ah, quintuplets Amanda! I remember you. I was also in that game.

Anonymous said...

Hooray! The gang's all here. My hubby and I have often rued the distance between us, as he counts that evening of gaming as one of his favorite nights ever.