February 22, 2004

Feeding the Herd

As I mentioned before, I want to set up the main Herd page so that the most recent post from each herder shows up on the page - the posts would mingle according to most recently updated, at least in theory.

Tried MT-RssFeed. Not doing exactly what I want. There are actually two different feeds there - the first is just an experiment with chucks rss alone. The second is everyone's.

Going to check out Carp next.

But if anyone has any suggestions or advice, I'm all ears (eyes?).

EDIT:
Here is a (Google-cached) example of what I'm looking for. At the AoIR conference, there was a RSS feed from all people involved in AoIR with a blog. This is the description and this is what it looked like (in terms of form, rather than style).

Posted by Jason at February 22, 2004 11:17 PM | TrackBack
Comments

I ended up taking my RSS feeds and wrapping them in a Javascript tree display to cut down on size and clutter.

You could include the other herders as tree "nodes", and have their recent entries be the child nodes, and still have it fit in one of the navigation frames.

Hit my site, check out RSS Feeds on the right bar, and see what I mean. I found the Javascript tree code on the net, and edited it slightly. Visit the URL in dtree.js to get the unedited (original) code. Basically, I just made it open node links in another target ("_blank").

If you like it, and want to use it, I can send you the MovableType template to embed the RSS stuff inside the Javascript.

D

Posted by: Doccus at February 23, 2004 12:30 PM | Permalink to Comment

That's an interesting possibility Doccus - thanks for bring it to my attention.

My ideal feed would look almost as though each post from the individual Herder blogs was a post (or, more accurately, an abstract of a post) on the main wordherder blog. So, if people wanted to scan the main wordherder blog, they could see what the latest, say, 10-15 Herd posts were and in the order of most recent to least recent, without regard to author (e.g., it could be one from Chutry as most recent, then one from MGK, then one from Chutry again as 3rd most recent, etc...).

But if I *can't* do that (at least, without pulling out too much hair), your option might be a good one for me to try. Thanks again.

Posted by: Jason at February 23, 2004 12:51 PM | Permalink to Comment

Ah, I get it :)

Would be "easy" to do with a bit of embedded tags inside a PHP-enabled page. The MT tags get processed during rebuild, and the PHP is not processed until the page is requested. It's basically what I did for the Javascript ... the MT tags drive the creation of the Javascript when the page is compiled, then the Javascript is interpreted on the client's browser.

I'd say if you're familiar with PHP and programming, it should take somewhat less than 8 hours to implement.

D

Posted by: Doccus at February 23, 2004 2:34 PM | Permalink to Comment

Alas, my php is rusty enough that it crumbles when used.

Might be time to brush up.

Posted by: Jason at February 23, 2004 3:19 PM | Permalink to Comment
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