RSS Feed for the forums Options

[JamieHarrop]

I don't have much experience with Invision, but does it allow for an RSS feed to be built in, maybe via a mod? Other forum software such as vBulletin has an RSS feed built in to the software. I often refresh the view new posts page here, but usually by the time I do it somebody has already answered the original poster, so there is no need for me to get involved.

An RSS feed would allow me to see new posts every 15 minutes automatically using Opera's built in RSS reader, and will therefore allow me to be that little bit more active and hopefully some members will get responses faster.

Is this something the WDG are willing to look in to?

[John Pozadzides]

Jamie,

I think this might be possible, but I'll have to do a little investigating. I'll add this to the list of things to get done and let you know as soon as I can get to it.

John

[JamieHarrop]

Fantastic. Thanks John.

I'm still missing the posts, so a feed would be very helpful.

[John Pozadzides]

Ok. I've just added some RSS feeds to the site. There are basically 4 options. The full feed, and then three partial feeds based on the sub-forums as they are grouped on the main forum listing page. You can find the RSS links at the bottom left of the page. Click on the RSS icon and it will drop down the list of feeds to choose from. (I know that isn't the most accessible thing in the world, but it's a start and better than nothing at the moment.)

Hopefully this will be useful for Jamie and others. As an FYI, the system updates the RSS feed every 5 minutes, so setting your end to check more often than that won't be beneficial.

Take care and let me know how this works for you,

John

[JamieHarrop]

Lovely. Thanks John.

[John Pozadzides]

Jamie,

Is it working OK? Have you had the opportunity to try it out yet?

John

[pandy]

Is it only the first post in a thread that's added to the feed? Not the replies?

[JamieHarrop]

It's working great John.

Yes Pandy, it is just the initial post of each thread.

[Frederiek]

When someone replied in a thread that's in the RSS, the initial post is marked again. That's quite handy, as you can watch topics of your interest or on which you replied.

[John Pozadzides]

Cool! Glad it's working out...

John

[Frederiek]

I'm afraid I have to take my words back.

I subscribed to the full forum feed in my RSS reader. The feed only rarely seems to update an already listed post, not always, as I thought before.

Have you noticed such behavior too, Jamie?

And, John, can something be done about that?
That would be cool for the reason I already mentioned.

[JamieHarrop]

I'm not entirely sure Frederiek. I just seem to be getting updates of new threads, which is what I was expecting from the RSS feed. I get email notification of replies to threads I am subscribed to, so notification of new threads is all I need.

I did find something interesting. You can setup Invision to send instant email notification of new threads in forums that you are subscribed to. I guess this would be a replacement for the RSS feed if there are people that prefer email.

To do this, open up one of the forums. Click the "Forum Options" link, then click "Subscribe to this forum". Then choose "Immediate Email Notification" on the page that opens.

[JamieHarrop]

The RSS just updated and listed the "Time zones" thread at http://forums.htmlhelp.com/index.php?showtopic=178 even though all that occured was a new reply to that thread

Here is my theory for why it did this. That thread is quite old, and was therefore created before the RSS feed was implemented. When a thread is replied to which was created in the forums before the RSS feed was introduced, the RSS treats it as a new thread and therefore lists it on its next update. I assume this is a bug in the RSS addon for Invision.

[Frederiek]

You're probably right. I noticed the same thing.

I know about the email notifications, though maybe not as far as you mentioned, but I prefer to use my RSS reader. I wonder if the feeds are not updated because of how threads are composed internally.

Anyway, I'd appreciate it as another possibility to track threads.

[John Pozadzides]

And, John, can something be done about that?
That would be cool for the reason I already mentioned.

Unfortunatly there are not really any options in the RSS configuration, so we've kind of got what we got. Sorry about that.

As Jamie pointed out though, it might be useful to subscribe for e-mail updates on some of the forums you are interested in as an alternative.

John

[Frederiek]

Thanks for the info, John.
It was worth to ask anyway.