Saturday, October 22, 2005

Looking at RSS generation for categories As I mentioned in the previous post, the RSS link was to the category URL. After I added a new upstream.xml file in the category folder, the link element in the channel element now has the URL of the new upstream location, so this will probably look OK in my final version. However, I would like to change several other elements within the channel element, such as title, description, managingEditor, and webmaster. Started doing some looking at how to do this. It appears that there is a script (radio.weblogs.writeRssFile) that creates the RSS file for main weblogs. Dave Winer replied to a Radio UserLand user who wanted to change some elements, saying that this script could be copied to user.radio.callbacks.writeRssFile and that it would run instead of the normal script. Tom Clifton also found that there is a script (radio.weblog.publishCategoryRSS) which might also shed some light on this subject. In the early days of Radio UserLand, Jon Udell and Sam Ruby had some changes to writeRssFile. Rick Klau also found some of the same threads when he tried to shorten his RSS posts. Dave Winer first wrote about writeRssFile in May 2002. Matt Mower started a thread proposing a more flexible way of generating RSS files in Radio UserLand and mentioning that he has a reference implementation in his LiveTopics tool. Dave Winer responded suggesting he do something simpler than re-architecting the entire writeRssFile process, and Matt replied to that message. It looks like there is more to the topic of category RSS generation than meets the eye. I am going to delay my launch of the Knowledgeorama weblog until I can resolve this issue. 8:52:21 PM

Testing modifying prefs.txt Here is another test of the DevKnowledgeorama cateogry. I added a line to prefs.txt in the category folder to change the site name in the banner. Did a post, no change. Changed prefs.txt to change the categoryName pref to Knowledgeorama and posted again. This time, the post did not appear in the category. Changed it back, published again, saw this entry in the category again. Took a look at the Radio UserLand book, decided to try applying a different theme to the category. Selected the Moveable Type Heat theme, republished the entry. I saw the entries in the new theme (I think I will use that one for the main site). Checked the category folder, saw that there was another set of template files in the folder. Decided to edit the home page template to change the title in the banner (replaced siteName with Knowledgeorama). Republished, saw the banner updated - woohoo! Replaced description macro with a different one, republished, saw the updated description! Next, I went back to the category testing entry and followed the instructions for adding the items and title link to items. Republished, saw the titles with links. Next testing steps; Check the RSS feed to see if everything is correct (looked at rss.xml in devknowledgeorama folder, saw that the links are to the category URL) Change the upstreaming path to go to a different folder (copied upstream.xml from www folder to devknowledgeorama folder) Check to see if the gems folder is uploaded to the new location. If it is not, create a new gems folder within the category folder and see if that is uploaded. Create a folder in the directory folder for the Projects section of the website and see if that is uploaded properly. Create a OPML file and work out the proper rules to formet the text for the section. 8:27:33 AM