Pick a feed, any feed


Thanks to a blog entry from Nick Bradbury, which put into words something I’ve been thinking about for a while, I have committed to one web feed format for the entire zimOrama network- RSS2. Because b2evolution (the program I have been using to generate these sites) offers many format, I’ve felt like I needed to use all the formats to entertain the maximum compatibility possible. That’s simply not true and only serves to confuse people by giving them too many possibilities.

Why did I pick this format? XML.com helped me sort out the options, from which I narrowed down the possibilities to two front-runners: RSS2 and Atom. To make this determination I found the Atom Wiki most helpful. I felt that Atom has a lot of features but I didn’t need all of them. RSS2 seems to be a more true XML format which would seem to me to be more usable in the future. Additionally the RSS2 format sends categories to the feed, while Atom does not. Since categories are an important part of the zimOrama network, I decided to go with RSS2. You can feel free to disagree with me on this one (if you do, leave it in the comments below).

You will notice that I also changed the auto-discovery on the zimOrama network to reflect my commitment to RSS2. This helps people by making it even easier to subscribe to a feed. I found an article on the FeedForAll website that helped me add a line of code inside my head tags so that browsers (or other programs, I presume) will automatically find the feed I want them to. Of course, in order to do this, you must already have a RSS feed created.

I hope these changes will not only help you as you use this site (or the rest of the zimOrama network) but also inspire you to consoidate your web feeds as well.

If you would like to receive other helpful feeds like this one, subscribe to my RSS feed.

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