cogdogblog: RSS Feeds for MT Categories

April 22, 2003

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RSS Feeds for MT Categories

Well it was not easy but with a little help with this link sent by D'Arcy Norman, I have managed to set up separate RSS feeds for the category areas of this site...

I have my blog set up to archive in catefories since the content will be rather different. Scott Leslie asked from here about setting up feeds for MT Categories.

Surely it is in the documentation?

Stop calling me Shirley.

So here is how it happened. Make a copy of the template content for any MT RSS Feed (listed under Index Files) in the Templates area. Create a new index template, and title it something unique, but as a file name make it:

cat_<category_file_name>

where <category_file_name> is the file name MT creates for your category archives. Mine are things like "cat_objects" and "cat_web_dev".

Inside these templates you just need to change the 2 places it says:

<MTEntries lastn="15">

and make it:

<MTEntries lastn="15" category="Name of Category">

I ended up hand coding the title and description tags to match my category info.

I was hoping on the right side of my categories template to list the XML link for just that category, but it got too hairy to pluck out the correct RSS file name, so I got weak, and used a MT Loop structure to spit out all of the category RSS links:

<MTCategories>
<a href="../cat_<$MTArchiveCategory dirify="1"$>.rdf"><img src="/images/xml.gif" alt="XML" width="36" height="14" border="0"> <$MTCategoryLabel$></a><br />
</MTCategories>

The clever part was using the "dirify=1" attribute of the MTArchive Category to turn things like "web dev" to "web_dev" and "web: good dog" to "web_goof_dog" (trashing ":", turnig spaces to underlines, making all text lowercase)

On the front page, I just inserted for now the two RSS Feeds for what should be the busier sections.

See here are the RSS 1.0 Feeds from CDB:

eportfolios
objects
Web Development

This opens up some interesting instructional ideas, so that a teacher might make a category for different classes and set up different RSS feeds for them so students could subscribe.

Just one thought

blogged April 22, 2003 05:19 PM :: category [ rss ]

Comments About "RSS Feeds for MT Categories"

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RSS is great for sites that have traditionally published content either in HTML pages, or in e-mail newsletters, because it offers users another option. I am not the first person to say this, nor will I be the last (in fact, this isn't the first time I've said this). RSS currently can't scale because parsing utilities must download and analyze the entire page at every single update event, which for a site with one million RSS subscribers would amount to one million page views every single time the RSS clients on the other end check for an update.
Commented by: Valerian on October 25, 2003 01:42 AM

Okay, I miss your logic completely.

First of all, I doubt that any single RSS feed would truly get 1,000,000 subscribers. And your logic assumes that all 1,000,000 will all request updates at the same time. I huess you can ponder what happens when all 1,000,000 click for your home page at the same time.

I really do not understand how a web page must be "downloaded" when an RSS update request only asks for the RSS file, a few k at the most. I have no clue what RSS parser must analzye an entire web page.

Nothing here supports a case of "RSS not scaling", but maybe you have much mroe knowledge than myself, I just do not get it. Maybe you are suggesting problems when/if RSS gets widely scaled in use and there are frequent update requests for people who set for hourly updates.

All of this leads to a suggestion for slim, svelte RSS feeds.

Help me understand.
Commented by: Alan on October 25, 2003 02:49 AM

Oh, Valerian, I understand you now from visiting your web site. You promote spamming in the name of making money. How freakin' noble.
Commented by: Alan on October 25, 2003 02:52 AM

Spammers Have Force Our Hands...

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