You Can Feed Anything You Want at WordPress’s Restaurant

You can feed anything you want at any WordPress blog
You can feed anything you want at any WordPress blog
Right on the URL, tack on "feed"
Syndicated almost anything you need
You can feed anything you want at any WordPress blog

Bear with me on Chapter 156 of my WordPress love. And for RSS.

WordPress offers so many ways to syndicate content. Feed by blog. Category. Author. Single Post. Comments. Custom Post Types. Multiple categories. On and On.

And a new one I did not know exist until today.

For the Elements of Networked Narratives site I was wanting to add a feed for the posts Mia Zamora writes on the DML Central site, available here http://dmlcentral.net/person/mia-c-zamora/.

There is a list of posts on her profile page, but no RSS feed for her posts. No author feed. Well I know why, because I inspect the main DML feed http://dmlcentral.net/feed and see that they are all authored in WordPress by Mimi Cruz who manages the site.

It looks like they might use a category or tag to pull her feeds together, but I cannot see it in the RSS source:

I feel close to a dead end. Then I go back to the WordPress Codex for Built-in Feeds and find:

Search results can also have their own feed. Here is the format:

http://example.com/?s=searchterm&feed=rss2

So I play with a search that pulls up her post (good thing for Mia having a unique name)

http://dmlcentral.net/?s=zamora

And bingo! I can make that search string a feed

http://dmlcentral.net/?s=zamora&feed=rss2

I never knew that was possible! And this adds a whole new dimension to what is possible to syndicate from WordPress, beyond tags and categories… Anything you can construct as a search can be made into a Feed at WordPress’s Restaurant…

And I walked in, I sat down, they gave me a piece of paper that said: "Kid, 
See the psychiatrist in room 404."

I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to feed. I want to feed! I want to see 
posts and tags and pics and posts in my aggregator! Feed old, new posts! I 
Mean: Feed. Feed!"

And I started jumpin' up and down, yellin' "FEED! FEED!" and he started 
Jumpin' up and down with me, and we was both jumpin' up and down, yellin', 
"FEED! RSS! FEED! FEED!" and the sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me, 
Sent me down the hall, said "You're our boy". Didn't feel too good about it.

Actually I do feel good about it.

Top / Featured Image: My own mashup of Arlo Guthrie’s classic album, it’s cover WordPress and RSS logos, all likely subject to copyright infringement, created as both commentary, parody, and with love for this song (which I have purchased before). Sue me.