Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed

Subject: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 Dec 11 - 02:50 PM

Since our latest hardware crash - a couple months ago or more, I've received e-mails from people wondering why they weren't getting their daily Mudcat e-mail digest. I've been telling them I supposed that was caused by the hardware crash, and Max hasn't restored that and a few other features yet. I directed them to our Messages by Date feature in our QuickLinks dropdown menu, and most seemed to think that was a satisfactory substitute.

Today I happened to notice an rss feed link on the top of the Forum Menu, under the "help the Mudcat" catfish. I know a little about audio rss feeds from downloading Jon Boden's A Folk Song a Day recordings last year, but what's this Mudcat rss feed do, and how do you use it?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 15 Dec 11 - 08:51 PM

Ummmm.... Facebook still works.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

It is current, "in the cloud," and a whole-booty-load better than the old "Annex."

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 Dec 11 - 10:23 PM

Facebook? How would this help with this, garg?

As I understand it, the e-mail digest sends the subscriber a copy of all messages posted for that day - or at least I think that's the way it works. Can somebody correct me if I'm wrong? I think the rss feed would do the same thing.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 15 Dec 11 - 11:03 PM

Clicking on the link will open a FeedBurner web page.

I'd guess their rss feed should do something along the lines you suggest but the listing of threads on the FeedBurner page seems to be from 6th Sept 2011.

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 Sep 12 - 02:27 AM

Somebody told me they received an RSS feed of the Mudcat daily digest today, so our longstanding problem with that feature may be fixed.

Trouble is, I don't believe that Mudcatters can access the page for turning the RSS feed on or off.

If you want your RSS feed setting changed, contact me by personal message or e-mail - be sure to give me an up-to-date e-mail address. To get RSS feeds, you must be a registered Mudcatter with a valid e-mail address in your registration.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 May 14 - 08:36 PM

Is anybody getting the daily digest RSS Feed?
Somebody asked about it today.
If it isn't working, you can go to QuickLinks and get the same information by selecting Messages by Date.

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Bill D
Date: 01 May 14 - 10:18 PM

I used to get the RRS feed, but since I come right here, I hardly bother.

I do NOT do RRS within a browser. I use Feed Demon standalone RSS reader/aggregator. I get all sorts of other RSS stuff, and the program works quite well. I will test getting Mudcat in it and report later if there's any problems.

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Bill D
Date: 01 May 14 - 10:23 PM

Well...it works. That is, I got the feed, but Feed Demon says 'it contains errors' and recommends the author fix a couple of things.

This address, entered in my program got a bunch of readable messages

http://feeds.feedburner.com/mudcat2

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 Jun 14 - 03:40 PM

Are the Mudcat RSS Feeds working now? I was able to get something at http://feeds.feedburner.com/mudcat2, but I don't know much about RSS feeds.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Jun 14 - 05:22 PM

I'll check later this eve., Joe. (my reader in only on the upstairs Win7 machine.)

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Mark Ross
Date: 27 Jun 14 - 05:28 PM

I just started getting the feed. Puzzling, because in all the years I've been visiting the 'Cat I've never gotten it before.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 27 Jun 14 - 05:30 PM

Me too.

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 Jun 14 - 06:17 PM

Mark and Steve, are you getting the feed as an e-mail, or how? When did it start?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: GUEST,#
Date: 27 Jun 14 - 06:57 PM

It started for me about two weeks back via email.

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Janie
Date: 27 Jun 14 - 08:00 PM

As good a place to ask as any. I've never understood what an RSS feed is or means. Anyone have the patience to explain to a dummy?

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Joe Offer
Date: 28 Jun 14 - 05:15 AM

Without Google and Wikipedia, I wouldn't know that RSS=Rich Site Summary. The Mudcat RSS feed is supposed to e-mail all the day's messages to recipients, once a day.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 28 Jun 14 - 03:40 PM

email.

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Mark Ross
Date: 28 Jun 14 - 07:30 PM

E-mail for me.

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: GUEST,Steve Henigson
Date: 28 Jun 14 - 07:39 PM

Apologies: I don't know how to send a PM here.

Mark Ross, do I know you from Los Angeles?
(I was The Sandalmaker.)

My e-mail: [e-mail]

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Jun 14 - 11:39 PM

Janie...and others.. I misspoke up there ^..

I use FeedDemon as my reader. This is currently the best one I can find- its interface is pretty user-friendly.(ummm.Windows only, I think)

If you want to try it, I'll do a short walk thru how it works... it is pretty easy after 2-3 examples.

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Jun 14 - 07:26 AM

Sorry 'bout that.

RSS feeds used to come in then for a long time they didn't. They seem to have started again a few weeks back. My question is this: how does one stop them?

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: GUEST,DaveRo
Date: 28 Aug 14 - 10:40 AM

I found this thread while searching for A Folk Song a Day (AFSAD). I am a big user of RSS feeds, and use it to access AFSAD every day (it's being repeated), so I took a look at what's on offer here.

There appear to be two RSS feeds for Mudcat:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/mudcat
http://feeds.feedburner.com/mudcat2

Their formats are very slightly different, and the first one contains more articles than the second. They're both entitled 'Feed of Topics' but they aren't - they're a feed of posts. I didn't find any reference to these feeds on mudcat; perhaps they've been abandoned.

Both 'work' in the sense that they retrieve data about recent posts. But neither is useful because they do not contain any text from the post. That is not invalid, but renders them pointless; you have to click through to the website so you might as well start there. Worse, the links within the articles point not to the post but to the thread so you can't read the post in one click. I don't know whether any of that is by design.

I'm not sure whether RSS is a useful medium for mudcat. A feed of new threads would be more useful than one of new posts IMO, provided it included the OP text.

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Aug 14 - 10:53 AM

???DaveRo...I just added http://feeds.feedburner.com/mudcat to my FeedDemon list, and it gives me the entire thread will all posts and all the text.

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: GUEST,DaveRo
Date: 28 Aug 14 - 11:15 AM

Bill - that's interesting.

The text isn't in the feed - I downloaded both (with wget) and examined them. They contain lots of feedburner links though.

I'd already tried them in my Android feedreader and the articles are blank - apart from a few links (Facebook etc).

I just tried them in liferea (Linus Fead Reader) - the articles are completely blank.

Are you actually opening the article in a browser window - is it just auto-following the 'original link'?

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Aug 14 - 12:13 PM

Nope... FeedDemon is a stand-alone program (for Windows only, I suppose)

I almost always use the best standalone programs I can find, and FeedDemon is the best I have used, although even it has not been developed much lately.

It has options to "open in default browser" but that defeats MY purpose of having the simplest system possible that displays feeds as I want to see them.

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Aug 14 - 12:18 PM

(I have used others, like RSS Owl, FeedReader, Ablion, Great News..etc, but they no longer seem to cope.)

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: GUEST,DaveRo
Date: 28 Aug 14 - 12:36 PM

By 'open in a browser window' I didn't mean open in your browser. In liferea I can select 'open in tab' and it opens the mudcat thread webpage in liferea itself. I think that's what's happening with your reader.

It's definitely not getting the text from the feed - it isn't there.

Every article contains a tag like this:
<feedburner:origLink>http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=63636&messages=19</feedburner:origLink>
and I think that's what your reader is following and displaying.

Anyway, I'll modify my opinion to 'works with some feed readers'.

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Aug 14 - 12:57 PM

Ok.. yes, that's what it does. I see the Mudcat thread as if I were in Mudcat itself... which why I seldom read Mudcat there.

I use the feed reader to do what they say.. to 'aggregate' similar articles & topics for an overview.

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Joe Offer
Date: 28 Jul 21 - 03:20 PM

According to Google's Feedburner, they're changing operation on July 31.
How will this affect those who get a Mudcat RSS feed? I don't do the RSS feed, so I don't understand it.

-Joe-

http://feedburnerstatus.blogspot.com/2021/02/building-modern-rss-feed-infrastructure.html

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: DaveRo
Date: 28 Jul 21 - 05:48 PM

Joe - or anyone - if you want to understand RSS feeds, you need to try it.

Download RSS Owl: http://www.rssowl.org/

This is a very old-fashioned reader, but it has the advantage of just being a feed reader rather than a lot of other things as well.

A good example of rss in a forum is concertina.net. So add these two feed URLs:

New threads: https://www.concertina.net/forums/index.php?/rss/1-home.xml/
New posts: https://www.concertina.net/forums/index.php?/discover/all.xml/

You don't need a c.net account.

I skim read those two feeds most days. I can read the posts in my Android rss reader without visiting the forum itself unless I want to review the whole thread, subscribe to it, or download an attachment.

When you've seen what rss does, try the mudcat feeds.

Subject: RE: Tech: Mudcat e-mail digest and RSS Feed
From: Max
Date: 30 Jul 21 - 04:42 PM

We're moving to a service called follow.it.

Anyone using the raw RSS feed and/or using a reader like rssowl.org or newsblur.com, etc, can continue to use our raw RSS feed URL mudcat.org/rss without any need to change anything.

As for the daily emails, I'm moving what we have on our list of folks that are getting the email newsletter thingy now (373 email addresses) to the new service from follow.it. So anyone currently getting it should start getting this new one.

If you don't get the new one or want to make other adjustments, you can click this link to sign up from scratch. https://follow.it/mudcat-org-rss-feed?action=followPub.

If the new email stinks or is too crowded with ads or anything like that, we'll switch again, but for now this is our solution.