Is RSS a possibility on this board?

[8 perf]

Like it says. Just asking. It would be nice to be able to include this boards posts in a news aggregator. You would be able to subscribe via the RSS client to the whole board and not just certain threads via email. Just a thought.

 

[Lord_Gita]

It is a possibility that I have been working on for some time. But there are a few downsides too it.

1. It creates less of a community when people consume the board 5 posts at a time. I've seen it on other boards...
2. There are certain areas that are not open to the public (I.e. Off-Topic) and I'm not sure how to exclude those.
3. I am not sure our bandwidth can take the hit. Even a small test has been a lot of bandwidth...

 

[8 perf]

Not sure i agree with number 1, since people would still have to log in to respond, but i do get number 3 with the while bandwidth problem. Was just curious as I use RSS for most of my other news groups and such.

 

[8 perf]

So....I'm just ready to log out and I see the familier blue "RSS" tag at the end of my browser address. Seems to work ok for me so far. Thanks.

 

[Lord_Gita]

I'm more concerned about people deciding not to respond when they first see a thread in RSS, have to log in etc..., and then forgetting later. But if I can resolve the 2 and 3 then we'll see what happen with number 1.

Can you tell me what refresh rate your seeing on your feeds? I don't think what I think I set is what's actually happening.

 

[Roger Ramjet]

We use it on the TPZ and it does gobble up additional bandwidth and as mentioned, once the person links to the feed, there is several threads and topics they will not be allowed to see and this has created a problem for us.

It's a nice feature to have if you are an open public board, but being both the RPF and the Trek Prop Zone are semi-private and have tiered setup as for as access to certain threads, not sure how beneficial it would be here.

Roger

 

[Lord_Gita]

I'm seeing that. The prop, costuming, modelling etc forum are visible in the RSS, but Off-Topic is not. Given that this is a prop board at heart I don't believe we have a problem with that but it's worth discussing... Discussing whether the RSS is a good idea I mean, not opening up the Off-Topic.

Can I ask what seettings you use at TPZ and what the bandwidth impact has been?

 

[8 perf]

i currently have my feed reader (Net News Wire) to check for new feeds every hour. Seems to work, but like you said, noit for all categories. I checked it tonight, and had 15 new posts. Upon logging in the regular way, I find that there are 8 pages of threads that I have to read. Not sure what, but something is not set right.
As far as the whole logging in thing, I have my Mac set up to auto log in to this and other boards. When I click on a post from an rss feed, it takes me right to the board area where the post was made.