WP: Let’s Improve the Feeds
[I think that, sometimes, the only reason I write these suggestions for WordPress is that it makes me feel better. But I also know that Matt reads my feed, so ... it's less intrusive than me sending him a nasty gram or something. Besides, I like Matt.]
Anyhow, I want to echo Scott’s suggestion that he made as an aside this morning as he discussed FeedLounge’s valiadation protocols:
As a side note, a large portion of the invalid feeds so far are from some version of WordPress. There are a lot of users out there that haven’t felt that upgrading is important. Please upgrade!!! The security fixes alone are worth it. I hope in a future release that the WordPress team might use one common codebase for feed creation, rather than separate code for each feed format. Disclaimer: dotnot.org uses WordPress 1.5.1.2, and will not change to something else anytime soon. I like WordPress, just offering constructive criticism, and I just want to give the WP team a friendly nudge from time to time
[Emphasis mine.]
I bring this up because, as it stands, Scott’s comment feed is invalid. And for whatever reasons, comment feeds are only available in one feed format: RSS 2.0. [Somewhere, Mark Pilgrim is spinning on his head.]
So yes: the suggestions are as follows:
- Please use a common codebase for generating feed information, and then use some kind of templating to output the feed in the desired format. I think WordPress has been edging towards this, but another nudge can’t hurt.
- Please provide comment feeds in other formats. It doesn’t make sense for WP to publish entry data in RSS 0.9x, RDF 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom 0.3 and then only comments in RSS 2.0.
Thanks as always for your time and consideration.
Hallelujah and AMEN!
This would help WP a lot in feed-related issues, as the debugging would only have to happen in one place.
Guess I also need to dig into my comments feed and see why invalid characters are coming out. Oh wait, WP isn’t encoding friendly! My bad…
June 13th, 2005 at 12:13There is a nice little library called FeedCreator that I think would be useful:
http://www.bitfolge.de/rsscreator-en.html
June 13th, 2005 at 15:55Bug reports (feed type A does B wrong) are far more useful than calls for a feed revolution.
June 13th, 2005 at 21:23Matt, the only problem I have is that everytime I encounter a bug and have my husband report it, we are told by you that it isn’t a bug. Digging into the code we find that it is a bug, but are left with nothing to do except write custom code to overcome it.
I am a big believer in open and honest communication and following processes such as bug reporting, but someone has to be on the other side willing to aceept the info and listen.
June 13th, 2005 at 21:55Matt,
http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/1438
More to come.
Cheers,
June 13th, 2005 at 22:30Scott Sanders
http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/1440 as well. That’s one atom and one rss on the same vanilla 1.5.1.2 (latest) install. Sounds like the need for some common code to me…
Scott
June 13th, 2005 at 22:38Bing! Bing!
June 14th, 2005 at 03:34You Say You Want a Revolution? Well, You Know …
The below is an open letter to Matt Mullenweg.
June 15th, 2005 at 10:49You wrote:
Bug reports (feed type A does B wrong) are far more useful than calls for a feed revolution.
Okay, you addressesed specific bugs in the comments, Matt. But let’s also face facts here:…