How to participate in feeds.scripting.com

Dave Winer created a blogroll aggregator over at http://feeds.scripting.com/ - he uses it to create Top 100 lists, views for people to see what feeds others subscribe to, what people subscribe to their feed and maybe other interesting stuff. It's no rocket science, just making good use of already existing stuff.

So people using the Python Desktop Server might want to participate. With the Version 0.7 and above (currently 0.7.0 is in CVS, so you need to fetch the snapshot if you want to participate), this is very simple. Just follow the few steps listed here.

I assume that your PyDS instance is running on your desktop and uses the default port 4334, so it is accessible at http://127.0.0.1:4334/ for you. If you have a different base address, you need to change all given URLs accordingly.

Here are the steps:

• go to your aggregator channel list and glance over your newsfeed. If there are any that you don't want to share with others (for example because they are private or from some for-pay service like http://newsisfree.com/), click on the XML icon to go to that feeds parameter page. There is a selectable setting for sharing, usually it's use default for sharing, change this to never share feed.

• go to your aggregator preferences and set the share feeds selection to read share feed (default is don't share feed)

• restart your Python Desktop Server (alternatively you could just add and delete a feed to trigger OPML file generation)

• go to your eventlog and wait until you see that an OPML is uploaded. It will be listed as aggregator/subscriptions.opml in the eventlog and will be linked to it's version on your cloud. If your blog for example is at http://muensterland.org/users/0000005/, your aggregator subscriptions file is at http://muensterland.org/users/0000005/aggregator/subscriptions.opml

• become a member at http://feeds.scripting.com/

• configure sharing for your OPML feed list on http://feeds.scripting.com/ (since you already share your OPML file with the world, I think there isn't much reason to not enable sharing at http://feeds.scripting.com/ )

• configure the coffee mug that allows you easy subscribing to feeds that are listed at http://feeds.scripting.com/ so that it reads as follows:

  http://127.0.0.1:4334/aggregator/addfeed_redir?url=http://[[xmlUrl]]
  

  The subscription will be directly - no confirmation, the feed will get it's first fetch and will be listed in your aggregator channel list immediately.

• share your OPML url - just enter the URL you found in your eventlog into the form and submit it. http://feeds.scripting.com/ will fetch it regularily from then on.

You might want to rerender your sites content now, if you previously ran an older version. The reason is that the OPML file is linked in the BaseRendering.tmpl template that is used for every page, so people can easily (and programmatically) find your OPML subscription list. If you don't rerender your pages, only newly created pages will contain the relevant HTML lines.