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RSS Help Needed (Help a Brutha Out!)

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  • RSS Help Needed (Help a Brutha Out!)

    A friend who teaches at another school asked me to set him up with an online journal for him and his students (and hopefully, students in history classes on the mainland). I'm running WordPress with an RSS feedreader plugin for the right sidebar in a three-column style. I've been wrestling with the aesthetics for a couple of weeks now, and I've slowly--mostly by trial and error--gotten it to look how I want it to look, but one feed is giving me problems, so I thought I'd ask if a solution leaps immediately to the capable minds of my friends on HT!

    Okay, here's what the first three items in the current feed from the Star-Bulletin look like:

    <item>
    <link>http://starbulletin.com/index.html</link>
    <title>Cover photo</title>
    -<description>
    <img src="http://starbulletin.com/2005/07/24/rrpromo.jpg" alt="Cover photo">
    </description>
    </item>

    -<item>
    -<link>http://starbulletin.com/2005/07/24/news/index1.html</link>
    <title>UH grants hit record of $353M</title>
    <description>________________________</description>
    </item>

    -<item>
    -<link>http://starbulletin.com/2005/07/24/news/index2.html</link>
    <title>In the footsteps of Father Damien</title>
    <description>________________________</description>
    </item>
    Question 1:
    I have the feedreader set to display the first four items in the feed. You can see what it's doing. For the first item, I get the words "Cover Photo" followed by a thumbnail of the front-page photo. I'd rather not display the "Cover Photo" words, but even if I figure out how to turn that off so I just get the photo, the rest of the items will show just that obnoxious horizontal line without the headlines. I'd love to not show those horizontal lines at all, but of course then I won't get the nice photo for the first item! Does this look like a fixable problem, or will I just have to grit my teeth and have to look at "Cover Photo" and that ridiculous horizontal line (which, with my current template settings, extend PAST THE RIGHT-MOST BORDER when the page is looked-at with Firefox! GRRR! It looks okay with the other browsers I've looked at, though, so I guess I can live with THAT).

    Question 2:
    Does this look like a sensible feed to you, or is the Star-Bulletin being obnoxious?
    Last edited by scrivener; July 24, 2005, 11:44 PM. Reason: "Scaramouche! Scaramouche! Will you do the fandango?"
    But I'm disturbed! I'm depressed! I'm inadequate! I GOT IT ALL! (George Costanza)
    GrouchyTeacher.com

  • #2
    Re: RSS Help Needed (Help a Brutha Out!)

    Question 1: Depending on what you're using to aggregate and present the feed, it's technically possible to have it exclude outright any element that meets certain criteria. The way the Star-Bulletin does it, for example, you could have it check if an item is all HTML (i.e. the image tag in the description field), and have it skip that item entirely. This wouldn't be easy to do, and since the Star-Bulletin is so inconsistent with its feed, it probably wouldn't be failsafe, either.

    Personally, I'd just remove the description field entirely from your aggregator. Folks will only see the headlines and the link, but that's what most folks expect to see, anyway -- over the web, at least, if not in a news-specific aggregator.

    Question 2: Yes, the Star-Bulletin is being obnoxious.

    That ridiculous line is their way of "blacking out" the description field, i.e. no article text or excerpt. (The Advertiser's feeds are similarly light, but they just leave the article text element out completely. Of course, they're also using RSS 0.92!) Since the Bulletin builds its site on a custom system and not via some giant CMS, and since they generally seem less concerned than the Advertiser about "giving away too much online," I can only imagine that this weird feed is the result of practical limitations and not some paranoid corporate policy.

    It's a pity, though. I'm a Star-Bulletin fan (and "dead tree" subscriber) through and through, but when it comes to newsfeeds or even reading on a mobile device, the Advertiser is simply easier to work with.

    The Bulletin does get major kudos for keeping up its light text version all these years, though -- when I'm patient enough to browse live via my phone, it's great.

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: RSS Help Needed (Help a Brutha Out!)

      Originally posted by pzarquon
      The way the Star-Bulletin does it, for example, you could have it check if an item is all HTML (i.e. the image tag in the description field), and have it skip that item entirely. This wouldn't be easy to do, and since the Star-Bulletin is so inconsistent with its feed, it probably wouldn't be failsafe, either.
      I have it set to display HTML items only for the Star-Bulletin's feed, specifically because I want that front-page photo in the sidebar. However, are you suggesting that there's a way to filter out content based on its text? So I could tell it to ignore anything with "________" as its content?

      Personally, I'd just remove the description field entirely from your aggregator. Folks will only see the headlines and the link, but that's what most folks expect to see, anyway -- over the web, at least, if not in a news-specific aggregator.
      I may do this, since I'll have a random-photo-displayer in the left sidebar. Still, I like the way the Star-Bulletin photo looks in the right sidebar.

      That ridiculous line is their way of "blacking out" the description field, i.e. no article text or excerpt.
      That is so lame. I can't imagine it would be very difficult to have the feed generator use the article's subheading for the description (for articles) and the photo-caption as the description for the photo. Gr!

      Thanks for the help. I think I am clearer on how to approach this.
      But I'm disturbed! I'm depressed! I'm inadequate! I GOT IT ALL! (George Costanza)
      GrouchyTeacher.com

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