The Basics of RSS and LiveJournal (and the LJ clones)
Hi, there.
For completely unknown reasons, a great deal of people seem to be planning on picking up and leaving LiveJournal. I've been seeing questions flying back and forth about RSS feeds, and how we can use feeds to keep track of each other once we're all split off to the four corners of the universe. I think RSS feeds are just about one of the coolest things since sliced bread, so I thought I'd give this a shot.
On this post, I'll cover the basics on how to get RSS feeds set up on your preferred blog. I've made four other posts, covering specific questions for LiveJournal, InsaneJournal, GreatestJournal, and JournalFen. I've picked these four specific blogging sites because these are the four I'm seeing discussed and compared the most.
I plan on making at least one more post concerning RSS aggregators.
Disclaimer: I'm tech saavy, but I am not an expert. I also don't write tutorials... ever. Any suggestions for improvement or corrections are welcome, and any questions that come up in the comments are anybody's game if you think you know the answers.
If you find this helpful, feel free to link.
RSS Feeds & Syndicated Accounts
What is RSS?
Wikipedia says:
This basically means you can take the 20 web sites you check on a daily basis and line the content up onto one view. It's fairly similar to our own friends pages; instead of checking hundreds of your friends' journals to see if they've updated, the entries are lined up in a page you only have to check once.
The neat thing is that you can place an RSS feed on your friends' page. Now you not only have all your friends, but you also have all your favorite web sites in one view!
How can I create an RSS feed for my journal?
If you have a LiveJournal, GJ, IJ, JF, or other common blogging site that supports RSS, you already have an RSS feed. It's built in to your account and you don't have to set anything up.
How can I place RSS feeds on my friends page?
LJ and the LJ clones can create what's called "syndicated accounts," which update regularly with a feed's most recent content. You can place a syndicated account on your friends page just like you would place another user or a community on your friends page.
Like regular accounts, syndicated accounts have to be created - they're not automatically available on LJ or the clones simply because there's an RSS feed. However, a syndicated account only has to be created once, so many users can subscribe to the same feed once it's been created.
The nifty thing: since a syndicated account is just like other accounts, you can use the same "lj user" tag to link to it. For example, the Leaky Cauldron's RSS feed has a syndicated account here, called leaky_cauldron.
So how do I do it, already?!
Here's the trick: it's a little different for each site. I've split this into four different posts because there are minute differences in the process. I recommend reading the information for both the service you have an account with and the service you want to subscribe to an RSS feed for. (So if you have an account with LJ, and you want to subscribe to a friend's page who is on JF, read the posts on both LiveJournal and JournalFen.)
LiveJournal
InsaneJournal
GreatestJournal
JournalFen
What are the drawbacks?
I'm sad to say that while there aren't many drawbacks, they're pretty big ones.
Protected Entries/Friends Only Posts
A big issue is that you can't view your friends' protected entries, even if you have accounts at both your site and their site and are logged into both. There's rumors flying around that this is merely a bug, but this isn't the case. Syndicated accounts only post public posts, and you are subscribed to the syndicated account and not your friend directly.
There is one way to get around this with the syndicated accounts, but it isn't safe because it involves putting your password into the public eye. I am aware that it's out there, though, but I would not recommend that anyone even try it.
However: Syndicated accounts and RSS feeds are not the same thing. If you use an RSS aggregator, you can subscribe to the feed directly without going through the syndicated account. If you have an account at the site you are trying to read, you are able to log in through your aggregator. You can do this by adding this into your RSS feed URL:
http://username:password@journalname.com/users/data/rss
I will go into more detail on this in my next post, because this is the option that I prefer.
LJ Specific Markup Tags
Yes, it's pretty handy that LJ, GJ, IJ, and JF all use the LJ specific tags such as "lj-cut" and "lj user." However, when a post is made using the "lj user" tag on LiveJournal, the syndicated feed over on InsaneJournal will provide a link to an InsaneJournal account with the same user name. You can get around this by not using the "lj user" tag anymore and posting direct links, but it still sucks.
Also, "lj-cut" doesn't work on syndicated feeds. Period.
What else can you say?
General Advice: If a friend creates a syndicated account for your journal, have them let you know where it is and what it's called so you can tell the rest of your friends. :)
The FAQ for each of the respected LJ/clones are listed below. They may answer questions that I haven't answered here.
Live Journal on RSS
Insane Journal on RSS
Greatest Journal on RSS
JournalFen on RSS
Where are RSS feeds besides blogging sites?
These days, they're everywhere. Okay, not really. But many news, podcast, or comic sites have them - pretty much any sites that is updated on a regular basis. You can usually identify them by seeing a graphic similar to these somewhere on the site.
What the hell?
Sorry! If you're really confused on something, let me know and I'll try and give you a hand. I know I haven't covered everything here, but I think this should be enough to get most of us started.
Like I said before, feedback AND questions are welcome. Thanks!
For completely unknown reasons, a great deal of people seem to be planning on picking up and leaving LiveJournal. I've been seeing questions flying back and forth about RSS feeds, and how we can use feeds to keep track of each other once we're all split off to the four corners of the universe. I think RSS feeds are just about one of the coolest things since sliced bread, so I thought I'd give this a shot.
On this post, I'll cover the basics on how to get RSS feeds set up on your preferred blog. I've made four other posts, covering specific questions for LiveJournal, InsaneJournal, GreatestJournal, and JournalFen. I've picked these four specific blogging sites because these are the four I'm seeing discussed and compared the most.
I plan on making at least one more post concerning RSS aggregators.
Disclaimer: I'm tech saavy, but I am not an expert. I also don't write tutorials... ever. Any suggestions for improvement or corrections are welcome, and any questions that come up in the comments are anybody's game if you think you know the answers.
If you find this helpful, feel free to link.
RSS Feeds & Syndicated Accounts
What is RSS?
Wikipedia says:
- RSS (which, in its latest format, stands for "Really Simple Syndication") is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel", contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that's easier than checking them manually.
This basically means you can take the 20 web sites you check on a daily basis and line the content up onto one view. It's fairly similar to our own friends pages; instead of checking hundreds of your friends' journals to see if they've updated, the entries are lined up in a page you only have to check once.
The neat thing is that you can place an RSS feed on your friends' page. Now you not only have all your friends, but you also have all your favorite web sites in one view!
How can I create an RSS feed for my journal?
If you have a LiveJournal, GJ, IJ, JF, or other common blogging site that supports RSS, you already have an RSS feed. It's built in to your account and you don't have to set anything up.
How can I place RSS feeds on my friends page?
LJ and the LJ clones can create what's called "syndicated accounts," which update regularly with a feed's most recent content. You can place a syndicated account on your friends page just like you would place another user or a community on your friends page.
Like regular accounts, syndicated accounts have to be created - they're not automatically available on LJ or the clones simply because there's an RSS feed. However, a syndicated account only has to be created once, so many users can subscribe to the same feed once it's been created.
The nifty thing: since a syndicated account is just like other accounts, you can use the same "lj user" tag to link to it. For example, the Leaky Cauldron's RSS feed has a syndicated account here, called leaky_cauldron.
So how do I do it, already?!
Here's the trick: it's a little different for each site. I've split this into four different posts because there are minute differences in the process. I recommend reading the information for both the service you have an account with and the service you want to subscribe to an RSS feed for. (So if you have an account with LJ, and you want to subscribe to a friend's page who is on JF, read the posts on both LiveJournal and JournalFen.)
LiveJournal
InsaneJournal
GreatestJournal
JournalFen
What are the drawbacks?
I'm sad to say that while there aren't many drawbacks, they're pretty big ones.
Protected Entries/Friends Only Posts
A big issue is that you can't view your friends' protected entries, even if you have accounts at both your site and their site and are logged into both. There's rumors flying around that this is merely a bug, but this isn't the case. Syndicated accounts only post public posts, and you are subscribed to the syndicated account and not your friend directly.
There is one way to get around this with the syndicated accounts, but it isn't safe because it involves putting your password into the public eye. I am aware that it's out there, though, but I would not recommend that anyone even try it.
However: Syndicated accounts and RSS feeds are not the same thing. If you use an RSS aggregator, you can subscribe to the feed directly without going through the syndicated account. If you have an account at the site you are trying to read, you are able to log in through your aggregator. You can do this by adding this into your RSS feed URL:
http://username:password@journalname.com/users/data/rss
I will go into more detail on this in my next post, because this is the option that I prefer.
LJ Specific Markup Tags
Yes, it's pretty handy that LJ, GJ, IJ, and JF all use the LJ specific tags such as "lj-cut" and "lj user." However, when a post is made using the "lj user" tag on LiveJournal, the syndicated feed over on InsaneJournal will provide a link to an InsaneJournal account with the same user name. You can get around this by not using the "lj user" tag anymore and posting direct links, but it still sucks.
Also, "lj-cut" doesn't work on syndicated feeds. Period.
What else can you say?
General Advice: If a friend creates a syndicated account for your journal, have them let you know where it is and what it's called so you can tell the rest of your friends. :)
The FAQ for each of the respected LJ/clones are listed below. They may answer questions that I haven't answered here.
Live Journal on RSS
Insane Journal on RSS
Greatest Journal on RSS
JournalFen on RSS
Where are RSS feeds besides blogging sites?
These days, they're everywhere. Okay, not really. But many news, podcast, or comic sites have them - pretty much any sites that is updated on a regular basis. You can usually identify them by seeing a graphic similar to these somewhere on the site.
What the hell?
Sorry! If you're really confused on something, let me know and I'll try and give you a hand. I know I haven't covered everything here, but I think this should be enough to get most of us started.
Like I said before, feedback AND questions are welcome. Thanks!