GMLscripts.com

Discuss and collaborate on GML scripts
Invert

You are not logged in.

#1 2007-10-13 19:14:45

leif902
Member
From: Georgia, USA
Registered: 2007-10-09
Posts: 24

Site Suggestion - RSS

I know this has probably been said before and forgotten about (and probably by me) but the site would be much nicer if it had an RSS feed.

Perhapses an RSS feed of the news and a separate feed for scripts in each category.

- Leif


Leif902

Offline

#2 2007-10-13 19:43:37

xot
Administrator
Registered: 2007-08-18
Posts: 1,239

Re: Site Suggestion - RSS

Indeed, an RSS feed is already planned. Good suggestion in any event.


Abusing forum power since 1986.

Offline

#3 2007-10-13 19:47:42

leif902
Member
From: Georgia, USA
Registered: 2007-10-09
Posts: 24

Re: Site Suggestion - RSS

Excellent, I can hardly wait. I use RSS heavily (Google Reader is the most amazing thing ever invented).


Leif902

Offline

#4 2007-10-14 08:22:38

xot
Administrator
Registered: 2007-08-18
Posts: 1,239

Re: Site Suggestion - RSS

Well, I may call on you to help test the feature, because I don't really know much about RSS beyond my Firefox live bookmarks that I use for Google and BBC news feeds.  I don't know anything about Google Reader. I've read a good deal about RSS syntax, but I plead utter ignorance as to its practical application. It would help me if you could describe in more detail the information you would expect in one or more GMLscripts.com RSS feeds.


Abusing forum power since 1986.

Offline

#5 2007-10-14 10:03:42

leif902
Member
From: Georgia, USA
Registered: 2007-10-09
Posts: 24

Re: Site Suggestion - RSS

Alright,

RSS is of course simply a method for syndicating news content through an RSS agrigator. Firefox, IE7, and Google Reader are just a few examples of commonly used RSS agrigators (most likely spelled that wrong...).
There are other formats that are commonly used as well (Atom and the like)... google has a great service called feedburner (feedburner.com) which will automatically translate your RSS feed into Atom or one of the other formats as your reader requires.

A basic site RSS feed should probably just contain the updates, for instance, the last entry might be:

Xot wrote:

Date: October 9, 2007
Author:Xot
Title: What the hell??? An update? This must be the wrong site.
Link: http://gmlscripts.com/ (Unless you make a page for each news item like a blog might do)

Body: "Fear not, True Believers! This week we present a gaggle of graphics scripts. First up, Schreib gives us a script to make a copy a d3d model. Schreib does it again with a new and improved rounded rectangle. Daniel-Dane follows suit with a pair of scripts to draw dashed rectangles. Next up, xot brings to you a pair of scripts to draw spooky, wavy sprites. Teej offers up a script to draw sprites flipped ... but with a twist. Leif902 donates a script to convert a wavelength to a hue. And finally, Keth wraps things up with a really cool motion blur script.

Until next time ... Excelsior! "

Of course, RSS is an XML standard, so it is a little more complicated than that.

You might also choose to just put a small snippit of the news in the RSS and let the reader go to the site for the rest (attracts visitors)

-------------------------------------

It would probably also be practical to have RSS feeds under each of the categories of scripts:

For instance, the { artificial_intelligence } RSS feed would have four items (one of which is below):

Xot wrote:

Title: angle_difference(angle1,angle2)
Link: http://gmlscripts.com/script/angle_difference
Author: EyeGuy; xot
Body: "Returns the difference of the given angles in degress, -180 to 180."

Last edited by leif902 (2007-10-14 10:10:36)


Leif902

Offline

#6 2007-10-14 11:07:55

xot
Administrator
Registered: 2007-08-18
Posts: 1,239

Re: Site Suggestion - RSS

Thanks Leif, that's a big help. The Google tool sounds very useful. All the different, incompatible RSS standards is ridiculous. I'm kind of dreading the standards selection process.


Abusing forum power since 1986.

Offline

#7 2007-10-14 11:10:40

leif902
Member
From: Georgia, USA
Registered: 2007-10-09
Posts: 24

Re: Site Suggestion - RSS

Yah it's really annoying... all those different (incompatible) standards... definitely give Feed burner a whirl, it will select whichever is compatible with your reader for you and automatically translate it, that easy!

It also has lots of other neat services for publication, publicity, compatibility, etc.


Leif902

Offline

#8 2007-10-17 15:02:06

paul23
Member
Registered: 2007-10-17
Posts: 110

Re: Site Suggestion - RSS

idk if an rss under each script is that usefull.. It's not like you're actually waiting for an update, so you either use the current script or simply write your own script/make a work around. So maybe making is just "useless"? (though I admit: I've never seen the point in rss feeds, I rather go to the site if I want to check new things. So my opinion might be a bit biased).

Offline

#9 2007-10-17 15:30:57

xot
Administrator
Registered: 2007-08-18
Posts: 1,239

Re: Site Suggestion - RSS

Leif isn't suggesting a feed for each script, rather one for each category scripts, which does makes some sense since at least one category is being updated every week or so (ideally). I'm not sure that I'm actually going to do it ... but I might if I can automate everything ... which is likely. wink  One step at a time.


Abusing forum power since 1986.

Offline

#10 2007-10-17 18:21:57

leif902
Member
From: Georgia, USA
Registered: 2007-10-09
Posts: 24

Re: Site Suggestion - RSS

Yah, I figure one for each category would be nice so that I don't have to try and remember what scripts are new every time one of my favorite categories is updated smile, and of course, that way I could get automatic notification of new scripts that interest me and notification when the main news is updated, etc.

RSS is mainly useful when you have several (more than 7) sites you visit quite often for updates, it lets me see updates to every site I love one one convenient page and only check out the ones I like.


Leif902

Offline

#11 2007-10-19 01:15:33

xot
Administrator
Registered: 2007-08-18
Posts: 1,239

Re: Site Suggestion - RSS

Leif,

I've been playing with Google Reader, trying to get a handle on how readers work, and how GMLscripts.com might work with them. I've subscribed to various feeds from my regular haunts, and have to admit that it's pretty amazing technology.

I see where feeds are linked in the HTML of the homepages. The linked rss+xml files usually have a just a few items in them. When I scroll down the Google Reader window, it automatically pulls in older items. What I don't understand is how the reader is able to find older items, they don't seem to be referenced anywhere that I can see. Do you have an insight about how this works?


Abusing forum power since 1986.

Offline

#12 2007-10-19 16:20:37

leif902
Member
From: Georgia, USA
Registered: 2007-10-09
Posts: 24

Re: Site Suggestion - RSS

I'm not entirley (sp?) sure what you mean... when you view an RSS or XML file containing RSS the items in the file are all the reader has access too. You might try it with another reader such as firefox or IE7. I beleive (don't quote me on this) that Google reader indexes and backs up all feeds so that even when the latest items have been removed they still exist on Google servers, this may be what you are seeing, but I am not sure.

Not all items are necissarily shown or linked to from the site either, some sites have RSS feeds and generate their pages and news from the feed, some have a page with news and generate the page from the feed and some maintain separate sites and feeds that contain the same content, there are many ways of doing this. (Personally I maintain a single feed and have the site automatically generate itself from the feed with Javascript, though I imagine this would be even easier in PHP, ASP or another server side language)

Hope that helps,
- Leif


Leif902

Offline

#13 2007-10-19 19:16:00

xot
Administrator
Registered: 2007-08-18
Posts: 1,239

Re: Site Suggestion - RSS

I beleive (don't quote me on this) that Google reader indexes and backs up all feeds so that even when the latest items have been removed they still exist on Google servers, this may be what you are seeing, but I am not sure.

You are probably correct. It seems the only possible explanation.


Abusing forum power since 1986.

Offline

#14 2008-01-06 01:29:38

xot
Administrator
Registered: 2007-08-18
Posts: 1,239

Re: Site Suggestion - RSS

I spent some far too much time today building a RSS generator for GMLscripts.com. You can now subscribe to the feed and know the instant the site is updated. Right now it is just a list of recent scripts, their description, their contributors, and a link to the relevant script page. Maybe in the future I'll add the news column as well.

It was easier than I expected to it get going, but took much more time than I figured to get it standards compliant and (relatively) bug free. There is one weird bug left, but it doesn't break anything, so I'm not going to worry about it.


Abusing forum power since 1986.

Offline

#15 2008-01-06 22:39:20

leif902
Member
From: Georgia, USA
Registered: 2007-10-09
Posts: 24

Re: Site Suggestion - RSS

Excellent, glad to see this implemented (I read somewhere recently that having a feed can boost readership by over 20%). But why oh why did you have to implement it when my home internet is down sad ? I'll definitely try it when I get back online again (I'm on a public (read, slow) dial up connection now).

Thanks,
- Leif


Leif902

Offline

#16 2008-01-08 23:01:18

leif902
Member
From: Georgia, USA
Registered: 2007-10-09
Posts: 24

Re: Site Suggestion - RSS

Hah! Sorry for the double post but I just got my internet up and running again (Windstream is a terrible ISP) and saw your post on the main site! (Thanks for the guilt trip, you deserved all those hours working on an automated feed mechanism!)

No really though, thanks a lot, I have subscribed and am lovin' it!
- Leif


Leif902

Offline

#17 2008-01-09 00:25:38

xot
Administrator
Registered: 2007-08-18
Posts: 1,239

Re: Site Suggestion - RSS

All in good fun. Like I said in my original reply, RSS is something I'd been wanting to do before you'd even asked. Because you asked, I actually did it, so I should be thanking you.

And I don't care about double posts. It's not like this is a high-traffic forum like GMC.


Abusing forum power since 1986.

Offline

#18 2008-01-09 09:41:54

leif902
Member
From: Georgia, USA
Registered: 2007-10-09
Posts: 24

Re: Site Suggestion - RSS

Heh, fair enough tongue (I hate smiley's)


Leif902

Offline

#19 2009-05-08 06:30:58

Caniac
The #1 Caniac
From: Raleigh NC, usa
Registered: 2009-05-08
Posts: 8
Website

Re: Site Suggestion - RSS

leif902 wrote:

(I hate smiley's)

Really?


Xot is Awesome!
GMVision is Awesome Too!

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB