chregu recently mentioned that he wants a feed for every blog (actually for every blog software…)

so i’ve modified my already present comment-feed, which i’ve been using to manage my comments (e.g archive nicely, edit, despam…) into a publicly available format, for all of you to consume.

the comment feed can be accessed via this file: comments.xml.

the full code is as follows [1]:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”<$MTPublishCharset$>”?>

<rss version=”2.0″

xmlns:dc=”http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/”

xmlns:sy=”http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/”

xmlns:admin=”http://webns.net/mvcb/”

xmlns:rdf=”http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#”>

<channel>

<title><$MTBlogName remove_html=”1″ encode_xml=”1″$> Comments</title>

<link><$MTBlogURL$></link>

<description>Comments</description>

<dc:language>en-us</dc:language>

<dc:creator><MTEntries lastn=”1″><$MTEntryAuthorEmail$></MTEntries></dc:creator>

<dc:date><MTEntries lastn=”1″><$MTEntryDate format=”%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S”$><$MTBlogTimezone$></MTEntries></dc:date>

<admin:generatorAgent rdf:resource=”http://www.movabletype.org/?v=<$MTVersion$>” />

<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>

<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>

<sy:updateBase>2000-01-01T12:00+00:00</sy:updateBase>

<MTComments lastn=”15″ sort_order=”descend”><MTCommentEntry>

<item>

<title><$MTCommentAuthor encode_xml=”1″$> on ‘<$MTEntryTitle encode_xml=”1″$>'</title>

<link><$MTEntryLink encode_xml=”1″$></link>

<description>

<![CDATA[

<$MTCommentAuthor$> @ <$MTCommentDate format=”%d. %B %Y, %H:%M”$>]]><br />

(<a href=”mailto:<$MTCommentEmail$>”>mail</a>, <a href=”<$MTCommentURL$>”>URL</a>)

<br />

—<br />

<$MTCommentBody encode_xml=”1″$>

</description>

</item>

</MTCommentEntry></MTComments>

</channel>

</rss>

so, if you want to add a comment feed to your MT installation, proceed like this. go to your mt.cgi (the main admin), add a new template, give it the name you want (comments.xml works nicely) and paste the code above into the Template Body field.

[1]: didn’t code it myself, but forgot where i’ve gotten it, it’s half a century ago (or so…)

technorati tags: comments, feed, rss

i’ve updated my blog to MT 3.2 [1] and now i lost all my customizations to the sidebar and stuff like that [2]. good that i documented the odds and ends, so i might be able to rebuild it rather fast. in the moment you must bear with the rather terrible view on /blog when you visit in the browser. if you access my blog through the feed, you shouldn’t notice a thing.

oh, and this is also a good opportunity to add some more plugins and bits and pieces here and there. for example, i updated the root index.html a bit [3] and deleted some unnecessary directories that were just lying around.

[1] mostly to get rid of the ever-increasing comment spam. lately not even the now deceased MT-Blacklist was able to cope with it..,

[2] i shouldn’t have “refreshed” the templates without thinking twice.

[3] no matter how you resize your browser window, the text is centered in it. done with some css-tweakery

i’m starting to really dig those social web-apps.

one the last discoveries of mine is upcoming.org [1]. upcoming. org is a social event calendar driven by people like you and me. people can manage their events there and i have a neat way of showing some of my upcoming stuff i’m planning to attend or just got in my date book.

in addition to that, i can subscribe to events for a certain city i like (as in “bern“, “zürich“, “tashkent” or “trachselwald“). or subscribe to events of a certain person, no matter city they take place. the subscription is possible as an rss-feed or as as a ical-calendar-file. so if you like, you can add the calendars of your buddies to your ical and see what events they go to and take part or start to stalk them :-)

i’ve started to add some venues and events in bern and hope this starts to catch up in my ‘hood :-)

and i also thought this might be a nice way of “collecting” the people that want to come to certain meetings. let’s see if it starts to take off a bit more. if you add yourself to upcoming.org, send me a note and we can start to share our events…

which leads me to the title of this post: “… in the sidebar” [2]. since the events can be shown to any site with the upcoming.org badge, i’ve added my next 5 events to the sidebar. with some css-tinkering it also looks like it belongs in the sidebar. so if you want to see what i plan to to in the next few weeks, then you can now peek there (but i’m not gonna tell you stuff that i plan to visit the einstein exhibit with nina this weekend, so no stalking me…).

[1] which got bought by yahoo yesterday, which made every news-site post about that, which made me tinker around with it a bit more. so it’s actually a re-discovery, i can’t remember when i first encountered it. what i know is, that i encountered it much later than b. (just look at my or his user number…).

[2] time for all you rss-feed-readers to visit my site

technorati tags: rss, social web-apps, upcoming.org