5 replies to this topic

[lightowl]

I apologize if I for some reason have overlooked this feature but:

I have for a while now been using a news aggregator. It is a tool that checks for posts on various channels which are feed though a standard XML page. These feeds are called RSS feeds. Here are a few examples:

http://www.fightaging.org/index.xml
http://www.mprize.org/blogs/index.rdf
http://www.mprize.or...feed&category=2
http://www.healthext...n.net/index.rdf
http://longevityfirst.org/index.rdf
http://www.betterhum...onze/index.aspx

Well, I think you get the point.

My suggestion is to make a similar feed of new posts in the ImmInst forums. As it is now I can get a list of active topics, but that requires me to have a browser open and refresh that browser once in a while. The aggregator software makes those checks for me and notifies me when new entries has been made.

In addition to the active posts lists I am really missing a list of all recent posts so I can see how active a topic is and who is making contributions. That way I can pinpoint a specific entry when I want to and still have an overview of the activity on ImmInst. Needless to say, I am hitting the refresh button quite often on the "Active Topics" page.

So, what do you think?

[caliban]

http://imminst.org/archive/index.xml

[Bruce Klein]

Thanks, lightowl.

The xml link to which Caliban has posted is for periodic updates on chats and members articles which are posted to the homepage. An xml feed for active topics is something which will be kept in mind as we make future forum upgrades.

[lightowl]

Excellent. I will add that link to my aggregator immediately

Thanks for considering this feature for recent posts too. It would be enormously useful.

[lightowl]

Not a bad idea if used to publish the contents of moderated forums.

Yes, good point.


Here are some possible parameters.

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- Single params

aggregatethreads=[true] or [false] - shows only changes to threads, not individual posts.

numberofposts=[integer]
numberofthreads=[integer] - in case aggregatethreads is [true]

- Array params

periodstart=[date]
periodend=[date] or [now]
perioddays=[days before periodend]

author=[user name] or [user id]
forum=[forum name] or [forum id]
thread=[thread name] or [thread id]

searchstring=[string] - advanced searching feature
searchtype=[title] and/or [description] and/or [content] and/or [author] and/or [date]
searchinclusive=[true] or [false]

username=[username] - for access to restricted forums
password=[password] - for access to restricted forums

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Hmm... I may be getting too excited. Well, just some suggestions