Entry tags:

technology: rss

How to see any blog on your LiveJournal flist
I have learned how to add RSS feeds for the blogs of greatestjournal folks, insanejournal folks, etc., so they show up on my friends list at livejournal. It is so easy you are going to laugh.

Let's say I want to add a feed for my friend telesilla at insanejournal. I go to this page:

http://www.livejournal.com/syn/

I scroll down to the bottom of the page and enter the url of her insanejournal blog — http://telesilla.insanejournal.com/ — in the box labeled "Feed URL." Then I click the "Add Feed" button.

If the account is not syndicated (most aren't), LJ will ask me to give the feed an account name. I pick telesilla_ij for the account name. I can not use "telesilla" because that name is in use on livejournal. By telesilla!

IMPORTANT: Never name an RSS feed "stewardess" or "telesilla" and so on. Always tack on a suffix or prefix such as "feed" or "LJ" or "IJ." Otherwise, your feed will prevent your friend from signing up at other blogs with his or her user name.

I type "telesilla_ij" in the box labeled "Account" and then I click on the button "Create Feed."

A familiar page pops up, the one you see every time you add a friend or community, asking if I want to add telesilla_ij to my Default view, or to any custom flist filters I have created. I want her on my Default view, which is already checked, so I click the button "Modify."

LJ cheerfully informs me "telesilla_ij has been added to your friends list."

And that's it. Damn, that was easy.

Few more things:

1. You can name the feed anything you want as long as it is not an existing LJ account name. It seems the feed name does not have to be unique: I can call it telesilla_ij, and you can call it that, too. Or you can call it she_makes_cement. You can call it anything up to sixteen characters.

2. Whatever you call it, that is how it will be displayed on your info page, just below the list of communities you have joined. Look for the small icon that stands for RSS feed:



And there lies grooviness! This means you can to go my profile page right now, locate telesilla_ij, and add the feed just by clicking on it, without going through any of the previous steps!

EXCEPT my user info page doesn't work. When you go over 500 friends, shit breaks [bugs that have existed for more than six years, I might add], and this is related poopiness: no RSS feeds show up on my info page. So I cheated and added links; they appear just above my interests. You can click them to add the feeds.

3. When you first add a friend's feed, her last 25 posts will show up all at once on your flist. Onslaught! After that, you will see her posts normally. There may be a slight delay. I'm performing a couple of tests and will update this when I know more. Edit: insanejournal posts showed up on my flist within fifteen minutes.

4. Potential problem if surfing from work: You will see RSS feed posts in their entirety; cut tags won't work. If someone puts a not-work-safe image behind a cut, watch out! Cheap solution: do not add RSS feeds to your default view, so you will never be taken by surprise. You can view RSS-feed-posts-only by adding ?show=Y to your flist view, like this:

http://stewardess.livejournal.com/friends/?show=Y

5. What about locked posts? If I have an insanejournal account, and telesilla has friended me there, I will see her friends locked insanejournal posts on my livejournal flist! Nifty!

6. Bad: It looks like basic and plus members cannot create RSS feeds, only paid and permanent. Good: Basic and plus can use feeds created by others, however. Edit: Morgandawn informs us this is true at all livejournal-like blogs. To create a feed for livejournal at insanejournal, for instance, you must have an insanejournal paid account.

7. RSS feed posts remain on your flist for only two weeks. So if you go on vacation for three weeks and skip backwards in your flist when you return, one week's worth will be missing from your flist.

Fine print: not all blogs support RSS, or may do it incorrectly. If so, you may be able to add them, but the posts will not show up on your flist.

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I recommend you do not add feeds for my insanejournals right now. I'm posting identical content there and here for the time being.

If any of you are worried about losing track of people who are posting elsewhere, relax! You can add anyone to your flist in about twenty seconds.