RSS feed for independant forums?

[SpiralOcean]

I'm looking for a way to RSS the OmniFocus forum. Is this possible?

So far I've only been able to RSS the entire Forum.

[Forrest]

This forum uses vBulletin http://www.vbulletin.com/ You're probably more likely to find the answer there. (If you do, please post back and let us know what it is.)

[WrongSizeGlass]

A search of "RSS" turns up nothing, but searching on "feed" finds gold:
RSS Docs at vBulletin (http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/search?q=feed)

[soundsgoodtome]

A search of "RSS" turns up nothing, but searching on "feed" finds gold:
RSS Docs at vBulletin (http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/search?q=feed)

Hmm. Although I see many articles, I don't see any that pertain to the original question (or at least not in an obvious way). :-)

It's frustrating and quite counterproductive to want to monitor one application's forum, but having to wade through new posts for all of the other Omni apps in order to do so.

Moderator(s): Is there a vbulletin setting you can enable that will allow us to subscribe to individual forum feeds? Please?

[pheski]

Moderator(s): Is there a vbulletin setting you can enable that will allow us to subscribe to individual forum feeds? Please?

I'd like this as well.

Peter

[acid2]

I'd also like to see this, or at least more detailed rss information, such as the content of the post

[SpiralOcean]

I was about to post/request for this, when wonder of wonder's... I had already posted it.

Moving this to the top.

[shahzadmasih]

Hi, this post is very informative; however I would like some specific information. If someone can help me then please send me a private message. Best Regards,

[Mark Millard]

I'm looking for a way to RSS the OmniFocus forum. Is this possible?

So far I've only been able to RSS the entire Forum.

Me too. I only want to read about OmniFocus in an RSS feed. Surely the software wizards at Omni can figure this out? Please?

[forum member]

Yes. This would be great. With the number of products they have out now, I'm surprised they haven't already done this.

[amarcou]

Me too. I only want to read about OmniFocus in an RSS feed.

You are kidding, right? 90% of the traffic coming through the RSS feed is about OmniFocus. The burden of the Forum-wide-only RSS feed falls hardest on those interested to pick up the OmniGraffle or OmniOutliner traffic, but forced to wade through post after post of 'next action' this or 'context' that in order to find it.

Whatever the case, it would be a benefit to everyone to be able to subscribe on a product-by-product or other, more finely grained basis.

[Forrest]

This is an even more important feature to have since the "Omni Style" theme is default and breaks some of the vB functionality.

[SpiralOcean]

Was hoping for a way to subscribe to OmniFocus forum only again... thought I would ping this thread.

[soundsgoodtome]

i, too, have been wanting this. in fact, i just noticed my previous post was exactly 3 months ago today. clearly this isn't a priority for the omnifolks, though i can't imagine it being more difficult than a preference setting in the forum software.

anyway, in lieu of a built-in solution, i've created a workaround:

a smart folder in my newsreader that sifts out the non-omnifocus posts. (i use vienna, but other newsreaders should have similar functionality.) i took a screenshot of my smart folder's setup, which i will attempt to attach, here. i hope this forum accepts attachments.)

before reading my OF posts, i go to my "omniothers" smart folder, select all, then delete. then i go to my normal, freshly pruned OF folder to read the OF posts.

note: i created this smart folder by having it capture posts containing the names of the feeds i don't want to read. however, be aware that if any post happens to contain the text "omnifocus" *and* the text "forums feedback" (for example), then that post will be captured by the smart folder (and therefore marked for your deletion).

i could have included a "text does not include omnifocus" line, but then i would have had to use the "articles that match all" option, instead of "any," and i would have had to create a separate smart folder for each unwanted topic. so i went with the quickest solution.

naturally, you can customize it to meet your own needs, but this can serve as a starting point.

-m

[SpiralOcean]

Hey OmniFolks... here's how to do it:

http://www.vbulletin-faq.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7439

So, you activated the RSS feed of your forum, someone told you (most likely a user) that it would be a nice feature to have. But you maybe don't care one way or the other, it can't hurt, right?.

But then you start to wonder how it is being used, or maybe how could you promote it's use, since you've heard that it can become a good way to publicize your forum. The bad news is, well, the RSS and other feed implementations in vBulletin are very basic, you're not able to offer your feed in other more esoteric formats, such as ATOM. You're not able to know how your feeds are being used, at least know how many hits has generated, or how many subscribers do you have, or in what apps or webservices is being used, such as google reader/google homepage, my Yahoo!, my AOL or Newsgator.

Enter Feedburner. With a good set of free tools, Feedburner greatly improves control and presentation of your feed to your potential subscribers. For starters, you can have a web browser friendly preview of your feed, instead of showing the raw XML code for previous versions of IE and Firefox (current ones show their own previews). You also have basic stats (number of subscribers and what kind of webapp or reader/aggregator are they using). Also, with just activating one option, you can translate your feed automagically to a good variety of feed formats, such as other versions of RSS or ATOM and so make it compatible with almost any kind of application or reader.

To "burn" your feeds, you just need to create a free account (paid services include more advanced stats, all other services are free) and add your current feed URL, you know, the http://www.yoursite.com/forum/external.php address. Once you're done, you have a slightly more intuitive url (http://feeds.feedburner.com/YourFeedName), then you can start playing with other settings, as Feedburner gives you a centralized place where you can control many usable aspects of all your forum feeds.

For instance, have you ever wanted to setup a different feed title and description for a single forum feed?. With a default vBulletin this is next to impossible to do. If you have both the general feed and the single forum feed burned you can do it quite easily just by going to the Title/Description Burner options in the Optimize tab of your Feedburner panel.

Do you have a podcast feed?, while the podcast feed tools in vBulletin are adequate, managing your feed inside Feedburner provides you a wider and easier control of the feed, making it also more compatible with other services apart from Itunes.

So what's the catch?, none that I have been able to discern. Feedburner is a service that has quite a few years under his belt, and it can also help you monetize your feeds if you choose to participate in their own ad network, which is why they can offer so many services free of charge, but that's totally optional.

Also, be sure to edit your headinclude template to change the default auto-discovery tag of your forum to the "burned" feed. For this you must look for the following code in the aforementioned template:

PHP Code:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="$vboptions[bbtitle] RSS Feed" href="external.php?type=RSS2" />
And make the following edits:

PHP Code:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Your Feed Title" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/YourFeedName" />
Have fun with your burned feeds!

[day]

Hey everyone.

I've created some feeds, one for each individual forum here. I did this using Yahoo! Pipes. The pipe I made is here (http://pipes.yahoo.com/daybarr/omnigroupforum), and you can read a tutorial on how to use Yahoo! Pipes to scrape a web forum (http://daybarr.com/blog/2007/12/11/yahoo-pipes-tutorial-an-example-using-the-fetch-page-module-to-make-a-web-scraper) here.

General:

Forums Feedback (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=07a2ba0c70435ca2c92d95104fdfbe4c&_render=rss&forum=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.omnigroup.com%2Fforumdis play.php%3Ff%3D19)

OmniWeb:

OmniWeb General (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=07a2ba0c70435ca2c92d95104fdfbe4c&_render=rss&forum=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.omnigroup.com%2Fforumdis play.php%3Ff%3D8)
OmniWeb Feature Requests (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=07a2ba0c70435ca2c92d95104fdfbe4c&_render=rss&forum=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.omnigroup.com%2Fforumdis play.php%3Ff%3D28)
OmniWeb Bug Reports (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=07a2ba0c70435ca2c92d95104fdfbe4c&_render=rss&forum=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.omnigroup.com%2Fforumdis play.php%3Ff%3D27)

OmniGraffle:

OmniGraffle General (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=07a2ba0c70435ca2c92d95104fdfbe4c&_render=rss&forum=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.omnigroup.com%2Fforumdis play.php%3Ff%3D10)
OmniGraffle Extras (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=07a2ba0c70435ca2c92d95104fdfbe4c&_render=rss&forum=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.omnigroup.com%2Fforumdis play.php%3Ff%3D7)

OmniOutliner:

OmniOutliner General (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=07a2ba0c70435ca2c92d95104fdfbe4c&_render=rss&forum=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.omnigroup.com%2Fforumdis play.php%3Ff%3D9)
Kinkless Getting Things Done (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=07a2ba0c70435ca2c92d95104fdfbe4c&_render=rss&forum=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.omnigroup.com%2Fforumdis play.php%3Ff%3D6)

OmniFocus:

OmniFocus General (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=07a2ba0c70435ca2c92d95104fdfbe4c&_render=rss&forum=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.omnigroup.com%2Fforumdis play.php%3Ff%3D38)
OmniFocus Extras (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=07a2ba0c70435ca2c92d95104fdfbe4c&_render=rss&forum=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.omnigroup.com%2Fforumdis play.php%3Ff%3D44)

OmniPlan:

OmniPlan General (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=07a2ba0c70435ca2c92d95104fdfbe4c&_render=rss&forum=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.omnigroup.com%2Fforumdis play.php%3Ff%3D37)
OmniPlan Extras (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=07a2ba0c70435ca2c92d95104fdfbe4c&_render=rss&forum=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.omnigroup.com%2Fforumdis play.php%3Ff%3D45)

Other Omni Software:

OmniDazzle (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=07a2ba0c70435ca2c92d95104fdfbe4c&_render=rss&forum=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.omnigroup.com%2Fforumdis play.php%3Ff%3D35)
OmniDictionary (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=07a2ba0c70435ca2c92d95104fdfbe4c&_render=rss&forum=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.omnigroup.com%2Fforumdis play.php%3Ff%3D13)
OmniDiskSweeper (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=07a2ba0c70435ca2c92d95104fdfbe4c&_render=rss&forum=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.omnigroup.com%2Fforumdis play.php%3Ff%3D12)

Developer:

OmniObjectMeter (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=07a2ba0c70435ca2c92d95104fdfbe4c&_render=rss&forum=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.omnigroup.com%2Fforumdis play.php%3Ff%3D15)
Omni Frameworks (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=07a2ba0c70435ca2c92d95104fdfbe4c&_render=rss&forum=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.omnigroup.com%2Fforumdis play.php%3Ff%3D16)

Community:

Omni Lounge (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=07a2ba0c70435ca2c92d95104fdfbe4c&_render=rss&forum=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.omnigroup.com%2Fforumdis play.php%3Ff%3D24)
Job Postings (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=07a2ba0c70435ca2c92d95104fdfbe4c&_render=rss&forum=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.omnigroup.com%2Fforumdis play.php%3Ff%3D31)


Hope you guys find it helpful.
Cheers,
Day

[philb]

> I did this using Yahoo! Pipes.

Points for creativity and very handy indeed as I was just looking for this capability. Thank you!