Technical Stuff #1 - syndicating RSS/Atom to Livejournal the easy way.

[andrewducker]

If you're using Firefox, and you've noticed the feed icon light up on the address bar sometimes (for instance here - it looks like this ) and wondered if there was any way to use this to automatically get Livejournal to subscribe to that feed, then wonder no more!

Using the advice here I was able to work out the following:
1) open a tab and type about:config in the address bar.
2) type ContentHandlers in the filter box.
3) Choose one of the feeds you don't use (Yahoo, for instance).
4) Replace the Title with "Livejournal"
5) Replace the uri with http://www.livejournal.com/syn?url=%s
6) Shut down Firefox and restart.
7) Done!

You can now click on the orange icon, choose " subscribe as live feed" and then select Livejournal from the dropdown list. It'll take you straight to the livejournal syndication page and you can then add the feed to your friends list (choosing a name for the feed if one doesn't already exist).

Comments

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

Gosh where would we be without you to document how to do something that we don't even understand or know why we'd need!!!

[matgb]

You need him because he's always got his finger on the pulse writing up ideas covered in better journals over a year ago (although this is a better write up)...
http://matgb.livejournal.com/161279.html

don't even understand or know why we'd need

LJ feeds can be created from most sites, if that little orange symbol is there you can put it onto your friends page, which means you can quickly get more feeds than just Nemi ;-)

I'll admit I may have got carried away with this awhileback. Maybe. Possibly. A little.

[andrewducker]

Aha! I knew I'd seen it before, but I was fucked if googling would turn it up. Cheers for the pointer.

[drjon.livejournal.com]

Yah. I did a post on this about a year ago as well, but again yours is better from clarity of instruction.

Also, I've had reports that Google Reader's feed aggregation is better, but the massive task of shifting all my feeds over is not one I want to embark upon just yet...

[andrewducker]

I used Google Reader for a while, but eventually switched to BlogLines, which I found was just a little more usable.

[matgb]

I've been planning to install Gregarious on my server and try that (foxfirefey speaks very highly of it), but either way I think it's possible to export your friends list as an OPML file (I think that's what it's called) and thus import it into whatever service you prefer.

I'm currently sticking to my friends page out of laziness, eventually I'll switch or they'll upgrade significantly.

[andrewducker]

Aaah - I use my friends page for people.

But BlogLines is much better for news feeds that are mostly links to actual pages and a line or two of text. I can divide things into groups and say "Show me all my tech news sites" or "just the Independent Health feed", depending on how much traffic there is.

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

Yeah he's a grubby little thief!! Nothing is sacred when he's around - lock up your women and daughters!
And you stalked me to see what feeds I subscibed to? I repaid the favour by surfing your LJ and it does indeed look far more interesting that Andys - Any objection to me adding you?

[matgb]

I never object to people adding me, I'm a bit more cautious about adding back currently mostly due to overload. But with icons like that who can resist?

But I looked at profile to see a) if you read any feeds and b) if oyu had a paid account, if neither applied the explanation was pointless and I'd have replied to him instead...

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

Oooo my icons are a little bit out there! I do indeed have a paid accoutn although I'm not sure I use the functionality as much as I should