I am playing with syndication on BloodhoundBlog.net. You can ignore me, although I’m sure I’ll have more to say soon enough.
Later: Okay, here’s what I’m up to. That’s a BloodhoundBlog.net weblog that uses the plug-in FeedWordPress to create an automatically-updating weblog built from the RSS feeds from the home weblogs of six different BloodhoundBlog contributors.
These really are different feeds. Eric Blacwell came in with RSS 0.92, Teri Lussier with RSS2, Cheryl Johnson and Chris Johnson came in from Feedburner, Geno Petro supplied a Blogger.com feed, and I took Brian Brady’s ActiveRain feed.
Yes, you read that right ARbeings. You can syndicate your AR and Localism content to your “outside” blog.
Do please note: If you do not own the feeds you are syndicating, you are stealing. Don’t do that.
Brad Coy says:
Well… I’m stoked!
November 25, 2008 — 4:15 pm
Cheryl Johnson says:
I just created a second BHB.net blog (my first is on special assignment) and syndicated my Active Rain blog to it.
I love that FeedWordPress plugin! This is way too much fun! http://cheryljns.bloodhoundblog.net/
November 25, 2008 — 7:56 pm
Geno Petro says:
This is very cool and not just because my feed is an example. Because it is something I would never have come up with on my own or even begun to understand a year or so ago. I really should have swapped my travel plans earlier this month and attended BHB Orlando instead.
November 25, 2008 — 9:22 pm
Brian Brady says:
You can syndicate the AR feed? That’s bitchin’
November 25, 2008 — 11:05 pm
Greg Swann says:
> This is very cool and not just because my feed is an example.
Your feed moved beautifully. I loved the photos.
So you (all) know, I took a one-time hit on your feeds. That is one among many of the controls possible through FeedWordPress. I don’t want to cause anyone duplicate content problems, I just wanted a kick in the head demo.
This is a way to build group blogs out of solo blogs, though. You can take a feed by batches, automated to a regular period like every ten minutes. But you can import the posts as drafts, then approve only those that advance the agenda of the group blog.
In fact… I may change the way we recruit for BHB. A feed-based apprenticeship makes more sense than trying to explain to people why they need to be writing to an audience before they start writing here.
> I really should have swapped my travel plans earlier this month and attended BHB Orlando instead.
Come back to Phoenix next Spring. It’s really your show, the answer to the question you left us with on May 20th. This time, we’re all going to do everything we talk about, step by step. One night out of the three we’ll give you a room, if you want it, and you can teach those who dare to submit themselves to you how to evoke emotion with imagic prose.
November 25, 2008 — 11:08 pm
Greg Swann says:
> You can syndicate the AR feed? That’s bitchin’
Here’s another one, and I’m probably going to build this tomorrow:
GregSwann.BloodhoundBlog.net will use a static post to link to everywhere I write, then use the weblog to aggregate all my feeds in that one spot.
This would be much better for you — including, FWIW, your tweetfeeds and Facebook status updates. In the long run, it might outsearch everything else you do. A good way to make sure you always get found.
The essence is this: If you can subscribe to a feed — Atom, RSS or RSS2 — from anywhere, you should be able to make it work with FeedWordPress. I’m interested in hearing contradictions to this proposition.
November 25, 2008 — 11:14 pm
Brad Coy says:
Not a contradiction, but a curiosity. I have been looking at doing this for a while since I’m much more spread out on the micro scale myself.
Having to pull in all of the feeds lead to a bit of a problem with placement and context. There’s not much getting around context when you look at someones twitter stream pulled in to a blog, but it’s nice to have a duplicate copy (self hosted). On twitter I can only go back so many months for reference. For placement though, SweetCron seems to do the best job I’ve seen. Take a look at this example of how everything is tabbed.
Would there be a way to pull the data in similarly using this plugin with WP?
November 26, 2008 — 12:23 am
Greg Swann says:
> Would there be a way to pull the data in similarly using this plugin with WP?
If you can make the feed content work, the rest is just a theme.
November 26, 2008 — 12:37 am
Cheryl Johnson says:
@Brian FYI,
The Active Rain RSS feed button is down at the bottom of the right side column, under “Archives”, even for people using the customized AR blogs.
Active Rain Groups also have RSS feeds. The RSS button is in the upper right hand corner. I built an aggregation of 6 different AR photography groups with FWP for my own personal use. (Sharing it with the world would involve copyright violations.)
For Localism, I’ve created feeds by running the URL (web address) for a community through Feedburner.
But if the Localism community has multiple contributors, copyright is again an issue.
@Greg, As you know, I’ve been playing with FWP for a few days, too, to see if I can pull some of our new agents blogs into a company blog.
One of the new agents has a blog on Microsoft Live Space. That puppy won’t cough up a feed, no way, no how. Anybody have any experience with Live Space?
I hadn’t even noticed the “Save syndicated posts as drafts” function. That does open up even more possibilities.
November 26, 2008 — 4:42 am
Eric Blackwell says:
@that’s bitchin… Yep, Brian it is.
Like all good things, though, there is the potential for abuse. People boosting other people’s feeds to generate their own content is a huge issue, as Greg pointed out.
I will be underscoring the HECK out of it with a post in a bit. If they are not your feeds then posting them is stealing **cough**and we can see you**cough**.
The real question for we authors is: How far will the clone wars go…and (in the end)is that a positive development in the blogosphere.
November 26, 2008 — 4:43 am
Cheryl Johnson says:
@Eric
Teri and Greg are both using Angsuman’s Feed Copyrighter Plugin http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/wordpress-plugin-to-automatically-add-copyright-message-to-your-rss-atom-feeds/
It inserts this paragraph at the end of every post appearing in a feed: “Copyright © 2008 yoursite.com. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@www.yoursite.com so we can take legal action immediately.”
I told Teri I think I would edit the paragraph to include something like: “We are pleased that you enjoyed this information and we invite you to do business with us.” 🙂
November 26, 2008 — 5:23 am
Geno Petro says:
I’m there.
November 26, 2008 — 6:42 am