Thought I'd give the RSS feeds a try via google reader, but it is not syncing very quickly... Indeed, the hottest topic right now (Ice) isn't appearing in the topic RSS feed at all. Does anyone else see such issues? I might be missing something obvious. Or maybe google reader is terrible.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » This site
RSS Feeds
(30 posts)-
Posted 11 years ago #
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I use Free RSS iPhone app.
New posts on site shows almost instantaneously, but others seem to take up to a day.
I know that doesn't answer to question about google reader!
Posted 11 years ago # -
I tried a free app, then I paid the princely sum of 69p for Newsify thinking the problem was with the app. And of course then found it was with Google Reader. I believe the issue may be Google Reader taking its time to check the RSS feed. I shall see how it goes!
Posted 11 years ago # -
I'm going to write this up separately sometime, but I've written a web app that has the missing feature I was looking for, which is the ability to jump straight to my first unread post in a thread that I've already read. So, for example, if a thread has 40 posts which I've read, and I come back later to find there's 53 posts in it, I find it a massive PITA to figure out which posts I've read, and instead want to just jump straight to the first unread post. I can now do that through the wonder of the RSS feed, Google Reader and a web app I've written, to plug the gap.
If it transpires that other people would find this useful, I can further extend it to allow multiple users to use it. I'll need something to do over the Christmas break, after all, once the kids are bored of their presents and are hiding in their rooms watching re-runs of Friends.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Definitely something I would use. Once topics drop off the frontpage I can never find them again, so it's annoying not to know whether somebody replied to me over the weekend etc.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Me too!
Posted 11 years ago # -
Sounds interesting/useful!
I use an RSS iPhone app to see what's happening, but on busy days this 'hides' some I haven't seen.
Posted 11 years ago # -
OK, I've extended my utility thing so that multiple people can use it. Therefore, if a few people want to try it out, on the understanding that it's "beta" and therefore might break, please feel free to give it a whirl.
http://www.irreverence.co.uk/ccefeed/
You first need to register with your email address, and note that since the site isn't over HTTPS, you don't want to use a password that absolutely must be kept secret from the world, since it'll travel over teh interwebs unencrypted. The site will store it securely though. So securely, if you forget your password, I won't be able to tell you what it is. Just pick a nice easy password. It's not as if this is a system that is storing your credit card, or anything, it's just remembering what posts you've read.
Next, you'll see all the posts from the citycyclingedinburgh.info site. The first time you go to it after registering, you will see *all* the posts that it has downloaded, so what you probably want to do is click the "Mark all read" link at the top, at which point you'll have nothing to read. But then later today, once people have posted to the citycyclingedinburgh.info site, those will appear on the ccefeed site, and you'll be able to jump straight to the new posts without having to work out which posts you've read.
One thing which you'll notice is that it takes a few minutes for posts on citycyclingedinburgh.info to filter their way on to the ccefeed site. That's because Google Reader takes a few minutes to pick up the new posts. So don't worry if you see a post on the citycyclingedinburgh.info site from 5 minutes ago and it isn't on the ccefeed site; it'll get there soon.
Also, re: chdot's point about busy days and missing posts, that shouldn't happen with this. This is why I'm using Google Reader, as it tries to make sure it doesn't miss any posts, even on busy days.
People will no doubt have questions about how it works, so feel free to fire away with those questions. I'll write documentation of some kind based on those questions that people fire my way... but do bear in mind that it isn't meant to be a replacement for the citycyclingedinburgh.info site at all, it's just a quicker way to *read* the citycyclingedinburgh.info site, and when you want to post replies, you'll still do that on the citycyclingedinburgh.info site. Thankfully, you can jump straight to the citycyclingedinburgh.info version of a post straight from the ccefeed site. You'll see what I mean if/when you start using it.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Mmm
Think many people will find that useful!
Will add a link in the RSS box (right) sometime.
Thanks.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Permanent link now on right.
Registration is needed as program produces results just for you!
Thanks mkns.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Been using this for the last few days, excellent!
Makes it very much easier to keep up.
Posted 11 years ago # -
The 'ccefeed' utility uses Google Reader, which is going to die on July 1st. I'm therefore looking into ways to keep the ccefeed utility going in its current form without any changes to the front-end. Feedly _might_ be something that can replace Google Reader's API access to the RSS feed for CCE, but if anyone knows of any other Google Reader API alternative, please do let me know and I'll investigate.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Don't know any alternatives, but very glad you are you willing to investigate. It is very useful.
Posted 11 years ago # -
For those of you who use my RSS feed reader thingy, I'm attempting to upgrade it to stop using Google Reader and do something different (and better). As with many upgrades when you don't fully control the environment you are running your system on, it's not plain sailing, so if you happen to notice any weirdness over the next few hours, that'll be me breaking it...
Posted 11 years ago # -
Thanks for taking the time to do it.
I have found it VERY useful for finding threads in recent months.
Posted 11 years ago # -
OK, job done. Weirdness should now not happen.
I've changed the utility so that it no longer uses Google Reader, which is due to be turned off one month from today. In the process, there have been some reasonably significant improvements to the utility.
1. Posts made on the CCE site should now be available on the CCE Feed utility within 1 minute, rather than waiting some arbitrary amount of time for Google to go fetch new posts (anywhere from 1 minute to many hours).
2. Edits to posts will now be reflected in the CCE Feed thing, assuming they are made before another 35 posts are made after yours. I didn't choose the 35 posts thing, that's entirely up to the CCE site itself. But I figure that edits are more than likely going to be made in that timescale, and if they are not, then tbh, there's nothing I can do about it.
3. The speed of the CCE Feed utility should now be faster, since it is no longer needing to download new posts while attempting to generate your page. New posts are now downloaded offline via cron job, which I didn't realise my web host allowed until recently. Win.
4. I've removed the "Fetch new posts" link which is now therefore redundant, as new posts are fetched automatically, every minute.
As a reminder, the CCE Feed utility is here:
http://www.irreverence.co.uk/ccefeed/
If you don't know what it is or how it could make reading the CCE site easier, go read the fairly short documentation:
http://www.irreverence.co.uk/ccefeed/?a=docs
I find it especially useful for reading the site on my iPhone, but I do also use it on my Mac at home and Win7 box at work.
As always, if you've any questions about it, let me know - and if you've used it before and stopped because it was always lagging behind the CCE site, then that problem has now gone away, so you might want to try it again.
some time later
Hurrah! I have broken the link from the Feed to the CCE site somehow. I'm off to investigate.
a few minutes later
...and I've fixed that. Half a dozen posts might now not have a link back to the CCE site, but the rest will be ok from now on.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I have found it VERY useful for finding threads in recent months.
Yep, I've done much the same thing a couple of times. The biggest win for this upgrade, though, is the fact it's now up to date within a minute, all the time. It was really starting to annoy me how far behind Google were in picking up new posts. Not any more! \o/
Posted 11 years ago # -
Posted 11 years ago #
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I've made another improvement to the CCE Feed thingy, just in terms of performance. It's so apparently trivial (because the web hosting server I have seems pretty nippy) that you probably won't notice any difference, but I know it's now more efficient, so that makes me happy.
If I've broken anything, do shout, but it all seems to be working fine as far as I can tell.
Again, for those of you who wonder what the hell this is I'm talking about:
Posted 11 years ago # -
Another couple of improvements added:
1. The ability to view all posts by a user (sometimes I remember someone posted something, but I can't remember what they said, so this makes it easier to track down the post), and
2. The ability to ignore threads, even when new posts are added to them (some threads don't interest me, so I can mark them to be ignored forever)
FYI, I'm talking about this utility, free for all to use (or ignore):
Posted 10 years ago # -
I can no longer find the link to the CCE Feed utility on the forum, so I thought I'd post a reminder that it exists, mainly because I'm having some major issues accessing the "real" CCE site due to being overloaded with users, so figured it was a useful time to remind / tell people of the existence of the tool.
For details on what the CCE Feed thing can do, see:
Posted 10 years ago # -
Is there a problem with CCE Feed today? I can see new posts on the site but they aren't showing on the feed site.
Posted 7 years ago # -
<ridiculous_lag>Aye, there was, sorry. Turns out a cron job stopped working for no apparent reason, and since I'd disappeared from the face of the planet, I hadn't noticed. Soz. Working now, though, if you happen to want to use it again. Silly cron jobs.</ridiculous_lag>
Posted 6 years ago # -
Brilliant. Must admit the feed site is my preferred way to read. Cheers Kenny.
Posted 6 years ago # -
PS If you think that's ridiculous lag, you should see my DIY to-do list.
Posted 6 years ago # -
LOL! Glad you find it useful.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Great to hear thanks Kenny. I've been using feedly but it's far from perfect.
Posted 6 years ago # -
I started using CCE Feed recently and it looks perfect, however I have problems where within a few hours it seems to reset and show me every thread instead of only those I have not read before. Is this is a known issue for which there is a workaround?
As the author states here it doesn't use https so I wondered whether browser would reject cookies etc from a plain-old-http site but don't see any Chrome or Safari settings which appear to describe that behaviour.
Posted 7 months ago # -
I don't have that problem myself. It can't be a cookie issue as it works cross browser/device for me.
The only way I can view all threads again is to click there show all threads link. Are you definitely not doing that?
Posted 7 months ago # -
Ok, figured it out, I managed to bookmark the URL including a max_post_id parameter, so removing that seems to have fixed it.
Posted 7 months ago #
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