Does Funky Mean Wrong?

14 June 2003, 09:48

Apparently, there has been quite a chit-chat going on in the comments at Sam Roby’s site. The 49 (at last count) comments surround this entry.

Take it from one who knows; inexperienced (non-coding) users don’t know that their RSS feed is funky. After reading all the comments, those same folks have no clue what to do about their RSS feeds, if anything.

Will somebody kindly step through the fog and say, “if you want your RSS feed to be right, and not funky, go do these steps...?”

The more I think about it, the less I understand why I have a little icon in my sidebar for XML and another for RDF. I probably should be able to pick one or the other, do away with the icon and simply the link to “syndicate this site.”

Help!

  • * * UPDATE * * * I’ve just found a second set of comments happening here. I’ve now seen several theories as to what Dave meant when he called the RSS feed in Movable Type “funky.” Thus far, I haven’t confirmed whether funky is wrong, nor have I confirmed which aspect of MT’s feed is the element(s?) that makes it funky. It may be something to do with the date element. It may be MT’s use of index.rdf to define the feed. Others have suggested it’s an extra colon in the time zone. Me? I’m still clueless!

Filed under:

  1. Some people can cut thru the fog. Thanks for being that person.
    — Randy Charles Morin    14 June 2003, 10:41    #
  2. http://www.kbcafe.com/iBLOGthere4iM/default.aspx?date=20030614#14135743 There's at least one bug. An extra colon in the timezone. But that's essentially the fix.
    — Randy Charles Morin    14 June 2003, 12:14    #
  3. A more complete, bug-free, well-known to be "non-funky", RSS2 template is provided with the latest MT. See http://www.movabletype.org/default_templates.shtml#rss_20_index I note that you already have RSS2 on your site. btw, This whole conversation started when Dave used what could be disparaging language about MTs RSS support: "funky". When Sam Ruby asked what was funky, Dave responded "but they still, by default produce RDF where RSS is called for". So, if it is important to you to get off of Dave's "Funky RSS" list, change the [link rel="alternative" ...] in your HTML template to point to index.xml instead of index.rdf. Simple, eh?
    — Mark A. Hershberger    14 June 2003, 12:43    #
  4. Just a note. I fixed the colon bug in the defunkification steps, http://www.kbcafe.com/iBLOGthere4iM/default.aspx?date=20030614#14135743.
    — Randy Charles Morin    17 June 2003, 06:32    #

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