Rodent Regatta

All the talk I’m hearing about an Atom feed as an alternative to RSS feeds assumes that you can read an Atom feed with your news aggregator.

FeedDemon does not recognize or auto-discover Atom feeds.

I say – true & true. What say you?

No sooner said than an example appears. Here’s what I want to get done this next year:

• Make this weblog valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional
• Learn and improve the use of valid CSS
• Improve the RSS feed so that even an extended entry with comments can be read
• Develop some RSS feeds for categories
• Take advantage of some plugins for some specific features
• Convert to MySQL as the underlying database
• Make some cosmetic changes related to colors, line weights, etc.
• Improve my blockquote entries
• Spell-check all entries
• Get to web standards and learn how to stay there
• Improve my search templates

2004 will see some changes in the way this weblog looks and performs. One of the things I’d like to move toward is valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Right now, when I attempt to do this, I get a string of errors that is pretty overwhelming.

There’s something in my main template or the CSS that is making every entry invalid. I’ve got a hunch that a few ”simple” changes will make lots of the errors go away, but I can’t put my finger on what needs to be altered.

Any advice is appreciated.

I think I need to change the underlying database for this weblog to MySQL. I know my host offers and supports MySQL. Why would such a change be necessary?

As I flip through the various plugins and scripts that are offered, I’ve found a high number that require the database to be MySQL.

I have no idea how I’d go about making such a switch? What’s at risk? Could I corrupt the entire weblog? Is a back-up sufficient to insure that I could import the entries back into a new MySQL database?

The more I write about this, the more it seems like a task for another day.

If you use Movable Type, you’ll be interested in this entry. Following the links in that entry I was able to save two OPML files to my hard drive, then instruct FeedDemon to set up channels in a channel group for all the Movable Type resources.

To do this, simply right click on the files and save them to your hard drive. Then, select set up new channels in FeedDemon, but choose the option that allows you to set up a channel (or group of channels) from an OPML file. Point to the files you saved and let FeedDemon do the rest. At that point you can read all of the sites that might help you with Movable Type in FeedDemon.