If you're like me- and if you have a personality, you're not- you'd really like an easy way of tracking all those comments left by your adoring fans who literally have nothing else to do with their lives but read the crap that you write. Enter RSS!
Now I would think, as a programmer, that this would be a 'built-in' feature of blogger but no, no, no! In fact it appears this used to be a built in feature but has now been deprecated. (No Musician, that does not mean 'pooped'.) Grrr... that makes me so angry. Well at least irritated.
So after much ado about nothing, I have discovered the secret to publishing a comment feed. Blogger is actually already publishing it. But this knowledge is hidden in the labyrinth that is Google and I shall bring it to light now. If you've got a blogger.com account, your Comment feed is: 'http://www.yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default'. Once armed with that knowledge, you are ready to go.
What I have done is just to link to an RSS feed icon from the 'net and then post a hyperlink to my comments feed. This in itself doesn't really do anything. But if you click the hyperlink it will (obviously) take you to an HTML version of my comments feed. From there you may subscribe or you may cut-n-paste the URL into your feed reader.
In my case, I found a free plug-in for Outlook 2003 called IntraVnews and configured it to check my comments feed. Anytime someone posts a comment to any of my blog postings I will receive an email. Now ends those sleepless nights and hang wringing throughout the day wonder if there are any exciting new comments for me to read.
I so prefer chatting.
7 comments:
ummm... since I started my blog, I have been getting emailed the comments.
It is under settings/comments... you just put in an email address where it says "Comment notification address".
...but your way is cool too... ...
Yeah... that's not the same as an RSS feed, mmmkay. That's just having it emailed you from their web server. An RSS feed is something that anyone can subscribe to. You can plug it into any number of various types of aggregators- I just happened to choose an Outlook based one. Perhaps the end product looks the same in my case, but RSS is way more robust and controllable. I could also use the same URL to subscribe to comments on your blog or the Musicians, for example. The link I posted was to help simplify finding the URL for others.
I guess for me RSS feeds are overrated. I can doubleclick my RSS feed app... or doubleclick the shortcut to the webpage that has the same info. Now if RSS feeds could be sent directly into my brain... THAT would save me precious time that would otherwise be taken up with unecessary mouse clicks.
Oh so now we have to have your approval to comment???
Blog snob.
It may just be the app you are using. There are a ton of RSS readers with many different functions. If you want one that pushes a message to the top of your screen, they have them. I prefer having mine sent to my email. The difference between using RSS for that and using the built-in function for Blogger (aside from behind the scenes technical stuff that only matters to coder) is that I can subscribe at work and home. I don't think the blogger function supports multiple adds. But if what you're doing works for you then you are all set!
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