[New feature] - Feeds

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Peculiar_Investor
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[New feature] - Feeds

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

For those FWF members (and guests) using feed aggregators and readers such as Feedly, we are pleased to announce a new feature on FWF, web feeds (also known as syndicated or news feeds) using the forum's Image Atom feeds.

There are currently three feeds enabled on FWF, each offers different information that a reader may find helpful based on their forum browsing habits.
  1. Image New posts feed - Feed with 10 most recent posts from all topics in Your Money ... (and sub-forums) and Now Hear This! forums.
  2. Image Active topics feed - Feed that shows 15 last posts, not older than 7 days, for the above forums.
  3. Image Topics feed - Feed that shows the first post of the 15 most recent topics in all forums for the above forums.
The feeds only provide the Your Money ... and Now Hear This! forums that are visible to guests.

The feeds are best viewed in a feed reader such as Feedly rather than in a browser. If you want to first try them in a browser, IE and Firefox offer reader capability, Chrome does not.

To reply to a post that you are viewing in a feed reader, the subject line is a clickable link back to the forum, where you can post a reply (if you are logged in the forum) in the normal way.

If there are any questions or feedback, please post them back to this topic.
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Re: New feature - Feeds

Post by kcowan »

So does it present the new posts when you start up Feedly? What happens if Feedly is left running?

Can we promote this on Twitter?
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Re: New feature - Feeds

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

Feeds are just another means to follow content from websites. You can read more about the functionality in Web syndication - Wikipedia. The social media (Facebook, Twitter, et al) generation are accustomed to viewing "feeds" and adding this functionality offers a means to engage them in a manner that might be more familiar to them.

I cited Feedly as an example because there have been references to it previously on FWF and it is the feed reader that I'm currently using. There are many others. Feedly is a feed aggregator that replaced Google Reader. It's server based so you don't run it, it aggregates (collects) using Google's Feedfetcher. When you visit your Feedly page, it shows all the feeds that you subscribe to.

If you subscribed to all three FWF feeds, it looks like: (click for big)
FWF - feedly.PNG
You can promote everything related to FWF and finiki on Twitter, Facebook et al. Where not shy about extending our readership and community.

Did you know that finiki's Recent changes also provides an Atom feed (look under Tools in the left sidebar) so you can track the efforts of finiki editors to see what's changing?

FWIW, keen eyed observers might have noticed Google Feedfetcher [Bot} showing up in the Who is Online information over the past month or so as we did some private testing of the feature.
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Re: New feature - Feeds

Post by pmj »

The links work just like regular RSS feeds: click the link, and Thunderbird adds an FWF folder in its Podcast folder :D.
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Re: New feature - Feeds

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

Imagefiniki, the Canadian financial wiki New editors wanted and welcomed, please help collaborate and improve the wiki.

Normal people… believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet. – Scott Adams
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Re: New feature - Feeds

Post by longinvest »

Is there a feed link for the FWF blog?

Note that the feed link image (http://www.financialwisdomforum.org/for ... s/feed.gif) in the OP and blog entry is missing. Actually, all the feed links are notoriously difficult to find, if one isn't aware of this thread. I suggest adding visible feed links in the appropriate places*.

* To be determined. :wink:
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Re: New feature - Feeds

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

Thanks. I'd say that's a phpBB 3.2 bug, they seem to have removed the feed.gif icon file. I've replaced it so the first post is displaying correctly.

The feed for the blog is http://www.financialwisdomforum.org/feed/ which is the standard location for a WordPress blog.

Good suggestion on making the feeds more visible, I'll investigate.
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Re: New feature - Feeds

Post by augustabound »

longinvest wrote: 19 Mar 2017 18:32 Is there a feed link for the FWF blog?
Most feeds allow you to input the URL in as a source.

And I had no idea there was a blog..............I was gone a long time. :lol:
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Re: New feature - Feeds

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

augustabound wrote: 19 Mar 2017 19:08 And I had no idea there was a blog..............I was gone a long time. :lol:
So you probably missed Relaunch of the FWF homepage. It's run on WordPress, so there is a blog, although it's mostly just used for announcement type things.

If anyone has ideas on improving the blog and/or the homepage, please don't hesitate to make suggestions.
Imagefiniki, the Canadian financial wiki New editors wanted and welcomed, please help collaborate and improve the wiki.

Normal people… believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet. – Scott Adams
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Re: Atom feeds, did you know we had them?

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

TL;DR - We publish a list (or "feed") of recent topics/posts in a standardized, machine-readable format. The feed can then be downloaded by a feed reader programs that allow FWF members and guests to subscribe to feeds and view their content.

Some background:
Peculiar_Investor wrote: 20 Mar 2016 15:28 For those FWF members (and guests) using feed aggregators and readers such as Feedly, we are pleased to announce a new feature on FWF, web feeds (also known as syndicated or news feeds) using the forum's Image Atom feeds.

There are currently three feeds enabled on FWF, each offers different information that a reader may find helpful based on their forum browsing habits.
  1. Image New posts feed - Feed with 10 most recent posts from all topics in Your Money ... (and sub-forums) and Now Hear This! forums.
  2. Image Active topics feed - Feed that shows 15 last posts, not older than 7 days, for the above forums.
  3. Image Topics feed - Feed that shows the first post of the 15 most recent topics in all forums for the above forums.
The feeds only provide the Your Money ... and Now Hear This! forums that are visible to guests.
And an update based on
Peculiar_Investor wrote: 30 Dec 2019 18:37
Peculiar_Investor wrote: 24 Jan 2016 14:08 We're a financial education forum first and foremost and we offer registered members the additional benefit of the ...and Your Life forums.
Times change and so are we. Our Community Centre forum contains lots of helpful discussion on Non financial topics: autos; computers; entertainment; gatherings; hobbies; sports and travel that might also benefit guests.

So we've decided to give guests access to reading the topics/posts in this forum effective January 1, 2020.
The Community Centre forum is now included in our atom feeds mentioned above.

For those who might not be familiar with Atom (Web standard)
Wikipedia wrote:Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a website. To provide a web feed, the site owner may use specialized software (such as a content management system) that publishes a list (or "feed") of recent articles or content in a standardized, machine-readable format. The feed can then be downloaded by programs that use it, like websites that syndicate content from the feed, or by feed reader programs that allow internet users to subscribe to feeds and view their content.

A feed contains entries, which may be headlines, full-text articles, excerpts, summaries or links to content on a website along with various metadata.
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Re: [New feature] - Feeds

Post by kcowan »

Do you know how many people use these features? Because I visit nearly every day, I do not understand the advantages.
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Re: [New feature] - Feeds

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

kcowan wrote: 09 Jan 2020 09:41 Do you know how many people use these features? Because I visit nearly every day, I do not understand the advantages.
Our data analytics give us some clues but no precise numbers.

I subscribe to each feed in Feedly and Feedly shows some statistics, i.e I can see that for the Image Topics feed feed, Feedly says there are "1 follower/ 304 articles per week". I can guess who follows that feed. :lol:

As to advantages, syndication via atom feeds is a web standard and offers alternative ways to see what's happening on FWF. This may or may not help lurkers and members and doesn't really cost us anything in terms of resources.

Personally I subscribe to all the feeds so that a) I can monitor them to ensure they are working as expected and b) during extended absences I find the feeds are a simple and easy way to stay in touch with all the blogs and forums that I follow, without actually having to visit the sites. If something of interest appears in the feeds, then I'll visit the site and read further. As another example, here are some of the feeds that I follow:
Feedly - financial general reading feeds.JPG
Feedly - financial general reading feeds.JPG (30.04 KiB) Viewed 3932 times
Imagefiniki, the Canadian financial wiki New editors wanted and welcomed, please help collaborate and improve the wiki.

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Re: [New feature] - Feeds

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

Here is my subscription list for FWF,
Feedly - FWF related.JPG
Feedly - FWF related.JPG (14.54 KiB) Viewed 3928 times
The finiki Recent changes feed is very helpful to stay in touch with what my fellow finiki editors are working on or updating.

For those that might not know it, the Financial Wisdom Forum feed comes from our blog. Yes, there is one, although posting on it isn't very frequent.
Imagefiniki, the Canadian financial wiki New editors wanted and welcomed, please help collaborate and improve the wiki.

Normal people… believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet. – Scott Adams
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