RSS Feed to LJ?

[Fjorab_Teke]

Well, I'm KIND-OF internet-savvy, but I'm all curious about this RSS feed I've seen mentioned in passing a few times here.

I don't play with RSS feeds at all, and I haven't used any aside from watching some via LiveJournal.

I have the old (and now defunct I suppose) RSS feed on my LJ, but could someone please create a LJ feed for the one that's been mentioned recently? I know a few people here are more RSS/LJ-techie than I am.

[Jazzy]

Okay, this is how you do it:
Go to http://www.livejournal.com/syn/
Scroll down to the bottom, to Add Feed
Enter the RSS Feed's URL
It'll tell you there's no existing account for that feed and ask you to name it. Call it something like neocoloursrss (because neocolours is taken).
et voila! Let us know what it's called so we can friend it.

Any Paid user can create it, which is why I can't right now.

[Fjorab_Teke]

Awesome, thanks!

*goes off to try my hopefully new-found RSS skillz*

EDIT: Hopefully that worked, and I yanked the name idea directly from Jazzy. Props to Joeno (or whoever made/linked it), the RSS link was very easy to find.

LJ RSS FEED FOR NEOCOLOURS NEW COLOR FINDS:
http://syndicated.livejournal.com/neocoloursrss/profile
(edited because that page is a prettier link )

[Joeno]

The RSS feed has been integrated with the detector script since approximately January

Still, thanks for creating it. I'm sure it'll proof to be useful.

[Silverevilchao]

What is RSS feed? I'm completely befuddled...

[Fjorab_Teke]

I'm not sure on the technical mumbo-jumbo of it, but a feed checks for updates in the RSS script (the XML code page linked on the front page of Neocolours in this example), and when that updates, it sends back a result with the new information. It's really spiffy.

For this one, we likely won't know how well it integrates with LJ/how it looks/etc. on there until a new color pops up. Hopefully sometime early next week we'll see exactly what it does on LJ's new little addition to the RSS pool.

[Joeno]

Actually, the RSS feed itself is more like a special page on the site that a computer program or script can read (and is intended to be read by computers rather than humans) that can be used to tell people when news has been added to a site, content, or other things. For Neocolours, there is such a page that lists the ten colours that have had recent updates.

Since there are pets in the list already, I'd expect LJ to have already retrieve those. Seems like that hasn't been done yet, though. Weird system.

[Jazzy]

I think it doesn't receive them retroactively in general because it would be a pretty big server load- some sites might have hundreds of existing posts. It might still retrieve some, though.

[Joeno]

It'd have to do that the following times as well, as presumably it only retrieves the .xml file itself.

It seems to have retrieved them now anyway. It doesn't look too inspiring (and seems to ignore the date field when showing on your friends list), but it's there..

[Fjorab_Teke]

Yay, and yeah it updated with a few of the most recent ones, like the Grey pets and some of the JubJub transformations.

It doesn't show whether it's an actual new color or if it's a revamp, and the visual person in me wishes we could have one of the mini-pics as a "color preview" on there, but it's still super spiffy to have the link greeting us and inviting to check it out. But will it post the newest 10 colors each time, or will it simply post a new one that it hasn't posted before from now on?

And perhaps now that it's confirmed to work, I can alert my friends, some of which aren't NC people, that there's a new LJ feed telling us there's a new/revamped color for a Neopet.

And I wish I knew who all has added it just out of curiosity, but it obviously gained quick popularity among my NC/LJ combo friends, even just a few minutes after I created it.

[Joeno]

The difference between actual new colours and revamps is not actually stored inside the system, so that's not as easy to retrieve as it seems. As for a small image link... I'd have to check what would be possible there, depending on what the <description> tag for feeds allows.

As for the updates: It should only post the new ones from now on. At least, that's what any sane RSS aggregator would do.

[FaerieInGrey]

I added it ^.~ so that makes one person you know!

Hee. Thanks for creating it.