#9: Improve visibilty & manageability of forum RSS feeds

Contents

by Jon Stahl — last modified Jun 11, 2006 12:21 AM

Ploneboard supports RSS feeds of forum & conversation contents, but doesn't clearly signal this in the user interface. Also, it appears that syndication has to be individually enabled for each forum & conversation.

Proposed by: Jon Stahl, ONE/Northwest
Seconded by: Marshall Mayer, LiveModern.com
Proposal type: User interface
State: being-discussed

Motivation

RSS syndication of forum contents helps draw forum visitors back to the site, making for active, lively forums.

Ploneboard already leverages Plone's built-in syndication tools to syndicate forum content. However, the Ploneboard UI does not appear to show an "RSS" button when syndication is turned on. This makes it difficult for users to discover that an RSS feed is available for the forum.

Requiring forum administrators to turn on syndication individually for each forum or conversation seems like it will generate a lot of unnecessary work and be a disincentive to comprhensive syndication. We believe that most Ploneboard admins will want to have a default for their Ploneboard install, and perhaps make individual exceptions on a forum or conversation basis.

Proposal

Expose the RSS button in the UI when syndication is enabled, both in forum and conversation views.
Make syndication settings inheritable from parent folders so that turning on syndication for a Ploneboard or forum automatically enables syndication for forums or conversations.

Implementation

Exposing the syndication button may be just a matter of including "documentActions" in the Ploneboard view templates.

Comments (8)

Alex Limi Oct 19, 2005 05:35 AM

In my experience you want something a bit more sophisticated than the RSS that gets triggered every time an object is updated, but I agree with the general sentiment.

I see no reason to turn off RSS feeds, though. Not sure if there is already a global option for this, I believe there is.

Marshall Mayer Jun 29, 2006 02:45 PM

This comment picks up on where Issue Tracker item #8 leaves off (http://plone.org/products/ploneboard/issues/38).

I think we need to have RSS feed options at the conversation level. If RSS is turned on for the forum, all conversations should inherit the forum settings. Perhaps there is a Ploneboard Setup option enabling this, with the default to be off. This feature will help prevent a common problem in forums, the proliferation of forums.

Wichert Akkerman Jun 29, 2006 02:55 PM

PloneboardSyndication looks like it should still work for Ploneboard. And if memory serves me correctly that suppors a conversation feed.

Tim Hicks Oct 19, 2005 08:55 AM

Jon,

When you say "Ploneboard supports RSS feeds of forum & conversation contents", I assume you mean with PloneboardSyndication, right?

If so, I don't think Ploneboard should depend on PloneboardSyndication, but if it is present, then the templates should link to whichever feed types are available.

Jon Stahl Oct 19, 2005 06:54 PM

Tim,

I'm not quite sure how Ploneboard is syndicating now. All I know is that if I 'enable syndication' for a Ploneboard forum, and then manually append /RSS to its URL, I get a feed. Not sure if it's got the right stuff in it, or how it's generating.

Tim Hicks Oct 20, 2005 09:33 AM

... I guess you're talking about using the standard CMF syndication_tool. If so, please do take a look at PloneboardSyndication.

Jon Stahl Oct 29, 2005 10:01 PM

Tim --

Yup, I was talking about plone_syndication -- because I had no idea that there was something called PloneboardSyndication. :-) Is it a separate product, or something baked into Ploneboard that I just haven't noticed yet?

Google is only turning up one passing mention, not enough for me to track it down.

Jon Stahl Oct 30, 2005 11:38 PM

Tim, I accidentally deleted your reply, which I think said something like, "Yep, it's a separate product in the Collective, which depends on fatsyndication and basesyndication, also in the Collective."

Sorry about that. I'll check them out. If you have a few spare minutes, it might be helpful to briefly summarize what these products do and why they might or might not be useful for Ploneboard. I suspect this is a bit over my head, but I'm game to try to grok it.