[Web4lib] RSS question

[K.G. Schneider]

> Might be because it's all the same link.  Not sure.  To test that try
> having different links on the items.  (Ie
> http://www.fresnolibrary.org/stffpcks/page1.html, etc).

The items having all the same link is kind of counter-RSS-feedy anyway. I
put the feed into Feed Validator and it checked out, and it looks ok in
Bloglines, but an entity can validate more or less and still be conceptually
not quite right. Seems to me that the staff picks page should have a series
of items which are discrete entries with URLs--

item> 
<title>Whatever</title> 
<link>http://www.fresnolibrary.org/stffpcks/whatever.html</link> 
<description>...

item> 
<title>Whatever, The Sequel</title> 
<link>http://www.fresnolibrary.org/stffpcks/whateverthesequel.html</link> 
<description>...

If you produced the entries on that page with blogging software, it would do
that feed for ya, no problemo, and you could tweak it out to your heart's
content.

The best book I've read on RSS so far is Ben Hammersley's "Developing Feeds
with RSS and Atom." I have another, fatter book, but it's not that clear. 

I keep meaning to post to the XML4Lib list about pimping our feed, but this
is a reminder that such a list exists and is run by none other than Roy
Tennant! Though I suspect the overlap with web4lib is pretty heavy. 

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at bluehighways.com