RSS feeds available?

Hi

Are there any RSS feeds available? I can't see anything in the BB faq or any RSS links on any forum pages.

[pre65]

Hi-wots an RSS feed ?

Philip

[Shian7]

Good question!

[colin.hepburn]

I don't fully understand it either http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format)

[John T]

What would be the sense of RSS on a forum?!

Most entries surely don't need any more abbreviation.

With respect, are you guys serious???

RSS is a very common way of aggregating forum feeds into a single reader application. Most forums support it, hence my question.

Not wanting to teach anyone to suck eggs, but it can strip out info retrieved to just bare text, maintains a read-post list and massively speeds up checking for new posts.

An example of forum support is PFM Classic at http://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/f...splay.php?f=20. Note the RSS symbol at the end of the address field.

Some screenshots of how it can look are at:
http://www.feeddemon.com/feeddemon/screenshots/
http://www.sharpreader.net/screenshots.html

Hopefully this helps explain my request a little.

[John T]

As I said above.......

RSS is great on "News" sites like the BBC and newspapers that carry many long articles. On a forum such as this with an average thread length of a 100 or so words - what's the point?

Yes, on the content-stripping aspect, it may just strip out all the avatars etc. so it can be of limited use - although I don't use it for that.

My reason for using an RSS reader is very similar to why I use a local email client application vs a webmail interface, and a local usenet client versus, say, Google Groups (although the latter is very useful for searches).
In other words, web sites usually don't make very good clients where maintaining a form of read state is important and their interfaces are limited by what can be achieved in a browser. Sure it can be done, but it's inefficient and sometimes isn't reliable.
I find many forum sites rather bloated in their interfaces, necessitating lots of scrolling around on lists and pages of threads and posts. RSS clients can be a lot faster and cleaner in their interfaces e.g. they can list many more threads in a locally scrollable window compared with navigating multiple web forum pages with a limited number of threads per page.

An RSS reader will show you at a glance how many new threads there are on a forum feed and it maintains a reliable read-post list. I find it's a handy unified method of keeping track of all the news/blog/forums sites that are of interest.
RSS readers also can have all sort of advanced features e.g. searches that alert for new posts (feeds) containing certain characters.

In any case, the fact that most other forums support RSS should constitute at least some justification for it without me having to list some of the benefits .

The vBulletin support forum mentions something about enabling RSS feeds that might be relevant:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=129284

[Mike G]

I personally don't have a problem with the speed of the site or it's user interface, if it operated too quickly, i'd not have chance to read the articles!!! - They'd be gone in a flash!! Maybe a compromise would be if we all learn't short hand!!