Biopowered - vegetable oil and biodiesel forum
General => Wiki and forum discussion => Topic started by: Tony on September 06, 2012, 08:58:59 AM
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Added this news reader. Doesn't have to stay, depends what people think :)
First pass it was bit of a spamfest but I've deleted a few posts from it now, and we should only see the odd update.
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At first sight I thought it was a terrible idea but after reading a couple of articles and thinking about it for a while it could well promote some discussions and make the forum a bit busier.
My only reservation is that we dont get flooded by the articles but other than that ........ ;D oops sorry Julian
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I've added two feeds, one for veg oil related stuff, that looks like it'll get updates about twice a week.
The other is biodiesel related, it's supposed to be UK centric but may end up posting things we're not interested in (New Zealand biodiesel policy posted in a UK paper? Err). This might be more frequent but we can either adjust the news filter to slim it down/refine it, or have a moderator delete the uninteresting posts.
Ultimately there is no point if they're not interesting, so we can decide to ditch a particular feed or adjust them to suit us. May just have to see how it pans out if everyone else is OK with that.
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Initial reaction was a no, but if it can be kept completely separate in it's own category, I'm warming to the idea. I assume the feeds get posted automatically or do you post them individually? I think you'll be creating a rod for yours/admins back if you relying on human editing for pertinent content. But bio and veg specific news item could be most interesting ... the ones that are posted now seem to fit the bill well.
Just one request/suggestion ... can the News Feed category be excluded from the recent posts page? I can see that page ending up rather cluttered if we get a lot of feeds.
Generally a good move ... well done!
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The news feeds are essentially a bog standard google news search (as any of us can do), turned into an RSS feed which is automatically pulled in by the forum and posted when new news articles appear in google.
The forum's automatic feed poster has some controls to limit the volume of news pulled in (so it can be updated every hour, six hours, day, whatever, and at the point of update only post a certain number of articles). Of course the quality of the feed is directly reflected by the quality of the initial search. If any of you can come up wit a suitable google news search then by all means we'll add or update the feeds as appropriate.
Regarding today's posts. I'm not sure. I did wonder if they should be excluded, but what happens when people comment on the news feed posts? They are a thread like any other in that respect. My initial feeling is that if they are there to stimulate discussion then they should remain, so long as they don't flood the "todays posts". If no-one posts comments against them they should drop off the bottom pretty quickly.
But yes, we can look into removing them from todays posts if we think they'll be too intrusive. I don't think we want a massive flood of news as that would defeat the purpose - we'd just end up ignoring them and finding them a distraction rather than a talking point.
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Blogging, twittering and RSS feeding have all rather passed me by (but I have to say life doesn't seems incomplete without them), however, I noticed that Biodiesel magazine has a blog ... http://www.biodieselmagazine.com/blog/read/
Perhaps a news from there, if an automatic feed is possible, might yield more relevant content, although it's based in the US and may have an American bias.
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They do have an RSS feed from their site, but like you say it does seem US biased. Anything with an RSS feed can be automatically fed into the news section.
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OK it is looking a little spammy now. Maybe I should investigate removal from today's posts.
Edit: And yes thanks to whoever the smartarse was that reported it as spam ;)
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Feeds disabled for now. Nice idea, shame about the spam!
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Tend to agree.
So people can pick up on discussions about the news topics would it be possible to prevent people posting within the news section and having a note on each news thread or at the top of the news section advising ... "responses should be posted in the appropriate section of the main forum and linked to this news thread".
That way you'd catalogue the replies, but not the feeds.
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Feeds disabled for now. Nice idea, shame about the spam!
If you have the time Tony, I recon it's an idea worth pursuing both from a members point of view and SEO.
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We can disable the ability to post on the threads (they can be automatically locked). I had a look at the todays posts PHP code again but my head nearly exploded so not sure on how to exclude a particular board.
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I installed "Ignore Board In New Posts" mod but it sadly did nothing, so I think we'll abandon news for the time being.
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Well, if you don't know there's not much hope for the rest of us!
Can't do something daft like change the date of the feeds so they're not seen as today's?
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This sounds like it might do the job ... http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=2975
or is it what you have tried?
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Got it figured, though you may not see this as it's obviously in the newly ignored section. ;)
I'll re-enable the RSS feeds as locked topics.
Edit: Moved this thread from this now ignored board so it again appears in Today's Posts.
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Well done, see how it works in that configuration. Is it possible to add a headder in the news section suggesting people reply in other sections?
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By all means add a sticky. Or we allow the posts to be replied, but obviously they will not show up in Today's Posts.
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I'll do that but I was thinking about having it on each post.
How about using the "Veg news poster" name? Could it be something like ...
"Veg news poster,
reply in a main section
and quote this topic."
Last be in a different colour would be good if that's doable.
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That's not a bad idea - the feed poster can add a footer to each post so we could put it there.
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Ooo, footer even better, especially if it stands out in bold or a colour.
This is what I'm going to post as a sticky, hope it makes sense! Use if you think it's suitable.
Posts "Veg News Feeds" are omitted from the "Recent Posts" page, to prevent overloading the page.
To check for new "Veg News Feeds" you will have to check the "Veg News Feeds" section directly.
Replies have been blocked in the "Veg News Feeds" section. If you wish to make them, replies to news items should be made in the appropriate section of the main forum, quoting the thread involved. This will ensure that your comments are listed on the "Recent Posts" page.
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Excellent, looks the business.
I hope that, given the News forum is read only now, that the RSS News Poster can still post in it. We'll see in due course I guess!
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That should of course have started ...
"Veg News Feeds" posts are omitted from the "Recent Posts" ...
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Yet another IT triumph, news feeds seem to be working as intended ... well done Tony!
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More luck than judgement!
I installed this:
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1338
...then hacked our already heavily modified recent posts code to use it. Lucky it works!
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OK I'm thinking we should delete the news feed.
Not only did it impact our SEO, but it pollutes the site search as well. I think this lowers the value of the forum if you look for something and have to wade through news articles to find it.
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It's a shame, but I'd tend to agree. Great idea, but most of the news was from the States. I do check the headlines ever so often, but don't often read the article.
Also think the volume of posts might complicate matters at some point.
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Right! Consider it nuked!