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Important news regarding Feed Informer future

Hello everyone,
we are glad to inform you that we plan to make significant changes to Feed Informer project.

Paid services will certainly be back, and we will work on new features and services. We also plan to have technical support available to paid users via e-mail, and to everyone - via forums.

That also means that there will be a way to create more than 6 digests, the question that was asked numerous times.

We also need your help: if you plan to switch to paid status to get additional features and technical support - let us know by leaving a comment below.

Also, if you have ideas on how to make to service better, please do not hesitate to comment here too.

Yours,
Feed Informer team

Good news everyone! Finally we made it – the new hot Feed Informer is here to rock up your world!

We're happy to introduce our updated FI with totally NEW design. It looks like Web 2.0, it feels like Web 2.0, (oh, what the heck) it smells like Web 2.0. You know what, IT IS Web 2.0!

Your favorite Feed Informer became even more accurate and stylish.

From now on you won't be sitting whole day on the first page changing settings! All settings are divided in several sections, which are easily operated by even the most novice user. A well-ordered web-service is a good (even great!) web-service, no?

New hierarchically arranged menus, new user panel, vivid display of choices - everything in order to extend usability of our service and bring Feed Informer to the whole new level for everyone (from casual user to hardcore web-site owners!)! So, fasten your sit belts, sit tight in your chairs and FEEL THE POWER of NEW FEED INFORMER!

Timezone Support for Digest Output

When you edit digests or create new digests there is now a simple "Timezone" field that lets you enter an hour offset (such as -5 for EST, 1 for CET, etc..) so that times output by %HOUR% %TIME24%, etc, and other Feed Digest tags, will show the time adjusted by a certain number of hours.

Feel free to discuss this feature and ask questions here.

Public OPML outlines available for each digest

Several users have recently demanded the availability of publicly accessible OPML outlines of their digests' sources for a while now. While OPML has been available in Feed Digest for months, it's been accessible to logged in users only. Now it's available to access from anywhere. The URLs aren't guessable, so as long as you keep your URL for your own use only, you're good to go. To get the URLs, log in to your Feed Digest control panel and there's an OPML link alongside each digest.

Re-publishing del.icio.us items using Feed Digest

Prisca has written a cool blog post about how to republish your del.icio.us items using Feed Digest. Thanks Prisca!

Warning: Feed Digest moving servers now!

Yes, it's true. Feed Digest is moving to significantly faster servers, and it's all starting in the next 30 minutes. The moving plan has been designed so that service is not interrupted at all during the move except for:

1) The Feed Digest control panel will be unavailable for up to 30 minutes.
2) Updates on feeds will probably stop for up to 30 minutes.

Actual serving of digests, etc, should be unaffected as we're keeping both systems running as they switch over. Report any problems here or in the forum ASAP though!

Is there a way to adjust the code to show more of the article text than just a sentence or two?

The answer is.. it depends. Generally yes, but we can only show what we have received. Many feed providers only put content excerpts into their feeds as a way to encourage people to click through to their sites. If that is the case, we can only show the excerpt. If the whole article has been provided, however, you can edit your template to show this instead.

In your control panel you can edit your digest, and at the bottom where you choose the template there's an option to edit your template 'manually'. When you do this you see the 'guts' of your template. There'll be a bit that looks something like %DESCRIPTIONPLAIN,100% for example. This means it'll show the item's description trimmed to 100 characters. Change that 100 to a higher number, or just use %DESCRIPTIONPLAIN% to show -everything- we have for each item :)

New look for FeedDigest.com

It's still in the middle of being rolled out, so excuse any minor flaws for the next week or two, but I'm working really hard on the roll out of the all new FeedDigest.com. I hope you like it!

We make the net “super awesome”

According to the guys over at TalkingApe.com, FeedDigest.com is one of six sites making the net "super awesome." Awesome!

(Update - Feb 2007: It's just a shame that post no longer exists :()

The upcoming new template system!

In my work with Feed Digest, one of the constant limitations is the template system. I want users to have as much control as possible over their digests, and while the existing template system hasn't been bad, it's far from ideal.

Currently users can give an optional header and footer template and a 'per item' template. So their per-item template might look something like this:

<p><a href="%URL%">%TITLE,40%</a>.. %DESCRIPTIONPLAIN%</p>

Quite simple. A paragraph for each item in the digest with a link using a truncated title (to 40 characters) followed by a HTML-stripped description. But.. for anything more complex than this, it begins to suck. So, I've invented a language called MoFo. It stands for "Markup Output Format" but the name is as much humorous as practical. It is markup itself, so doesn't have the best name. It'll do for now though. With MoFo you can do things like this:

<% foreach source in sources %>

    <p><b><%= source->title %></b></p>

    <ul>

    <% foreach entry in source.entries %>

        <li><a href="<%= entry->url %>"><%= entry->title %></a></li>

    <% end %>

    </ul>

<% end %>

It's basically a more extensive language which will allow me (as well as advanced FeedDigest users) to develop more templates for FeedDigest users in a quicker time. I'll also be able to use it to develop RSS and Atom templates in varying formats, as opposed to the two 'fixed' RSS and Atom templates now. Users will be able to create their own WML/WAP templates, OPML templates, and, well, anything they want on each digest.

MoFo doesn't have much logic in it yet, but this is all being developed right now. Eventually if it has anything to do with feeds and content redistribution in the vaguest, Feed Digest will be the #1 API and developer platform to use. The easy stuff will be even easier, and the complex stuff will now be possible.

More news to come as this stuff begins to roll out..