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Calgary & Edmonton & Vancouver & TSAC
| Topic: RSS Feeds? |
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Any way we can get a RSS feed from this forum. I'm thinking of coming up with a way to bringing all the Canadian message boards together by building a ning site. |
Posted: Jan 24 2008 4:27PM
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I cannot get RSS from this site. Whether or not the capacity to have them exists is probably something that Barry can answer. My gut tells me no. |
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Hey Eric whats a ning site? |
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www.ning.com Its a freely hosted community / social networking site. Its all web 2.0, where you can allow a community (like Canadian Foosers) to share data, pics, ideas, etc. The site pulls data from various sources such that Canadian foosers will have a single access point to see what is new on all the message boards accross Canada. But only if those boards can provide a thing called an RSS feed. If they do, then foosers can go to the ning site (that i'll create), and be able to see all the new postings from all the messageboards, fickr images, blogs, etc. If they see a subject line (from a posting) they are interested in, then they can click on it, where then they are brought to the site it came from and can respond, etc on that site. Same with pics. I'll set something up quick to give people an idea what its like. It comes with a built in forum, but not everyone is going to want to join that one. Its crazy easy for people to sign up to join the community as well (just provide email address and a password, and you're in) here's some examples of ning sites i found: http://hawaiifoosball.ning.com/ http://foosballsvideos.ning.com/ |
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Using the ning interface, the following website took me just over 1/2 an hour to create: check it out: signup. try to post your own pics and video's http://tablesoccerca.ning.com/ |
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What about luddites like me who don't believe in participating in Web2.0. Anything with a 2.0 suffers the sophomore jinx and should be avoided. When Web4.0 hits, I'll consider moving off of the Web1.0beta I've been using for the last 15 years. |
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I guess that's another possibility. I've been talking with Peter lately about revamping the site, giving it a new and better look, and improving the point stat system. One thing that I was really hoping to improve was the forum system, but that's a hard change since there's the other province websites which we'd lose our tie to. Eric, do you know all the webmasters of each of the other provinces? If you really wanted a better forum system, I could setup something like phpBB or vBulletin in 10 minutes easily. It would give us RSS feeds as you were wanting, it would fix the issue lots of people are having with logging in to our forums, it would give it a lot of new features such as the ability to edit you own posts, ability to moderate, etc... I have all the access to the server, it would just be a matter of coordinating with the other provinces to switch to the new forum system, and setting up the forums by province how we want it. I think it would also help grow our community, since with the forums we could have a single "Chat" or "Questions" area to share between all provinces, then a province specific forum for each group to talk about their specific issues. What do you think? |
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best case scenario: each region has their own board, and the central TSAC (ning) site, (through the RSS feeds) people are able to see the new posts all at once - in one location. 2nd best scnario: have single message board for all of Canada - where each region has their own section, and there's a general section as well. TSAC (ning) site can still be used - but at least we have control of our messageboard data incase ning goes away or starts charging. 3rd best scenario: use ning's forum's for canada wide message board needs (again each region would have its own section). but we dont 'own' the data anymore 4th scenario is what we have now: a bunch of boards all over the place. So, yes i know most of the webmasters of the sites. and those that i dont, it's probably easy enough to post on their board. My main concern is longevity. I wouldnt want to go through this effort to find out a year from now that whoever is hosting the Canada messageboard now, has lost interest, and no longer wants to pay or do whatever it is they have to do to keep it running, and then we're back to square one. I'm starting to think that the only thing that's going to be around for sure (well most likely) is a TSAC like body. So if there is some way that TSAC could own or at least be able to migrate the data elsewhere if needed, then that would be best. So to sum up (sorry for being so long winded): Yes i like the idea.. how long are you going to be around? B-) |
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I understand what you're saying, and I obviously can't make any promises on how long I'll be around. I'd like to think I'm hooked for life but who knows. But really, it doesn't matter if I'm around. Once the forums are setup, they're setup. I have my own servers I use for many other websites, so hosting it on there wouldn't cost me anything extra. If you would prefer having your own account so everything was under your name and pay for a seperate hosting account, that's fine too. Out of curiosity why would you prefer each province having their own boards instead of one large community board as you said in #2? I would think since our communities are pretty small as it is, combining them would be best. Also, if we wanted to use vBulletin, seperate boards would mean $120 per province's license, though phpBB is free and almost just as good. Also one last question. If we went to that ning site, what would happen to player stats? That's something we definitely still need. |
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well now that you mention that - that raises another idea. where a tsac site should allow for each region to have their own section of the site - not just a forum, but a full blown section - with their own forum, pics, video's, rankings, etc. Right now each region has someone that has setup a website, along with a messageboard of sometype. I would think they like to have control over their own board for various reasons. We don't want control over everything, i'm just hoping to bring it all together somehow. If we can provide them with all the functionality they currently have (and more!), and make it easy for their users to migrate their accounts over (you'd be amazed at how much control lazyness has over peoples habits), then i would think it possible. Now that i think of it, what's to stop us from creating a whole hierachy of ning sites. one for each region. and have the tsac one have feeds on all the regional sites - that way we could spread the drive space limits as well (100MB limit - or you have to start paying). I imagine player stats would have to be something that we provide elsewhere, cause as it is now i cant see how the ning set of funcationality would help us with that. There is ning widgets (under beta) at this point - and that has some possibilities - but i'd have to look into it more to be sure. I'm going to create a couple of regional ning sites, and hook them up to the tsac one, and see how that might work. as for user accounts, etc with your idea. I wouldnt need user accounts on the message board or anything like that. I guess i dont have an understand as to what's going on with the vanfoos site these days. i know richard used to host it. now you do? and you do this type of thing for a living i take it? |
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I've done web development in the past, and I offered to re-do the vanfoos website as I discussed with Peter Tielens. I had been working on something from scratch for Vanfoos, but if what you're saying is something you'd seriously want to do, I wouldn't mind making a generic website for Canada foosball giving each province their own section. That way you can have a unified point tracking system and all players in Canada could use this system. Of course that would mean not using ning at all, so that's totally up to you. Ning is a quick and easy solution, but not very customizable and not viable for tracking stats and keeping everything under 1 roof. If you want, shoot me an email and we can discuss this further in private. okomili at gmail dot com Onur |
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By the way, I was just dicking around with the idea of an RSS feed to see how complicated it was to make a feed and actually created an RSS feed for our singles tournaments. http://www.vancouverfoosball.com/rss.php It's for the last 5 singles tournaments. I don't know if there's much interest in it but it's there if anyone wants it. If people actually want a doubles feed as well I can do that very easily in a minute or less, just let me know. Onur |
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that seems to work pretty good. i've added a results section on the vancouverfoos.ning site: http://vancouverfoos.ning.com/ but yea, do it for doubles too. and people can get an idea of the power of RSS feeds and why they are a good thing. |
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Done. Singles: http://www.vancouverfoosball.com/rss.php Doubles: http://www.vancouverfoosball.com/rssd.php |
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k updated the vancouver ning site - hmm. if this is to really work, its best to have a single list on the main site, i'll have to look into seeing if there is a way to merge rss feeds. i'm sure there is.. |
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Well I could make it a combined list if needed, that's not an issue. It's a simple change. Really this is all going to go out the window soon anyways when I get time to re-do the site but I was just fiddling around with it in the mean time. |
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