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 :()
Introduction
Feed Informer lets you specify a format / template that your digest will use to adjust its appearance. Templates use standard HTML, along with “tags” to insert things like feed item titles, descriptions, URLs, and so on. This page explains the format used so you can make and customize your own templates.
Types of Template
Header Template (optional) - The header template is a once-off template which is placed at the top of your digest. This will usually be a combination of HTML and plain text (e.g.: “<p><b>My Digest</b></p>”)
Footer Template (optional) - The footer template is a once-off template which is placed at the end of your digest. This will usually be a combination of HTML and plain text (e.g.: “<p>Courtesy of FeedDigest.com.</p>”)
Item Template - The “item template” is used for each and every item in your digest. It is the most important template, and the one which will have the biggest effect over how your digest looks and feels. This the type of template the rest of the page will cover and explain.
Example Item Template
1. Link and description only.
<a href="%URL%"target="_blank">%TITLE%</a><br />%DESCRIPTIONPLAIN%<br /><br />This template would make a list of items which have a link to the item and the full description/summary of the item on the next line. Each item has two blank lines between it and the next one (courtesy of the <br /> tags).
2. Numeric date and link only.
%MONTH2%/%DAY2% - <a href="%URL%"target="_blank">%TITLE%</a><br />This template makes a list of items, one to a line, which each have a date in MM/DD format, followed by a link to the item using the item’s title.
keep adding more…
- TemplateTags - learn which tags you can use in your templates
General Tags
%TITLE% - The title of the item
%URL% - The URL of the item
%DESCRIPTION% - The raw description / summary of the item
%DESCRIPTIONPLAIN% - The description / summary of the item with HTML removed.
%DESCRIPTIONPLAINWITHBR% - The same as %DESCRIPTIONPLAIN% but with line feeds respected.
%DESCRIPTIONUNESCAPED% - For tricky descriptions that come out double-encoded with the other choices.
Note that a comma followed by a number in any tag trims it to that length.. so %DESCRIPTIONPLAIN,100% means a plain description of up to 100 characters in length. %DESCRIPTIONPLAIN,100NODOTS% removes the trailing dots used.
Date Tags
%YEAR% - The year (e.g. 2005)
%YEAR2% - The year in two digit form (e.g. 05)
%MONTH% - The month in numeric form (e.g. 9)
%MONTH2% - The month in two digit form (e.g. 09)
%MONTHLONG% - The item’s month’s full name (e.g. January)
%MONTHSHORT% - The item’s month’s short name (e.g. Jan)
%DAY% - The day of the month in numeric form (e.g. 4)
%DAY2% - The day of the month in two digit numeric form (e.g. 04)
%DAYLONG% - The item’s weekday’s full name (e.g. Monday)
%DAYSHORT% - The item’s weekday’s short name (e.g. Mon)
Time Tags
%TIME12% - The item’s time in 12 hour format (e.g. 2:08 PM)
%TIME24% - The item’s time in 24 hour format (e.g. 14:08)
%HOUR% - The item’s hour (e.g. 2)
%HOUR2% - The item’s hour in two digit form (e.g. 02)
%MINUTE% - The item’s minute (e.g.
%MINUTE2% - The item’s minute in two digit form (e.g. 08)
%SECOND% - The item’s second (e.g. 7)
%SECOND2% - The item’s second in two digit form (e.g. 07)
%TIMEAGO,FULL% - The item’s date in relative terms in full precision.. (e.g. “5 years, 2 days, 12 hours, 7 minutes, and 3 seconds ago�?)
%TIMEAGO% - The item’s date in relative terms in middling precision (e.g. “5 years, 2 days ago�?)
%TIMEAGO,SHORT% - The item’s date in relative terms of least precision (e.g. “5 years ago�? or “2 days ago�? or “2 minutes ago�?)
Feed Tags
%SOURCENAME% - The item’s feed’s name / title (e.g. “My Blog”)
%SOURCEURL% - The item’s feed’s regular URL (e.g. http://www.someblog.com/)
%SOURCEFEEDURL% - The URL of the item’s source feed itself.
%SOURCEDESCRIPTION% - The item’s feed’s description (e.g. “A blog about nothing.”)
%SOURCEID% - A unique ID number of the source. Ideal for putting into CSS class names for per-feed styling, etc.
Tag Modifiers
%TAG,10% - When you use a tag and follow it with a comma and a number, the tag’s output is truncated to that number of characters. For example, %DESCRIPTIONPLAIN,100% will show the first 100 characters of the description / summary of an item. This can be useful if you want to ensure certain elements in the digest don’t go over a certain length, such as titles and descriptions, both of which can be long.
<lowercase> .. </lowercase> - Anything between these two tags is changed to be all in lower case.
<uppercase> .. </uppercase> - Anything between these two tags is converted to upper case.
<capitalize> .. </capitalize> - Anything between these two tags is capitalized / titleized.. It Means It Would Look Like This Text Here.
<ifdescription> .. </ifdescription> - Anything between these two tags is ONLY included IF the current item has a description. Use this to clean up digests which have combinations of items with no descriptions and longer descriptions.
<gsub from=”text1″ to=”text2″> .. </gsub> - Performs a substitution from ‘text1′ to ‘text2′ within the block.
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!
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
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!
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!
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.
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.
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!
Refresh.