Moderate Christian Blogroll

I have revived and completed some software I originally started when I created the Moderate Christian Blogroll, and thus have new and improved options for displaying the blogroll, including a site list via RSS that will display properly in WordPress.com sidebars.

You will have noticed (I hope), the posts about problems with the current feed. It has been leaving out a number of sites, including almost all blogspot blogs. The new feed seems to be including them properly, so it’s time to start using it.

I will leave the old RSS feed active for a couple of weeks so this information can percolate, but you should change to the new feed, as many sites are not included in the old feed. Here are your options:

Display all sites in random order:  http://www.moderatechristian.com/xml.php (The default is to display site names and do so in random order.)

Display sites with most recently updated first:  http://www.moderatechristian.com/xml.php?order=recent (order can also = alpha, but that is not particularly useful as there are more than 50 sites on the blogroll.)

Limit the number of posts (maximum and default are both 50):  http://www.moderatechristian.com/xml.php?order=recent&max=10

List posts rather than sites:  http://www.moderatechristian.com/xml.php?type=posts.

Note that you can limit the number of posts in the same way.  If you are going to display it on your sidebar, most widgets are going to limit the number, and you’ll probably want to do so anyhow.

All options that worked through ncs.hneufeld.com should no longer be used.

You can still use the blogrolling:

Javascript: <script language=”javascript” type=”text/javascript” src=”http://rpc.blogrolling.com/display.php?r=0705fa51be540e1725e02706416a59df”></script>

RSS:  http://rpc.blogrolling.com/rss.php?r=0705fa51be540e1725e02706416a59df

Remember that the requirements for inclusion in the blogroll are that you include at least 5 blogroll members on your blogroll, or use one of the methods above to display that many.  The links should be no more than one click from your homepage, thus it is acceptable to simply link to http://www.moderatechristian.com which displays the aggregator.  It is more helpful to your fellow bloggers, however, to include a few more links than that.

If you don’t want to be included in the aggregator, which displays extracts, please e-mail me at pubs@energion.com.  I will be glad to exclude your site from the aggregator while leaving it in the blogroll.  You can also choose to be in the aggregator only.

Also, please report any errors to me.  This software is in testing, and is only implemented here.  I’m going to use it one other place which will also help, but I need error reports if I’m going to work out the remaining kinks.

Thanks!

Just so nobody thinks I died or decided this wasn’t important, some calls have kept me from completing the work, and I also found that there was some cleaning up to do on the blogroll. I will have that done soon, and will then add all the new members.

I believe the new RSS feed options will be more useful than the ones they’re replacing as well.

I have also found some more “4 Posts” ideas as I worked, so hopefully I will post one or two of those tomorrow, including 4 Posts Involving Photography and 4 Posts on N. T. Wright.

Due to an emergency call from a client that took several hours out of my day, I did not complete the new RSS feed fix, but I did find out what needed to be done and how it could be done. With any luck I will manage to complete it by the end of the day.

I will post again on this blog when all is finished, and the new feeds are available, along with instructions as to how to use them.

For those who many have missed earlier posts, the problem is that all blogspot feeds, and some feedburner feeds are being incorrectly parsed by the software I was using. I found that the aggregator software I wrote for moderatechristian.com is still picking them up correctly, and I will be providing a set of RSS feed options from there.

The combined RSS feed is not correctly including blogs on Blogger or Blogspot. If your blog is missing from the most recent posts, that is the most likely reason. If you’re not on one of those services and you aren’t showing up, let me know. The best way to check is to look at the aggregator, which lists the last 50 posts. If you have a recent post and it’s not in there, let me know.

I expect to have something working yet today. Unfortunately the wordpress plugin I’ve been using to aggregate has not been updated for some time, so I can’t really check that way. I’ll probably either find another aggregator, or finish up the one I was already writing, but abandoned since there was such an easy option to use a wordpress plugin.