phpBB RSS Mods
As I was importing my old content into the new site design, I found this article under the "software" section. It didn't seem right there, as it's not a software product. It's a comparison chart of phpBB RSS mods. So I decided to give it a second life as a blog entry. But before we get into it, a disclaimer. This article is getting "published" on March 7, 2007, but I actually wrote it in 2006. So it's possible that some things have changed. If so, I'll rely on your comments to set things straight.
Onward. Basically, all these RSS mods enable you to turn forum posts into feeds for syndication. I wanted to do that (syndicate some content), but I wasn't sure which mod was best. So I created this chart. I settled on RSS Feed 2.2.4, but then I released some mods of my own to make it stronger. You can find my RSS Feed mods on my phpBB mini mods page. In particular, you'll want to try "Trim RSS Mod Posts" if you want your feed to contain snippets instead of the whole post. And you'll want to try "Autodiscovery Plus" to enhance the XML features.
If you don't think RSS Feed is for you, check out the other two. They also have some strengths. Here is the chart.
| RSS Content Syndicator 2.0.2 | RSS Syndication mod 1.0.4 | RSS Feed 2.2.4 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| RSS 0.92 | Yes | No | No |
| RSS 2.0 | No | Yes | Yes |
| Atom 0.3 | No | No | Yes |
| Autodiscovery | No | Yes | Yes |
| ACP | No | Yes | No |
| Latest posts, all public forums | Yes | No | Yes |
| Latest topics, all public forums | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Latest posts, specific forum | Yes | No | Yes |
| Latest topics, specific forum | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Latest posts, specific topic | No | Yes | Yes |
| Blocks private forums? | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Authenticated feeds? | No | No | Yes |
| Full text of post? | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Full URLs? | Yes | No | Yes |
| EasyMod? | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| XML Button? | No | Yes | No |
"Full URLs" is important, because without it, smilies and other links may be broken in some readers. "Authenticated feeds" allows a forum member to enter his/her password to view a feed that would otherwise be blocked. "ACP" shows if there are some options you can set via the phpBB Admin Control Panel. "XML Button" shows whether the mod will change your pages to visually display a link to the RSS feeds. Note that while RSS Feed 2.2.4 doesn't come with an XML button, you can use my "Autodiscovery Plus" mini mod to get one.
Lastly, you may wonder why I've created "Autodiscovery Plus" mini mod, since RSS Feed 2.2.4 has an autodiscovery feature already. But the built-in feature is actually a bundled, bare-bones add-on. For example, on a topic page, it won't show the feed for the topic (even though it can do it). Instead, it just shows the main, all-forums feed. Thus I released my mini mod to bring it up to a useful standard.
Links: RSS Content Syndicator 2.0.2, RSS Syndication Mod 1.0.4, RSS Feed 2.2.4.