RSS syndication?

[rikiwarren]

Is there currently any RSS syndication for these forums (allowing people to access the forums using usenet-like readers--or, more importantly for mobile users like myself, letting us quickly download the new posts and read them offline.)

Any chance of it being added in the future?

I'm pretty sure there are existing mods for phpBB that provide RSS/RDF syndication.

-Rich-

[xiombarg]

I'd love to see this -- were it somehow possible -- because it would mean we could make the Forge's content accessible to, say, the hordes of LiveJournal users.

On the other hand, what would you syndicate? Unlike a blog, the Forge isn't exactly linear.

[Andy Kitkowski]

On the other hand, what would you syndicate? Unlike a blog, the Forge isn't exactly linear.

"ForgeNews"?  Or, if nothing else, news and PR material regarding indie games...

...but that's probably well out of the range of what Clinton and Ron want to (or even can) handle.

Wasn't there another Indie RPG site out there, one with more PR-style news and the like?  Damn, what was that link...

[rikiwarren]

I was specifically thinking about serializing the new messages from the forums.

I've seen this done on several other sites. And, as I said, I've seen prebuilt mods for phpBB that will do this.  However, I don't know how well they work.

-Rich-

[Andy Kitkowski]

I've seen this done on several other sites. And, as I said, I've seen prebuilt mods for phpBB that will do this.  However, I don't know how well they work.

Just curious: Could you show me some of those sites? I can't visualize well what you're describing...

Again, not like /I/ have a say or anything... I was just curious. :-)

[rikiwarren]

Well, I was googling for phpBB and rss to see if it was already built in (and I just needed to enter the proper url to access it), and I ran across the following.

There appear to be at least two modules that serialize phpBB:

RDF Content Syndicator:
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=75316

and CC RSS Forum Feed Mod:
http://www.codecrush.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=187

The following site seems to have a home-grown solution. But on further inspection, he seems to be using phpBB as a blog, rather than as a forum. On the other hand, besides the controls on who can start a thread, there really aren't many differences between a forum and a blog.

http://www.brockerhoff.net/bb/viewtopic.php

I also ran across someone who is trying to build an entirely rss message board system, but it still appeared to be in early development.

Again, these are sites that I encountered when checking to see if phpBB could do this already. I really haven't checked them out to see how the system works, nor have I tried to grab syndicated info from any sites using one of these mods.

I typically grab stuff from more traditional sites: BBC News, Slashdot, varius Mac news sites, various Linux news sites, etc.

-Rich-