Fellow videogblogger HeathParks, a.k.a The Batman Geek, tells us a story from his childhood, while at dinner with New Media’s movers and shakers in Hollywood.

Click image to play Video, or choose a format via links below.

Formats available: Flash Video (.flv) Quicktime/iPod (.mp4)

More »

16 Apr 2008

by Dave

13 Comments »

Blog, Geekery

Publisher Friendly Feed URLs

Bloggers, podcasters, and videobloggers often live and die by their syndication feeds. Syndication feeds such as RSS feeds are just URLs where the recently posted entries/episodes are listed. “Subscribers” enter these URLs into applications like Google Reader, Bloglines, or iTunes in order to get all the latest and greatest content out there without having to actually browse to scores of websites and download each manually.

So, its a good idea for publishers to make sure their Syndication Feed URL is easy to find on their website.

Sometimes a publisher gets lucky enough to have more than himself and his best friend as a subscriber, and watches with glee as he gets more and more and more subscribers over time.

But what happens if the publisher wants to start using a different blogging software, or changes some 3rd party services, or perhaps even just starts using a different set of core-plug-ins and in doing so ends up changing his syndication feed URLs? Does he lose all of those original subscribers? Do all of his original subscribers have to unsubscribe from the old URL and then resubscribe to the new one?

Thankfully, no. With a little planning the publisher can make sure he never has to lose or inconvenience a subscriber just because his source syndication feed URL has changed.

I was recently asked how a publisher might move subscribers from one subscription feed to another without actually asking them to unsubscribe from one URL and then resubscribe at another. The following are my tips on how to set up “publisher friendly” feed URLs. By “publisher friendly” I mean the publisher is now free to do whatever he wants with his blogging software or source feed …. secure in the knowledge he wont lose or inconvenience his subscribers.

This post is a bit long and may be a bit scary, but don’t worry … there are only six steps. I’ve tried to include alot of explanation behind the steps so that you can really understand what is happening, but don’t let the added words here scare you away …. it’s pretty simple.

Goals:

Give your subscribers a feed URL that never changes – no matter what you do on the back-end of your site.
Move any existing subscribers over to this “permanent” URL, transparently – no inconvenience to your subscribers.

To accomplish the first goal you have two choices.

Use a service like feedburner and just publish the feedburner URL.
Create a URL at your own domain such as http://mydomain.com/feed

Option 1 is easier because it doesn’t require that you have the ability to edit your .htaccess file, but it does require you always use feedburner. (i.e. you can’t later switch services without having to readdress this issue again) …. So if you have the ability to edit your .htaccess file, option 2 is ideal. Lets assume you want to use option 2.

Prep work:

Step 1) Find your BLOG-GENERATED FEED URL.

Step 2) Decide if you want to use feedburner (or similar service), and if so use the BLOG-GENERATED FEED URL when creating the FEEDBURNER URL.

NOTE: From now on, when I mention “SOURCE FEED” I mean either a) the FEEDBURNER URL (if you are using feedburner or a similar service) or b) your BLOG-GENERATED FEED URL (if you aren’t using Feedburner or a similar service).

So with that in mind, lets assume for the sake of these instructions that your SOURCE FEED is http://feeds.feedburner.com/MYSOURCEFEED (Be sure to replace this URL with your actual SOURCE FEED URL in any of the instructions below)

Step 3) Now lets pick the FEED URL that you will actually publish to your visitors/subscribers. Pick a URL at your own domain that doesn’t already exist. This is the URL you will publish as your FEED URL, and its only purpose is to redirect (behind the scenes) subscribers to the SOURCE FEED where all the data actually is. Lets assume the FEED URL you chose is http://www.mydomain.com/feed. (It’s the /feed portion that we want our server to redirect to the SOURCE FEED, and we’ll use that portion in our examples/code below.)

(Has Step 3 confused you? Check out this clarification of Step 3)

Goal #1: Give your subscribers a feed URL that never changes.

Step 4) Now all you have to do in order to accomplish Goal #1 is redirect your FEED URL to your SOURCE FEED. The advantage to doing this is that if the location of your SOURCE FEED ever changes, you can just update the redirect, and your subscribers are none-the-wiser. To accomplish the redirect, you’ll need to edit the .htaccess file for your website. (If you’re having problems finding the .htaccess file, try a different FTP / File manager program – the .htaccess may be ‘invisible’ in the listing your application provides)

Add the following lines to your .htaccess file (above any other redirect rules or <IfModule> blocks that are already in the file):

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^feed/?$ http://feeds.feedburner.com/MYSOURCEFEED [QSA,L] </IfModule>

Goal #1 is now accomplished!

That was easy wasn’t it!? You can now send any new subscribers to your newly created FEED URL (http://www.mydomain.com/feed) and they will actually be subscribing to your SOURCE FEED (http://feeds.feedburner.com/MYSOURCEFEED). As described before, you can alter the redirect at anytime in the future should your SOURCE FEED URL change … and your subscribers will automatically move with you. Nice.

Goal #2: Moving existing subscribers from an old feed URL to the new one you just set up.

Step 5) First things first, determine what your OLD FEED URL is. Lets suppose it was something like http://mydomain.com/archives/feed.xml. Notice it’s the “archives/feed.xml” part of the OLD FEED URL that defines the file we want to redirect … so lets call this last part the OLD FEED PATH. We’ll only need to reference the OLD FEED PATH (archives/feed.xml) in the .htaccess rule we’re about to write.

Step 6) Now, lets provide a redirect for your OLD FEED to your new FEED URL. We do this just like we did with the last redirect we wrote – by modifying the .htaccess file.

We’re going to use a slightly modified rewrite rule this time however because we want this redirect to report a “permanent” redirect so that smart feed readers will automatically move over to the new url from now on (don’t worry the dumb feed readers will just keep asking for the old one and just keep getting redirected to the new one each time).

To accomplish this redirect, add the following line to the code you just added to the .htaccess file – just above the </IfModule> line.

RewriteRule ^archives/feed.xml$ /feed [R=301,L]

Done and Done! Goals 1 and 2 have now been accomplished.

The overall changes to your .htaccess file should look like this:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^feed/?$ http://feeds.feedburner.com/MYSOURCEFEED [QSA,L] RewriteRule ^archives/feed.xml$ /feed [R=301,L] </IfModule>

And you’ll want to put these lines above any other rewrite rules or <IfModule> blocks you already have in the .htaccess file.

So what have we accomplished?

Your old/existing subscribers will be seamlessly redirected to your new FEED URL (http://mydomain.com/feed) the next time they request the OLD FEED URL (http://mydomain.com/archives/feed.xml)
New subscribers will start off requesting your new FEED URL (http://mydomain.com/feed)
So, now ALL of them are asking for your new FEED URL (http://mydomain.com/feed) … which is redirected to your SOURCE FEED

Now, you can change just about anything you like. You can change the source of feedburner, or even drop feedburner all together in the future and your subscribers never have to change their FEED URL. You just simply alter the redirection in your .htaccess file to what you want – and your users wont know the difference.

As an added bonus, you’ve just cheaply and easily ‘branded’ your feed URL with your domain name (instead of feedburners).

Extra Credit:
For extra credit you may want to update your blogs theme or styles to publish your new FEED URL both in the content of your pages as well as in the auto-discovery links in the page headers.

More »

11 Apr 2008

by Dave

7 Comments »

Blog, Family

A lil' panic in the morning

It’s about 6:50am, and already this Friday has been interesting.

I’m sitting at my brother’s PC in his office in his house … which is a great accomplishment given the course this morning was on only about an hour ago. I suppose I should start at the beginning … last night …

I came over last night as planned so that I could spend the night and babysit my nephew Ethan in the morning. Doug had to catch an early morning flight and Jana wouldn’t be home from work until about 8am. So my job was simple: babysit Ethan in the morning.

I went to bed just after midnight or so – an improvement from the 2am that was the norm for this week – so that I wouldn’t be too out of it should Ethan get up really early. Unfortunately I woke up at 1:30am-ish with a KILLER headache. It was really bad, I thought sure it was the start of a migraine (which I haven’t had to endure in quite some time actually) but some pain killers and about and hour or so of misery seemed to do away with it mostly. I got back to sleep sometime just after 3am.

At 5:15 or so Doug came in and woke me up. He needed to be out the door to the airport but my car was blocking him. Half asleep I get my keys and go out to move my car, and Doug waves as he passes me on his way to the airport.

I – still half asleep – get out of my car and turn back to the house … and realize that Doug had closed the garage door as he left. This was a nightmare I had lived before . I had no keys to the house and the only unlocked door was behind the garage door he just closed (and I had no opener for). This was even worse than the last time however, because this time there was my nephew in the house all alone. I reached for my phone, but of course didn’t have it … I didn’t even have shoes. I was out in the dark of night – the world asleep; and I had no way into the house, I had no phone, and my nephew was all alone in there. Doug couldn’t be more than a few blocks away, but without a cell phone I couldn’t call him to get him to turn around.

In reality Ethan wasn’t in any immediate danger or anything – he was sound asleep in his bed a matter of meters away – but I couldn’t get to him and I was the one now in charge of him. If anything had happened to him or the house I would have been helpless – unable to get to him. I absolutely freaked out. Maybe too much so … but I have to think it was understandable.

I ran around the house through the muddy grass and over the rough wet pavement looking for something – anything – I could use to break down a door or through the glass patio door.

This time, all of this wasn’t as comical as the last time I got locked out of the house … I was really freaking out about not being able to get to Ethan.

I broke something – I’m not even sure what it was – pounding it against the patio door trying to break the glass. Whatever it was – despite seeming to be a large, heavy, and solid thing in the dark – shattered into a million pieces on the third or fourth hit cutting up my hand – but leaving the patio door intact.

I grabbed a plastic and metal grill scraper from the grill and started pounding the business end of it into the glass over and over again – no use (Damn those patio doors are tough – who knew).

I ran around to the front of the house again – seriously freaking out. I had no key, couldn’t manage to break the patio door glass, and I didn’t even have a phone … what was I going to do?! I had my car but I couldn’t actually drive away from the house and leave Ethan, I just couldn’t do it. Besides I have no landline phone at my place so its not like I could have gone home to call Doug even if I was willing to drive away from the house (and I wasn’t).

I ran across the street to wake up one of Doug’s neighbors to use their phone. If there was another option at this point I didn’t see it. I chose the family right across the street as I know they have several children and thought they might be the most sympathetic to a panicked and largely inexperienced guardian suddenly unable to get to the child.

I rang the doorbell and their dogs went crazy. Eventually the owner came to the door, and I surely had a look of desperation or panic upon me. I wonder if he noticed the small amount of blood on my sleeping attire. I tried to calmly explain that I was locked out – and failed. He interrupted to try and make sense of what I was saying “So you need to get back in?”.

“Yes his baby is in there and I’m watching him!”

“Ok ok let me get you a phone” he said. He got me a cordless phone and I called Doug’s number. No answer. I called again. No answer. I finally realized I’d been calling his house number rather than his cell phone number … but I couldn’t remember his cell phone number (I usually just hit his name in my contacts list on my cell phone and hit “home” or “cell” – and I couldn’t for the life of me remember his actual cell number). I don’t know Jana’s cell phone number by heart, and so I had to call (and wake up) my Dad in order to get Doug’s cell phone number (geeze).

A few calls later, I ‘d reached Doug and – trying not sound as guilty and panicked as I felt – told him “You closed the garage door I cant get back in and Ethan’s in there.” Doug of course remembers the last time I got locked out of his house, and knew I wasn’t going to be able to get in unless he or Jana (or someone with a key/garage door opener) came to let me in.

Doug (now nearly at the airport) said I should call Ted (my older brother who would be much closer to me than Doug or Jana) as he should have a spare key – but I reminded him I didn’t have my phone or my address book, and I was standing on his neighbors porch using his portable. “OK” he said, he’d call Ted and I was to call him back in 5 minutes. Knowing that I would forget his cell phone number again, (and not wanting to keep the kind neighbor up while I nervously bled on his cold wet porch), I again reminded him I was at his neighbors house.

So Doug finally let me off the hook and said he or Ted would be back at his house shortly and I just had to wait for whoever it was.

I handed the phone to the neighbor, thanked him, and sat in my car waiting. I still wasn’t what you’d call calm … I wasn’t sure how long it was going to be, really.

Thankfully, only a few minutes later, Ted showed up with a spare key and all was well.

There are shards of something broken on the deck, and I have a few band-aids on … but I’m inside and as I type this (now just past 7am) I hear Ethan is starting to wake up.

When Doug gets home I’m going to force him to program his garage door opener into my car’s garage door button, and take him to a hardware store to get a copy of his keys.

I’m gonna have to send that neighbor a thank you card.

More »

2 Apr 2008

by Dave

4 Comments »

Blog, Geekery, Video Blog