By ekendra on

Hello drupalites.

I'm new to drupal but I am very impressed thus far. I've hacked around in Mambo and found it mostly frustrating and difficult for me to get non-IT folks to use it. This drupal seems the go. I'm already making themes to convert a few of my community driven sites over.

One issue that comes up is with this 'read more' link and how it is obscured with a lot of other options at the bottom of the 'node'. I searched around and found a thread (http://drupal.org/node/22408) where they have managed to successfully display the 'read more' at the end of the teaser. Now it looks a lot more functional on the actual site but it doesn't show up in the rss feed.

I want it so when people get postings in their newsreaders or when other sites aggregate our content the 'read more' link appears there with the teaser. Even with the hack above it doesn't - it seems a pretty straightforward thing but I've hacked around to no avail and am hoping a senior drupalite can point the way so that my syndicated content doesn't show up as incomplete posts. It is very important for a syndicated post to look as if there is more to read otherwise they will just think the post ends with however the teaser cuts it off as their is no indication to continue on to the originating site with the 'read more' link there.

How to get around this??

cheers,
Ekendra das (gopinatha.net)

Comments

ekendra’s picture

ekendra commented

surely i'm not the first person to notice this anomoly :S

should i submit this as a feature request then???

ekendra’s picture

ekendra commented

go - run - gaa - !!!!!!!

dman’s picture

dman commented

Generally speaking, it's the job of the rendering engine to provide a link to the full story. Using FeedReader, et al, the "read more" button/link is displayed by the software.
Using website syndication, the link is provided by the host website.
It is up to the formatter to decide whether to link the title, the whole story, or a link at the bottom (named "more..." "continue" or "visit this site for the rest of the story")

IF you put your own link in (yes it's possible, but unreliable to embed with RSS, not sure about Drupal syndication) You will break the integrity of your feed.

Your page will likely render

<b>My Story</b>
  Hey, I just found a real  :
  cool way to make my news  :
  feed look badly formatted :
  on lots of sites!         :
         [read more]        :
                  [...MORE] :

If you don't like the way a particular site is doing a bad job of linking back to you - That's their problem.

There may be some confusion about whether you are syndicating the whole story (which seems to be a trend) or just the teaser (which was the original intent. If they expect the full thing, and you are supplying a teaser - you have a conflict of protocols (which I can't help you clear up. RSS does not natively expect the full thing, and AFAIK there is no way to specify this option.

.dan.

.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards

ekendra’s picture

ekendra commented

ok - thanks for the reply - and from a fellow kiwi! Im honoured !!!

I've used 3 blog engines besides drupal --- WP, b2evo and geeklog -- and they've all added the 'read more' link to the actual teaser via some tag like [more] or similar.

It sound's very well informed (what you're saying) but it doesn't correlate to my experience with blogging/syndication thus far. I read my news through the Abilon newsreader (recommended) and it doesn't supply the 'read more' link either. Nor do any of the sites where my stuff gets syndicated and aggregated supply the link to continue to the original post.

Thanks for the effort to help though. anyone else????

btw - im in CHCH - where r u?

dman’s picture

dman commented

Sounds odd to me.
I repeat, although an RSS description can contain embedded links (not always even to the originating page) the "link" property of an RSS item is rendered by the displayer.

Have you tried looking at the feed itself and comparing it to other valid feeds?

Lets see... A fragment that Drupal syndication spits out:

<item>
  <title>Portfolio : Telecom Intranet</title> 
  <link>http://localhost:8888/drupal/?q=portfolio_telecom_intranet</link> 
  <description><p class="intro">The Telecom Intranet is one of the largest in the country ...
... a new, self-maintaining navigation system site-wide.</p></description> 
  <category domain="http://localhost:8888/drupal/?q=section/cv/portfolio">Portfolio</category> 
  <pubDate>Tue, 20 Sep 2005 17:39:04 +1200</pubDate> 
  </item>

And grabbing from my current RSS subscriptions...

 <item rdf:about="http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/22/193655/342">
  <title>Devastation</title>   <link>http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/22/193655/342</link> 
  <description>It looked just like a scene from Apocalypse Now. ...
...describing his house, which sits about three blocks
 from where the 17th street canal levee broke in New Orleans</description> 
  </item>

<item>
	<title>Shark Tank: Just Doing the Best We Can</title>
	<link>http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/management/helpdesk/story/0,10801,104921,00.html?source=x41</link>
	<description>Trouble ticket: "When my computer is turned on, 
the person sitting behind me gets shocked. 
My computer makes a buzzing noise then she yells." ...</description>
	<pubDate>Mon, 26 Sep 2005 09:00:00 EST</pubDate>		
</item>

... yep, all normal.

There are a few ... Lets see, RandomGoodStuff is one that includes an actual, encoded link or three in the body,
(Sorry, the code is too horrible to look at. View-source to see why what they have done is a bad thing)

but

  1. It's an ATOM feed, not RSS
  2. They are syndicating the entire story, not just a teaser
  3. The link is to the subject of the story, not to the story (no traffic driving at all)
  4. And yes, it renders just like my diagram on my feed reader.

    [Read the whole review here. ]...[read on]

So, lets have a look at the XML sources of any competing feeds that seem to work in a way that yours doesn't.

Not Syndication - just shout-outs

... Your example (your link was dead, BTW) is to a site that syndicates the entire 'story', all given in the feed "description" (all the articles seem complete in themselves) [point 2 above], and DOES provide a link back to where they came from both in the title and the footer. It just doesn't use the exact phrase "read more" but the clicks work.
You'll see that the stories that do have handmade links in them are not actually linking to where they came from! [point 3 above]

RSS is provided to link to content, to allow you to find content, to draw people back to the source.
These people are using it to publish, to push teasers without actually having any content to follow it up. The introduction is the story.

Look at "1969 September 26 : "Regarding your last question..."
That thing has 5 links, all somewhat similar but not the same. only two of them (the embedded ones) take you to any content, the rest take you on empty detours. How similar to that are you trying to get?

The solution

- a bad one - will have to be for you to take control of the teaser text and edit it to contain your frankenstein link before it goes out in RSS.

Find
modules/node.module Line 1155

    // Allow modules to add additional item fields
    $extra = node_invoke_nodeapi($item, 'rss item');
    $extra = array_merge($extra, array(array('key' => 'pubDate', 'value' =>  date('r', $item->created))));
    $items .= format_rss_item($item->title, $link, $item->teaser, $extra);
  }

And go

    $items .= format_rss_item($item->title, $link, $item->teaser . "<a href='$link'>More...</a>" , $extra);
  }

To replace the last line
Your line numbers may differ, My node.module is 2005/08/11

... This would be (is) a very very easy mod, but I'm against it in principle ;-)
RSS has enough standardization problems as it is.

... BTW, I'm Wellington based. Independant contractor.

.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards

ekendra’s picture

ekendra commented

:)