FOSS4G'13

The working site for the conference committee of FOSS4G 2013

Blog aggregator

Posted by Jo Cook on September 7, 2012

Dear All,

Steven mentioned yesterday wanting to have a sort of news feed of blog posts relating to the organisation of foss4g, separate from our news announcements section on the website. I immediately thought of a "Planet FOSS4G", like you have "Planet Geospatial", "Planet PostGIS" etc. Planet PostGIS is nicest because it seems to aggregate only posts with the appropriate tag rather than everything from a particular blog.

I thought I might have a tinker around with the software that Planet PostGIS runs on (http://www.intertwingly.net/code/venus/) and see if I can get it set up, unless anyone else has experience of this sort of thing and knows a better option?

We will then also need a list of blogs that we want to aggregate.

Thoughts? Or is this the wrong approach and we should do something different entirely?

Jo

Comments

Antony Scott on September 7, 2012:

I think this is good - it means that people will be able to go to our site for an update on all things FOSS4G, assuming we select the right blogs. As long as there isn't too much extraneous noise, this can only add to the value of the site.

Jo Cook on September 7, 2012:

One vital thing that I forgot to add is that we should be able to aggregate only those posts tagged with (say) foss4g2013. I think that's how Planet Postgis is configured- in that I know I only see my own posts appear on that feed if they mention postgis :-)

I'll start looking into it at the weekend (time permitting)- unless someone else speaks up as an aggregator ninja, or has a better idea...

Jo

Rollo Home on September 7, 2012:

This sounds a very good idea. I do like the 'blog' feel of the  http://foss4g4uk.posterous.com/ site - it's engaging with the audience and helps create a 'community' fuzzy warmth....something perhaps missing from the current Wordpress site?
Also, it means that we can all blog as per normal, and it counts towards the website content....double bonus :-)

Steven Feldman on September 7, 2012:

Here is one to add in when you can http://www.geoconnexion.com/publications/geo-uk/issue/september-october-2012-uk-issue/page/open-eye

Jo Cook on September 7, 2012:

The way it will work is that we will need a list of blog URLs (sites, not individual posts) and then authors will need to tag posts that they want to be aggregated with a tag like foss4g2013. It will then pick those up automatically but I don't think we can add things retrospectively. What we can do right now though is a news flash that points at that article. I'll try and sort that this evening

Jo

Steven Feldman on September 7, 2012:

Cheers
_____________________
Steven

Jo Cook on September 7, 2012:

done news posts about team meeting (with photo) and Mike's article- that's enough for today :-)

Jo