FeedBlendr.com

I am in the process of moving over to a new set of internal code for FeedBlendr to help with future enhancements, so you might see some funkiness over the next few days (although hopefully not!). The new version introduces a few enhancements, including some slight changes to existing features:

• Internal APIs use Atom-based formats where possible now (OPML stuff is still there where it makes sense tho).
• Added a custom namespace (fv, for FeedVille) to the OPML output, and also some other outputs to provide additional information to users/developers.
• Added some new output format options (look for them on blend information pages soon).
• Added some customization options for output formats for restricting the number of entries displayed and limiting output to headlines only.
• LOTS of internal changes, but those shouldn’t affect you 🙂

Hopefully all servers will be switched over to the new code-base by the end of today, and some new documentation etc will be available to detail these changes.

UPDATE 2007-08-21: This code has been fully deployed on all servers as of 2007-08-17 and appears to be working successfully 🙂

I’m currently working on some significant core upgrades to FeedBlendr that will also allow the service to start scaling towards some of the other tools that I’m going to be rolling out. These changes affect pretty much everything internally, and will allow me to add a few new features, and to build out the other tools faster>

• New, standardized Caching framework (that will hopefully not cause more problems!)
• Improved database connection handling (this will allow me to more easily use slave DBs etc when required)
• Standardized and centralized “auto-discovery” class for locating feeds
• Improved and generalized HTTP class, customized to handle everything I need and nothing I don’t
• Totally separate “format conversion” layer for doing output in Serialized PHP, JS, JSON etc – some cool things can happen here!

I’m really excited about these changes (and some others that I’m still working on). This is the next step in ramping up towards the rest of the Feedville family. Keep an eye on this blog for more info!

Oh — and in response to my previous post about moving to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud and Simple Storage Service, I got a few questions about my experiences etc, so I’ll be writing up another quick post summarizing it all soon.

I’ve just finished uploading and testing a new round of updates for FeedBlendr, please let me know if you spot anything funky!

• Added a “What Are Feeds?” page (link) to the homepage.
• Improved RSS output (stripped some unnecessary attributes, output <category> tags properly, and a couple others).
• Changed all the URLs that you use to request blends and subscribe pages etc. I’ve added redirects to handle all the old formats and redirect them to the new formats, but please take note of the new formats as outlined on a blend’s detail page. This change makes all the request URLs much more RESTful.
• Added the “Source” in the output for mobile reading.
• Got rid of the separate subscription buttons and added a single, “AddThis” button which links to all sorts of readers, both online and actual clients.
• Added caching to JavaScript and JSON output, so hopefully they’ll work a little faster. You may see slightly longer delays with updates of content, but actual page-loads should be a bit quicker for you now.
• Added the option to get headlines-only from JavaScript and JSON outputs. Read about it in the Developers section

You can email me using this address if you notice anything strange, or would like to suggest a new feature.

After many months of development (the complete engine was re-written from the ground up!), I’m very happy to announce that FeedBlendr 2.0 is now officially launched and available for use. I’ve mentioned in previous posts all the new features in this version, so I won’t repeat myself, but needless to say it’s a major upgrade.

I’ll be fine-tuning and tweaking over the coming weeks, but hopefully this will be a stable revision to the system and will open up some new options for people who couldn’t use FeedBlendr for something in particular in the past.

One glaring omission in this new version is user accounts, which a lot of you asked for. Rest assured that this feature is coming, but it’s part of a bigger picture, so has been left out intentionally for now to allow me to integrate future features into it better.

Please check it out and let me know how the new version goes!

PS: If you’re into that sort of thing, be sure to check out the new Developers page with information on more powerful ways of interacting with FeedBlendr

A new beta version of FeedBlendr is now online at http://beta.feedblendr.com so please check it out. This version adds/updates:

• Improved date-sorting
• OPML output (and improved OPML handling on import/blend creation)
• In-linking (allows you to pre-fill the Blendr homepage with details via a link)
• The integrated feed-reader now supports embedded media players for videos and audio!
• JSON output
• Improved handling of source feed errors
• Some good info on the Developers Page
• Lots of smaller bug fixes

Please try it out and again – let me know how it goes!