Introducing RSS Feeds for Individual Categories
December 29, 2006
Last week on the Blog Business Summit blog, I gave Matt Ward some advice about the when to provide RSS feeds for categories. In a nutshell, I told him that category feeds were better on blogs that covered a wide range of eclectic topics.
And then I realized, “TeresaCentric covers a wide range of eclectic topics. It should have category-based RSS feeds!”
It took me a while to find the proper PHP string and even longer to figure out how to style it so that those pretty little orange RSS buttons pop up next to all the categories, but now that I’m done, I’m pretty darn pleased with myself.
So for all of you non-techie types out there going, “PHP? CSS? I’m lost…” here’s the deal:
Let’s say you think Andy and I are geniuses when it comes to politics. You don’t give a shit what we have to say about baseball, but you LOVE our political writing. You could subscribe to the feeds for only the categories that interest you and ignore all the rest. That way, you only get information in your RSS reader that you find really, really interesting.
I hope this is useful to those of you who view this site through an RSS reader.
UPDATE 1/3/07: Matt Ward suggested that I replace the orange RSS buttons with little plus signs because they’re a little less assaultive on the eyes. Thoughts?
i suppose it makes sense to have that arrangement. it seems so obvious that you kindof have to wonder why you haven’t thought of it yet. (i’m using “you” in general, not “you” teresa)
Yowza! That’s a lot of categories (and a lot of little orange buttons).
I think splitting categories is less applicable to personal blogs than to business blogs. I read your blog because I like to see what you and andy have to say. I hope people read my blog because they’re curious to see what my twisted brain will come up with next.
I *don’t* split my categories (not that WP doesn’t do it automatically, and anyone who knew the URL formula could sign up to the individual feeds whether or not I provide a link to them…) because I want people, at least for now, to get the whole me.
Selfish? Probably. My blog? You bet.