Random Bytes...by Ross Rader

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Wednesday, August 6

[08:26PM EDT] Brett asks, "What's the filesystem on Blogware?"

Strictly speaking, there is no file system. Blogware is an application run entirely from a database. Every word, picture and HTML file that makes it into your Blogware account is stored in a database until some one asks for it. And when they do, we retrieve, format it according to the templates that you've set and then sent it out via HTTP.

So what's the blog extension in the URL all about? Its an artifact of how we pull things out of the database. You'll notice that sometimes it is displayed, and sometimes its not - and even if it isn't, the system still assumes that its there.

In each case, the term "blog" will come before the applicable category and filename - ie http://yourblog.blogware.com/blog/mystuff/photos/birthday.html.

Make sense? C | T (53) | #

[10:13AM EDT] David Akin outlines why "RSS Best Practices" make sense from an end-user standpoint.

There's one thing that the blogdev's need to straighten out *now - the user experience sucks. Nothing is self-evident and nothing is predictable. We're not talking about valid style sheets or RSS that can sneak past a link-checker, we're talking about the user experience and getting past trying to convince users that "blog" means something that "trackbacks" are good for them and the "RSS" will change their lives. None of these terms means anything to those that aren't reading this post, nor should it.

This actually has very little to do with those that "control" the standards and technology and instead, falls into the lap of those that "control" the content. Publishers need to start demanding more. Publishers need to tell their vendors that they aren''t happy with the status quo. And most importantly, publishers need to stop blindly giving their readers what we give them. Strike the words XML, RSS, trackback, ping and feed from your public vocabularlies and focus on making sure that your readers can deal with your content in a meaningful manner.

Despite getting the specification confused with the implementation, David hits the nail right on the nose when he says "The RSS feed would be more valuable at my end if I, the end user, had more control over it." Let's see if we can't help make this happen for him. C | T (23) | #