psa: the Nothing Doing website is up, complete with notes, alt text and transcripts for each strip, and a mostly functional RSS feed! check it out! https://horseonvhs.com/nothingdoing/
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in reply to @nothingdoingcomic's post:
Not sure if this helps, but I tried adding the RSS feed to my FreshRSS server and the RSS Feed isn't working. The validation it offers gives back this: https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhorseonvhs.com%2Fnothingdoing%2Frss.txt
not sure if I should be trying something else?
thanks for letting me know. it seems like it’s working on some readers but not on others - i’m gonna take a look at it when i get home and see if i can sort it out, but i’m pretty unfamiliar with this stuff so it might take a bit. i’ll be sure to hoot about it once it’s up and running
Not a problem, I totally get it! I'm also unfamiliar with how they work so unfortunately I don't have any suggestions. I've never seen one as a .txt document though so it might be possible it just doesn't work with FreshRss. Not sure. Love the comics though!
The file extension doesn't really matter (it's all just bits anyway), although the server's Content-Type header can in some situations. Most feed readers just ignore all that anyway and .txt should be Fine™.
That said, naming it rss.xml would be better (and Neocities does allow that).
The easiest fix for the big validation issue there is to double the <link> tag as a <guid> tag. Some feed readers don't require that but super-strict ones do.
The format of your <pubDate> tags is also non-conformant and to be fair the specified format is annoying bullshit. The main thing is it needs to be "Thu" not "Thurs." There are plenty of libraries that can emit the correct format, though.
The RSS feed is working for me on Feed On Feeds, but there needs to be a discovery tag in the <head> section rather than just a visible link in the footer:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS"
href="https://horseonvhs.com/nothingdoing/rss.txt">
is that something that needs to be on every page or just the index?
That gets into a philosophical rabbit-hole and the short answer is "it doesn't really matter." I'd err on the side of putting it on every page but don't worry about it if that'd be annoying to do.
ok, i've added that to the head of each page, changed the txt file to an xml file, and fixed the pubdate; could you write out what you mean by double the link tag as a guid tag? it's showing as valid now, but the reader i'm using to test it still isn't picking it up
the fact that i had to edit that comment three times to get the words link and guid to appear shows you about where i'm at with this lmao
What I mean is turn e.g.
to
<link>https://horseonvhs.com/nothingdoing/?pg=20#showComic</link>
<guid>https://horseonvhs.com/nothingdoing/?pg=20#showComic</guid>
It's stupid and weird and shouldn't be necessary but some RSS readers care deeply about that.
EDIT omg why cohost are you constantly eating this
ok, i think i've got everything set up right now. still having an issue with one reader but i'll keep working on it. thanks for the help, i really appreciate it!
Sure, it's kind of amazing RSS ever was as popular as it was considering how bad a format it is. Atom's a better format but it's also a lot more strict and fiddly about a bunch of stuff too.
I'm happy they're both still around - I really enjoy using the RSS readers as a supplement for social media and for keeping up with news. It's nice being able to fall back on an older technology that's still kicking as more sites become a pain to use.
I mean, Atom's only slightly newer than RSS. Both are ancient now. And usually when someone refers to "RSS" they actually mean "RSS/Atom" anyway.
Every now and then people try to reinvent the idea with more "modern" formats (mf2, json-feed, etc.) but none of them ever really catch on. So you really need to support Atom and/or RSS anyway.
(mf2 is pretty nice, that said, and my site supports it as well as Atom. I have no idea if anyone uses the mf2 feed though. But adding mf2 also adds a few other nice things for IndieWeb integration and it's basically free to implement if you have any control over your HTML templates.)
big big big fan of the new website and of the comic still hell yeah i'll carefully stash that inspiration to make my own (website) in a corner of my head for when i have time for it
I just discovered your comic and I've fallen in love with everything about it, can't wait for more!