Feedshow has an OPML builder
Feedshow has released an OPML Builder.
What you can do is list a whole heaps of RSS URL’s in the box and click submit, it will generate a once only OPML URL (Reading List).
It’s a bit like the OPML Generator, but better as it doesn’t just give you code or a file, it actually gives you a unique URL.
You could do this the long way with OPML Workstation, where you can always re-edit and do lots more stuff, but if it’s a quick fix, then OPML builder is the tool.
I’ll just mention here that OPML Builder will only allow you to make OPML Reading Lists, the URL’s have to be feeds, there is no option of setting the type value to “link”, etc…
Another limitation is that unlike OPML Workstation, there is no login, which means you can’t go back and add/delete an item from your OPML.
Another similar tool is Tony Hirst’s Social Bookmarking RSS Feeds - OPML Generator…see more.
Tony has also knocked upon one for news engines, see the Persistent News Search OPML Feedroll Generator.
More
Anyway, the real power of the Feedshow OPML Builder is that you can enter a given URL and it will strip all the links off the webpage and put them in the box…only thing is that since this builder is limited to RSS URL’s you have to pick out and delete the bad eggs.
Another way of doing it choosing a file extension filter, but this didn’t help for me, I whacked in my blog homepage and filtered for .rss, but I don’t have any links on my homepage with .rss…my feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/LibraryClips.
What I did was use the other filter technique, they also offer a custom filter box.
When I put in this custom filter…http://feeds* it just returned the URL’s that started with these characters, and it worked, I got my post and comments feeds as the only entries.
Again Tony Hirst steps up to the plate, another tool of his is pageLinks2OPML, but this is different as it uses a bookmarklet…this bookmarklet will scrape all the URL’s on a given page and create an OPML URL, just like that.
The bad part about this is that you can’t do any cleaning up like you can when you have a text box to play around in before you submit to create your OPML URL.
Actually, I posted about getting this bookmarklet to just recognise the post titles on my blog homepage and ignore all the other hyperlinks, and what do you know, he knocked up a personal gift (I found it at the end of this post)…thanks Tony (NOTE: It’s not working properly for me at the moment).
See also:
Newsmastering and advertising
Print a blog post via a 3rd party
Other ways to make Reading Lists type OPML:
Ways tomake Reading Lists so far
More ways to create and use Reading Lists
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The bookmarklet sort of works on the blog frontpage, styling issues aside (the first bit of the file is masked). The workaround is just to click the bookmarklet a second time so you CAN see the whole listing.
The bookmarklet doesn’t seem to work on individual post pages (I think it was written just for the front page?) but I don’t have time to look at this at the mo, sorry (nor address the styling issues..).
I am slowly trying to put together some bookmarklet design patterns. If they come together, I’ll try and revise your bookmarklet in accord with them and address at least the style issue for the homepage bookmarklet.
tony
Comment by Tony Hirst — July 7, 2006 @ 10:02 am
John,
have you checked out the heirarchical outline editor at http://ijot.net/? OPML output is something they added to it later, it just made sense. it’s all wysiwyg and a very intuitive way to build unlimited depth OPML files.
Comment by rickdog — July 11, 2006 @ 7:29 am
Thanks I’ll check it out…it’s been on the to-do list for so long that I forgot about it…I heard it was demonstrated at OPML Camp.
Comment by Johnt — July 11, 2006 @ 10:12 am