B2 ‐ Add OPML to CList

What Is It?

OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) is format for listing a collection of RSS feeds. In turn, RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a list of articles posted on a blog, news website, or podcast. Hence, adding OPML to CList allows you to read the updated contents from a collection of blogs, news websites, or podcasts. Read more here. CList uses an intermediary service called OPML2JSON to collect these contents from their respective websites.

Register the access token on CList

• Login to CList and click on 'Read' to open the left pane

• Click 'Accounts' to open the account manager

• Select 'OPML' under the heading 'Instance Type'. Values will appear in the fields below. These are sample values only. You need to fill them in.

  • Account Title: call it whatever you want - you will see this title on buttons in your interface

  • Username: enter the OPML URL, for example, https://cogdogblog.com/stuff/podcasts/cogdog.opml

  • Permissions: enter 'r' (for read).

  • Access code: enter the URL of the OPML2JSON service, specifically, https://opml2json.downes.ca/

• Click 'Add Account'

What Happens

• When you click 'Read', the OPML Feed you added will appear as an option; click on it to read posts from the feed

• Note that CList currently downloads the RSS feeds only when you select it. This can result in a delay in seeing the feed results. Be patient. The downloaded feeds are cached for an hour after you click them once (yes I could make it faster with preloads and all that, but I haven't done that yet).

Reading OPML

When the feed is ready, a single button = 'Timeline' - will appear. Click on the button to view the posts.

Status Actions

Under each status is a set of icons allowing you to perform specific actions with that status.

• Expand - posts are truncated; clicking 'expand' will display the full post

• Listen - opens an audio player and plays the audio associated with the post; this allows you to listen to podcasts

• Bookmark - add to a bookmark tool (not currently functioning)

• View original post - view the post in a new window from its original location

CList actions

• Load - to the right of the status is an 'arrow' icon that loads the content of the status to the current editor and adds it to the list of references