WordLand-generated "shadow" feeds

[scripting]

This is a WordLand-generated feed aka the shadow feed.

We generate a "shadow feed" for each WordPress site the user posts to. It only includes posts they made via WordLand.

These are the differences between this feed and the feed generated by WordPress for this site.

1. The parallel WordPress feed includes all the posts from the site, the shadow feed contains only items written in WordLand.

2. Both feeds contain the id of the site and post using the same namespace, used in the WordLand and potentially other editors. See note below.

3. Each item in shadow feed has a <source:markdown> element for each item. It contains the Markdown code for the text in the <description> element. If a reader can process Markdown, it can use this version instead of the description element.

4. It's possible to represent a linkblog entry in the shadow feed, where an item-level link element can point offsite. In the WordPress feed links point to the location of the page containing the post.

Notes

An example of a linkblog shadow feed, and the WordPress feed for the same site.

A blog post about this document offers more perspective. ;-)

When FeedLand reads a shadow feed, it stores the site and post ids with each item, and passes them through its API to apps, including WordLand to enable its Edit This Post feature. This should work for other editors that allow users to edit WordPress sites. Someday that kind of interop will be at the center of a new developer community, I hope.

I wrote about linkblogs in an earlier issue on this site.

[jamescridland]

The <source:markdown> element is interesting.

I can see many benefits for <source:markdown> in the podcasting world, for a different way to make the <description> available, rather than the sometimes quite dirty HTML that often gets put in there, or in <content:encoded>.

Is there a source namespace definition?