Jan Zuppinger contacted me today about a problem they had with the Swiss weblog directory. For a weblog to be nominated for the Swiss Blog Awards it has to be listed in the blog directory. So we currently get many new additions to the list. Great!
But one problem surfaced. There are weblogs that don’t have an XML feed (RSS or Atom). But the feed URL was obligatory in the list and I even actively deleted submissions without feed URLs. After all, the list is mainly for the aggregators. Or is it?
I currently know of the following services consuming the provided OPML feed:
- Planet Switzerland
- ping.blogug.ch
- Swiss Top 100 Blogs
- Swiss weblog statistics
- Swiss Blogs Gallery
- blog.ch (though I'm not sure if Matthias just imported the list once)
- Nominations for the 1st Swiss Blog Awards
I just now realize that there are already quite some applications using that OPML feed. Cool! But anyway, of the seven sites listed, only about two really care about the feed URL (planet and blog.ch). I assume for the others the page URL is sufficient.
In short, after the inquiry by Jan I quickly rethought my previous stance on the topic. Feed URLs are no longer obligatory for listing your blog in the blog directory. Though personally I still believe a blog isn't a blog without a feed, the minority of blog tools who thinks otherwise is sufficiently large for me to feel tolerant and include them.
The OPML feed by default only exports blogs with a feed URL to maintain backward compatibility. To include all blogs without feed URLs as well, just append "?nofeed=1" to the URL. For example http://list.blogug.ch/opml?nofeed=1. There is an extended OPML help on the blog directory site.
How this explanations weren't too geeky and complicated.
What are your comments about this change?