Well, now that news about Planet Lowcountry Bloggers has been blabbed all over the Internet, I guess it’s time for me to write a bit about it and how to get on it (if your blog isn’t already there).
First of all, Planet Lowcountry Bloggers is powered by Planet, a feed aggregator. The software vists all of the feeds (either RSS 2.0 or Atom) it’s configured with, grabs the newest entries and spits the entries out into a web page. Currently Planet LCB is configured to update every 3 hours.
To get listed in Planet LCB, I need a URL for your blog’s RSS feed. The URL for your blog just won’t do. Has to be an RSS or Atom feed (usually they have an .xml extension). Most blogging software (Typepad, WordPress, MovableType, etc) generate feeds automatically. Most of those blogs in TBB have already been included in the Planet already.
Some blogging services (Blogger/Blogspot for example) include it as one of their premium features that you have to pay for. If your blog falls into this group, FeedBurner is an easy way to get a feed for your blog. Just provide them with the URL to your blog and follow the steps. You’ll get a bit of URL you can place in your blog to advertise your feed, and they even have some neat widgets you can use in web pages and forum signatures to promote your blog.
Ok, so once FeedBurner gives you a feed URL to include in your blog, just email it to me or leave a comment here. I’ll add your feed you will have joined the Planet.
Simple huh.
Planet LCB isn’t the only Planet out there. There are plenty of others and even one other local planet (which looks much nicer than mine and doesn’t seem to have issues with strange text characters popping up all over the place). Hmm, a few more and we could probably form a solar system…
What Planet LCB isn’t going to be is a replacement for the daily round-ups in Lowcountry Blogs. It’s just a convenient location to go catch up on the most recent blog entries from around here and hopefully to make doing round-ups a little easier.
Oh, and don’t let the times and dates published in Planet LCB throw you off. All times are in UTC, so just subtract 5 hours (4 if it’s DST) to get the original blog entry time.
Discover more from Imablog
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
This is neat stuff. If we are already listed, do we still need to give you a link?
Re: replacing the roundups at LCB. Let’s see how things pan out — if the planets perform the functions that users are currently deriving from the round-ups, and it’s doing it faster and more comprehensively, without the subjectivity issues, then at a minimum this suggests that the role of the LCB should change to reflect that.
There are all sorts of possible relationships, groups, products, etc., that could evolve out of something like this.
Regarding a new, “reliable”, non MUSC server – http://lowcountryblogroll.com is currently set up and awaiting your planet config.ini file.
Agricola: You’re already listed so there’s no need to send me anything. Already grabbed the feed URL from your blog.
Dan: Sure. I originally set up the Planet as a proof of concept type of thing to see how it would work out. I’m all for it evolving into something else.