Cox Crow

Optimal, Improper Redirection

Yesterday I wrote about a means of causing two RSS feed consumers to update their subscriptions list, and about a means of causing web browsers to load another page. This is not the best way to do either of those things. However, it may be the optimal way.

The optimal way is that which works best given certain constraints. In this situation the constraint is two-fold:

1. end-users are unable to modify the server configuration (by placing directives within a .htaccess file)
2. This is the closest thing to a meta refresh workaround for RSS aggregators.

There are downsides to these methods. The downsides of the meta refresh element are that

• it is bandwidth intensive, and
• machines do not update themselves

By the latter I mean those like our friend Google, which will not update its index, and so PageRank will be lost. Some machines simply do not follow that element, and are stuck wondering where you went.

The downsides of the attempt to redirect RSS are many.

• It's not RSS.
• Only Radio Userland and NetNewsWire do anything with that file, so
• people who read your feed in other aggregators will never know you moved.
• It's a machine-readable format that means nothing to machines, and is barely comprehensible for humans.
• It requires extra effort on your part.

So what should you do? If your readership only uses Radio Userland and NetNewsWire, then that fragment of XML is fine. If they don't, then a politely worded note in the RSS must suffice — perhaps in combination with a polite request to Userland to be considerate of others.

3:30:21 PM # Google It!
categories: Writing Online