Minx doesn't email you when new comments or private messages arrive.  It could - it would be easy to do - but I don't want to be sending out thousands (and eventually millions) of emails a day.  There are all sorts of problems with being a high-volume email source, and I'd rather simply not go there.

But it's very useful to be alerted to incoming comments (and private messages!) without having to visit your site every ten minutes.  So how else can this be achieved?

Well, there's RSS.  Minx already supports automatic RSS 2.0 and Atom feeds (and you can customise it to support other formats).  Why not add an RSS feed of comments?

Comments are public, so an RSS feed of them isn't an issue.  (Not true of private messages, but we'll get to that.)  But maybe you don't want everyone to see spam or unapproved comments.  Well, you can set up a hidden feed.  Or the system can do that automatically for you.  If your public comment feed is at http://mysite.mee.nu/feed/comments, and your private comment feed is at, say, http://mysite.mee.nu/feed/comments/aj69c0, you'd have to try an average of a billion combinations before getting access to someone's private comment feed. 

There would be a link in the editing interface so you could subscribe with one click, and easy-peasy, comment notification.

I could certainly do the same with private messages.  If you're sensitive about those and worried about that 1 in a billion chance, I can have an option where the RSS feed only shows the arrival of a new message, and not the sender or contents.

I could also do secured feeds, but that's more fiddly and many popular readers don't support them.

So, what do you think?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:50 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 291 words, total size 2 kb.

1 Could it be as simple as adding a couple extra notes that pop up in the banner image the same way that the "edit" button appears only for me when viewing my site?

Posted by: Will at October 08, 2007 04:21 AM (E3UGR)

2 Yep, I can do that too. I've just finished tweaking the private message system so that it can show you a highlighted Messages button when you have new messages. (That will be in next week's update. First feature of the 1.2 release. )

But I think the RSS feeds would also be useful.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at October 08, 2007 04:31 AM (PiXy!)

3 I like the idea of the RSS feed.  Indeed, having new comments emailed is very nice -- but I can quickly adjust to looking at an RSS feed to find them just as easily.  And having the comment feed private with editing, approving, banning, etc. all in one place would be neat.

Posted by: Ogre at October 08, 2007 10:50 AM (oifEm)

4 All good choices: As far as I'm concerned, do whichever is easiest.

Posted by: Old Grouch at October 09, 2007 12:43 AM (5RhlR)

5 Hey, Pixy, Jeff Goldstein's had his server yanked out from under him. I wonder whether you'd be so good as to take him under your wing and get him set up here. He's had nothing but trouble since that Frisch shit. jeff@(redacted).com

Posted by: Dan Collins at October 26, 2007 12:21 AM (JSYrn)

6 Already under way.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at October 26, 2007 09:46 AM (PiXy!)

7 Just hid Jeff's email address - he probably already gets all the spam he needs.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at October 26, 2007 11:58 AM (PiXy!)

8 Oh look, more spammers. Aren't they cute!

Posted by: Old Grouch at November 13, 2007 09:21 PM (T2+us)

9 Hey, there's another one!

Posted by: Old Grouch at December 21, 2007 02:25 AM (8vPcQ)

Hide Comments | Add Comment