# RSS Feeds?



## Beefnot (Nov 12, 2014)

Is there anyway to configure the Sightings/Distressed forum for RSS feeds or any other type of filtering and notification mechanism?  I would love to receive notifications when a thread is created whose title contained a word(s) that met my criteria.  If it is currently possible, I don't know how to do it.


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## brigechols (Nov 12, 2014)

There was a thread some time ago about using the Tapatalk app for this purpose.


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## TUGBrian (Nov 12, 2014)

yep, im pretty sure you can subscribe to the forum using tapatalk and it works just for that.


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## Beefnot (Nov 13, 2014)

No, there is no way to have specific filtered criteria trigger a notification.  Tapatalk only allows me to do pretty much what I can do via the web. I found a few sites that explain how to turn on RSS for a vbulletin site. See below.  This would be very powerful for the Sightings/Distressed forum. I could use an RSS reader app to receive notifications when a sighting for a specific property popped up instead of having to hope I checked the forum at exactly the right time. Can you explore this?

http://www.mydigitallife.info/how-t...ulletin-rss-feed-and-xml-syndication-support/

http://www.itamer.com/vbulletins-inbuilt-rss-feeds/248/

http://theos.in/internet/howto-add-vbulletin-rss-feed/


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## TUGBrian (Nov 13, 2014)

shall look into it!


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## Makai Guy (Nov 13, 2014)

We've had RSS feeds turned on in this board for a long time -- maybe as far back as our first installation of vBulletin in 2005.  I've never thought it was all that useful, as it only sent the most recent X (don't recall how many) posts for the whole board with no way that I know of to limit which forums you receive from.  I quit doing anything with it years ago, but I'll take another look.


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## Beefnot (Nov 13, 2014)

Makai Guy said:


> We've had RSS feeds turned on in this board for a long time -- maybe as far back as our first installation of vBulletin in 2005. I've never thought it was all that useful, as it only sent the most recent X (don't recall how many) posts for the whole board with no way that I know of to limit which forums you receive from. I quit doing anything with it years ago, but I'll take another look.


 
With an RSS reader one should be able to select the forum they wish to subscribe to feeds from and then filter however they wish, rather than the whole board. In any case, I get an error when trying to create a feed from TUG, so I don't think RSS is turned on any longer.


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## Makai Guy (Nov 13, 2014)

Set your RSS reader to download [noparse]http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/external.php[/noparse]

I just learned that you can specify which forums to download RSS listings from by specifying a _forumids_ parameter, like so:
[noparse]
http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/external.php?forumids=1,2,3,4 
(note, no spaces)
[/noparse]
The above would download listings from forums 1, 2, 3, and 4.

To discover the number of any particular forum, find a link to the forum in question (like on the forum list on the board's home page) and check its URL.  The end of the URL will be f=X where X is the forum number.

By default you will receive the most recent 25 posts.  You can change this by adding a _count_ parameter, like so:
[noparse]
http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/external.php?count=XX[/noparse]
where XX is the desired number of posts.

If you want to specify both parameters, connect them by an &, like so:
[noparse]
http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/external.php?count=35&forumids=10[/noparse]

The above would list the most recent 35 posts from this About TUG BBS forum (forum 10).

Note that you need to use a program that understands RSS feeds for this.  If you try to use those URLs in a browser that doesn't understand RSS feeds the RSS formatting commands will be displayed, which will make the text nearly impossible to read.​


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## Beefnot (Nov 14, 2014)

Thanks Doug. I kind of got it to work, still trying to get the forumids part to work correctly. Also, still trying to figure out options to accommodate private forums like the Sightings thread which require password.  That looks difficult to overcome.


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## Makai Guy (Nov 14, 2014)

Beefnot said:


> Also, still trying to figure out options to accommodate private forums like the Sightings thread which require password.  That looks difficult to overcome.


Don't see a way to tell the system that you're entitled to see a private forum.

Best bet is probably to subscribe to the forum (forum options menu) and choose the daily updates by email option.  (And make sure you have a current valid email address in your bbs profile, and keep it updated if you change.)


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## Beefnot (Nov 14, 2014)

Makai Guy said:


> Don't see a way to tell the system that you're entitled to see a private forum.
> 
> Best bet is probably to subscribe to the forum (forum options menu) and choose the daily updates by email option. (And make sure you have a current valid email address in your bbs profile, and keep it updated if you change.)




Yeah, but that defeats the purpose of what I was hoping to accomplish. I was looking forward to real-time notifications of sightings that met my criteria. Oh well, was worth a shot. Thanks.


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## Makai Guy (Nov 16, 2014)

I asked about RSS access to private forums on the vBulletin support board and got this response:





> No. Doing so would mean the forum would not be private, as anyone who could work out the feed URL would be able to obtain content from the forum.


So suspicions confirmed.   Sorry.


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