topic Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken? in Community Site Feedback

Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

Anonymous — Sun, 09 Apr 2017 15:33:39 GMT

Just what the subject says really. I selected this option from the "Re: Quality of Service Page replacement in Plusnet Feedback" thread so I could be notified of replies to Townman's post, but I was presented with this:

This was not what I was expecting so I tried another post and I got this:

I don't ever recall seeing anything like this before; in fact if I am right then the subscription process is silent with the exception of a 'green' banner appearing at the top of the page to acknowledge the request.

Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

jaread83 — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 08:17:22 GMT

I just tried the RSS subscription on the thread you found to render weird and it looks like the second screenshot

https://community.plus.net/aptgm87544/rss/message?board.id=Plusnet&message.id=76733

Can you post any other links that are not working for the RSS? I would be interested in raising this with Lithium to look into further (as I have no control over this code).

Cheers

Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 08:25:15 GMT

@jaread83 - On this very thread I get :

I've obviously cut the remainder but it is similar in output the the second image above.

Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 08:27:26 GMT

And I get this on another:

Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

jaread83 — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 08:31:33 GMT

This is what I see.

Can you provide the link please?

Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

jelv — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 08:34:10 GMT

I've just subscribed to the RSS feed of this topic using FeedDemon and it's working exactly as it should.

I'm puzzled by your reference to the green tick which is what you would expect to see if you subscribed to the thread (the option below Bookkmark in the Thread Options menu).

Are you getting the two confused?

Edit: I can't see anything wrong with the screen shots you've posted - in all cases they are what I'd expect to see if you visit the pages using a browser and not a feed reader.

Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 08:51:39 GMT

@jaread83 this is the link to the thread.

https://community.plus.net/t5/Community-Site-Feedback/Inconsistency-in-Forum-View-post-count-v-Unread-Posts/m-p/1327988#U1327988

Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 08:54:05 GMT

@jelv, yes as regards the green you are correct that's for the 'Subscribe' option, it's been a while since I used it last.

Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

jaread83 — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 10:36:37 GMT

Okay, I think we have narrowed it down to when the green banner is visible (after subscribing) and then clicking the 'subscribe to RSS' as I can now replicate this very odd behaviour.

With this information I can go to Lithium to look into so they can also replicate and fix.

Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 09:35:49 GMT

@jaread83 - If it helps them (or you) I am using FireFox 52.0.2 (64-bit) on macOS Sierra v 10.12.3.

Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

jelv — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 13:32:19 GMT

Just what is odd or broken? As far as I can see it is working correctly.

I cannot think of any circumstances under which a green tick would be displayed as the action to subscribe is taken by the local RSS client - not at the server.

@Anonymous Which RSS feed reader are you using? How does what you are seeing differ from another feed such as http://www.thinkbroadband.com/rss/full/

Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

jaread83 — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 13:57:18 GMT

Okay... i can't get this to replicate anymore even after the steps above.

Now I don't know what is causing the RSS to break.

Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 14:15:04 GMT

@@jaread83 and @jelv, the green banner reference was a mistake I confused it with the 'Subecribe' option and the reader is the Live Bookmarks.

So just to clarify, can someone tell me what is the correct and expected behaviour is when the "Subscribe to RSS Feed" option is selected?

Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

jaread83 — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 14:32:54 GMT

It should take you to the RSS feed in your browser with the option to subscribe or you can take the URL and put it into your RSS feed reader. It has been a very long time since I last used RSS.

It also varies between browsers, on FF it gives you the option to subscribe to the RSS feed:

Once subscribed, I can keep the 'Live Bookmarks' thing on my FF menu and it shows up like this:

But as I said.. haven't used RSS in over a decade and wasn't even sure if anyone used it here (but wanted to give you all that option in case anyone wanted to use it).

Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

jelv — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 14:34:30 GMT

Can you change the order of the menu? If so I'd suggest moving the RSS option to the bottom.

Subscribe is the one 99% of users will want with only a very few advanced users wanting to use RSS.

Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

jaread83 — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 14:36:36 GMT

I cannot change the placement of the menu items unfortunately.

Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 16:00:51 GMT

Yes that is what I get when I click the link, and when subscribed I get the same offer again! But some of the pages simply produce the raw RSS XML when it should be an offer to subscribe, and when subscribed should be an offer to unsubscribe. Does that not make sense?

Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

jelv — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 17:47:30 GMT

No, it doesn't make sense if you understand how an RSS feed works.

The RSS feed is just a specially formatted web page. You subscribe to the RSS feed using a feed reader on your local PC. Unless the web page could (a) know which of the hundreds of possible different feed readers you are using (b) you had opened a huge great gaping security hole in your firewall and (c) the web server interrogated the application running on your PC there is no way it could change subscribe to unsubscribe.

Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

jelv — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 18:11:04 GMT

@jaread83

Can you change the text of the items on the menu? If so I'd suggest that you change "Subscribe to RSS feed" to be simply "RSS Feed". I've looked at quite a few other sites and that seems to be more common, or they just have the icon:

Reason: when you click the item in the menu it doesn't actually subscribe you (unless user's feed reader is configured to subscribe to new feeds automatically); what it does is take you to the URL to be used by your feed reader and the user then has to subscribe to that using the procedure for the feed reader they are using. It would remove the confusion about subscribe/unsubscribe for those that don't understand RSS feeds. Lastly those that don't understand RSS are not likely to confuse it with subscribing when they want to be notified by email when new posts are made.

By the way: what does the RSS feed on a post give you - a post is a single entity, so what would a feed give you?

Re: Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

jelv — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 18:17:41 GMT

I'll answer my last question: the entry in the Post Options menu is for exactly the same URL as the one in the Thread options menu.

I can't see the point of that being there as it relates to the thread and not the post - having it on the Thread options menu only makes sense.