SMF-RSS

How to get forum.contribs.org topics/boards as RSS feeds

There have been a few times when I wished I could easily subscribe to a forum section or topic via RSS, but unfortunately our forum software doesn't provide the requisite links by default. Here is a quick tutorial on how to create the RSS url by hand:

When you browse to a forum thread you will see a url in your browser that looks similar to this:

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,50277.0.html

We can get what we want by modifying the format slightly and adding some information to indicate that we want an RSS feed:

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=50277.0;type=rss;action=.xml;limit=20

..notice that the topic number is the same; you may change or remove the limit number as needed (it defaults to 5). You can also specify a different type of feed; supported formats include rss, rss2, atom, and rdf.

This technique also works for subscribing to sections (boards) of the forum. For example, say you are interested in following all posts in the sandbox from your RSS client; the following URL is what you will find in your browser when looking at that section:

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/board,17.0.html

..if we modify it as we did above we will have a working URL for your favorite RSS reader:

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?board=17.0;type=rss;action=.xml;limit=50

You can also subscribe to multiple boards, or topics in a single feed. This is accomplished by using comma separated ID codes for the desired content. For example, if I want a feed for posts from several boards I would use the following rss url:

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?board=17.0,26.0;type=rss;action=.xml;limit=50