Customer log inWeb Feed Generator service news
This page carries periodic service information about the Web Feed Generator. There is a separate news releases page.
Sign-up service closed
The Web Feed Generator service has temporarily been closed to new customers to clear the way for important system changes. Existing customers will continue to access the service as normal. Metacentric is preparing to further simplify the feed creation process, to guide beginners through the steps to publish a news feed. This work is expected to introduce significant changes to the private area of the site. The suspension of the sign-up service will help focus on current customers' needs and properly plan the changes with them.
The new account page answers some basic questions about these changes. If you have other questions or want to be notified when the the Web Feed Generator is re-opened to the public, please contact customer support.
Posted: 2006-07-27
Link filter update
The link filter introduced on 13 May is successfully re-directing requests from feed readers that mis-handle ampersand entities in auto-discovery links, &. Requests from six major feed aggregators are now directed to the correct URLs, details below.
Posted: 2006-06-03
Auto-discovery link filter
Metacentric has introduced a filter to re-direct feed readers that do not handle auto-discovery links correctly. Our research shows that feed links with HTML ampersand entities (&) in the URL are not interpreted correctly by a number of popular feed readers. The problem only seems to affect auto-discovery link elements, not text or feed button links in the body of Web pages. The new "entity filter" detects bad feed requests and re-directs them to the correct feed URL.
Posted: 2006-05-13
Simplified feed creation
The Web Feed Generator has been updated to simplify the process of feed creation and introduce a range of other usability enhancements. The system now prepares site profiles automatically, so you do not need to register your site first, and the feed configuration screen is now the main feature of the service home page. Feed management features have been moved to the Service settings navigation bar, with a new Claim a feed option.
This update also introduces the option to move a feed directory to a different site profile, plus:
- Automatic insertion of recently used feed URLs
- Automatic selection of recently used site profiles
- Clearer presentation of site profile and feed directory changes
- Context sensitive navigation to related feed management tasks
- Simpler email verification process
Posted: 2006-04-15
HTML Tidy correction
Metacentric has reported a problem with HTML Tidy, the error correction module used by the Web Feed Generator. The Java version of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) HTML Tidy program is used to correct common markup errors in customers' Web pages. In rare circumstances, a single quote entity in a Web page could cause HTML Tidy to produce invalid markup. The Web Feed Generator has been re-configured to overcome this error.
Posted: 2006-02-09
New conversion override setting
The Web Feed Generator now has an option to override the conversion pattern used to create RSS news feeds. The new setting forces the Web Feed Generator to use the paragraph links conversion pattern for news feeds instead of fragments mode, when a page has empty fragment anchors. The links mode override has been added to the standard feed creator form, which will automatically generate news feed buttons and auto-discovery links with the new setting.
Posted: 2006-01-30
Free Trial .gov package
Metacentric has launched a pilot scheme to help government Web sites adopt news feed technology. The Free Trial .gov package can only be used with .gov domain names. It enables Government Web managers to try the Web Feed Generator for 30 days as a proof of concept. The pilot scheme is designed to demonstrate the benefits of news feed technology to senior IT managers in government.
Posted: 2006-01-05
Google FeedFetcher date correction
Metacentric has reported a problem with Google FeedFetcher, the software that drives the Google Desktop program and Google Reader service. When the current version of FeedFetcher checks for feed updates, it passes a badly formatted date to the server. As a temporary fix, Metacentric has introduced a "Google filter" that will correct the last modified date while the Google team works on the problem.
Posted: 2006-01-04
Technorati tags: Metacentric, RSS, Web Feed Generator