Call Me Al

Here is an update to my blog entry about creating your own blogger RSS feed.

Blogger has added two new fields, <$BlogItemURL$> and <$BlogItemTitle$>, allowing an entry to get a Title and URL. By utilizing these fields, we can move the RSS tags into the template. Now when you post an entry, Blogger won't complain about the title tags. Change your template as follows (I've bolded the new items).

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE rss PUBLIC 
"-//Netscape Communications//DTD RSS 0.91//EN" 
"http://my.netscape.com/publish/formats/rss-0.91.dtd">
<rss version="0.91" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
<channel>
<title>Call Me Al</title>
<link>http://alanjstr.blogspot.com</link>
<description><$BlogDescription$></description>
<language>en-us</language>
<Blogger>
<item>
<title><BlogItemTitle><$BlogItemTitle$></BlogItemTitle></title>
<link><$BlogItemURL$></link>
<description><$BlogItemBody$></description>
<dc:date><$BlogItemDateTime$> GMT</dc:date>
</item>
</Blogger>
</channel>
</rss>

The language item has been updated to remove the quotes. I left the Blog title hardcoded to distinguish it in the blogger dropdown list. There's nothing like two "Call Me Al's" up there to confuse me. The description can be more flexible, though, so go ahead and use the blog's description. Under Settings - Formatting, set Show Title Field and Show URL Field to Yes. If you have a Post Template, take it out. Click Save and go back to the Posts tab. Now you should see two fields at the top of the post. Unfortunately, the date on it won't validate. I just have to convince Blogger.com to provide more formats, which have been needed anyways.