i wanted to generate an OPML file based on all the different types of feeds offered with the default WordPress installation. that is, every WP site has a “main” site feed (in rdf, rss, and atom), but there are also category (and subcategory) feeds, as well as feeds for each author. There are even feeds for tags if you use the UTW plugin but i won’t get into that now.

i guess i was originally inspired by the relatively new service offered by Grazr. Add to that the cool things you can do with OPMLBuilder and the awesome potential of Share your OPML..

and well, i got to thinking (more like scheming).

hmm, the one thing that i couldn’t seem to figure out was why there didn’t seem to be a way to synchronize the feeds in your OPML file and thus ensure that it is always kept up to date. this would make it more useful to me, but i suspect it would be a lot more useful to others too – who in a shared environment (like on Share your OPML) – aren’t necessarily going to know when you add or remove feeds from this your file. essentially, i wanted to be able to create an OPML file, on-the-fly, based on WordPress categorization that would stay current even after i’ve added or deleted categories.

To do this:

• i created a new WP Template file and called it opml.php
• i used this new template file to create a WordPress “Page” called opml (you don’t need to put any text in this page just use the OPML Template file (opml.php) instead of the Default Template page and you’re good to go)

What it does:

• queries the wpdb for all your WP categories (minus any empty categories – ie: ones without posts)
• excludes any additional categories that you specify (“Uncategorized” is excluded by default)
• creates a “live” OPML file (actually it’s a URL) based on all your site’s categories but you can easily click on “view source” and copy/paste that code into a local text file (save it as filename.opml)

What you can do with this file:

• import the OPML into your favorite feedreader (that supports URL imports)
• create a local OPML file (as described earlier) and import it into your favorite feedreader (that supports OPML file uploads)
• add your OPML to a directory like Share your OPML ( http://share.opml.org/ )
• use your OPML to browse your site with Grazr

How to get it all working:

1. download the new template file from here [ opml.phps ] (right-click and choose “Save Link As..” or “Save Target As..”)
2. rename opml.phps to opml.php and drop it in your template directory
3. optionally edit the template file to manually add more categories to the exclude list* (other than the default “Uncategorized”)
4. create your new WP Page and call it “opml” (you can call it anything but in this case the OPML URL would be http://www.yourdomain.com/opml/)
5. make sure that permalinks are turned on (otherwise i doubt any of this will work)
6. try it out in your feedreader, on Share your OPML, or with Grazr

* the exclude list is just a list of category IDs you don’t want to display and formatted as:
$opmlcatid == ’1′ || $opmlcatid == ’2′ || $opmlcatid == ’3′ || and so on..

Examples:

• you can see it all in action on the Indyish Networking page where visitors can use Grazr to quickly browse the entire site for content, feeds, and more.
• or, embedded right here in this page

Known Issues:

• [ resolved: see comments ] i’m not an expert php programmer but for some reason there seems to be a problem when using Grazr (in “Slider” mode) where if you drill down into the category and subcategory feeds – navigating backwards becomes a bit retarded. it goes back to the wrong category and all you see is a completely blank page. Fortunately, you can just keep clicking backward (or the “home” icon, or the “refresh” icon) to get to the top of the directory and start over. Furethermore, i temporarily worked around this problem by switching the default view-mode in Grazr, from “Slider” to “Outline”

Up Next:

1. i’d like to get it to list all author feeds as well [ Update: this is done. just grab opml-authors.phps, rename it to opml-authors.php, and drop it in your WP template directory. then, uncomment the 2nd to last line of php in opml.php ] *This will only select Users who have the “Author” capability in WordPress. Authors without any published posts are excluded by default. You can also exclude other Authors by manually editing opml-authors.php – similar to the way i described earlier
2. i’d like to get it to list all Links in WP (ie: the default “Blogroll”, and any other link categories you create in the WP backend) [ Update: this is done. just grab opml-links.phps, rename it to opml-links.php, and drop it in your WP template directory. then, uncomment the last line of php in opml.php ] *you can also exclude Link Categories by manually editing opml-links.php – similar to the way i described earlier
3. i’d like to get it to be a simple WP plugin

if anyone has time, and wants to take a crack at any of these (or if you see any other ways to improve upon any of this i’d love to hear about it – leave lots of comments)

i’ve browsed the library of modules (94 modules at last count).
i’ve added some modules (with one click) to my netvibes page.

one modules that i particularly like was the “Web Search” module.

at first glance, the name alone doesn’t appear very impressive. in fact, some particularly astute observers might say: “hey, that’s nothing special. doesn’t the default netvibes page already include a search google, yahoo, icerocket, wikipedia?”.

what make this modules different, and the reason i thought it might be a useful addition to my netvibes page is because it lets you add any search engine. not just the 4 search engines mentioned above. what’s more (and this was the kicker for me), if you can make sense of “search query urls“, you can create any number of refined, or specialized searches for any given search engine.

For example, let’s say i wanted to search del.icio.us from my netvibes page using the Web Search module:

The first thing i would do is go to the actual del.icio.us site and enter a search term like “technews” into their search box. Once you land on the results page, take a look at the URL in the addressbar of your browser.

In this case, i get the following url in the addressbar on the results page:

http://del.icio.us/search/?all=technews

Note that the term i used “technews” appears in the URL (at the very end).

Congratulations, you’ve just figured out the logic behind a basic del.icio.us search and can now make sense of “search query urls”.

The only thing left to do now is replace the search term “technews” with the symbol %s so that the newly modified URL reads as follows:

http://del.icio.us/search/?all=%s

Paste this new URL into the Web Search module to complete the configuration and hit save. You can now search del.icio.us from your netvibes page.

i also added technorati search in a similar way.

http://www.technorati.com/tags/%s

(in case anyone was wondering).

obviously, the very first thing you need to do is add the actual “Web Search” module to your netvibes page before you can configure it to use new search engines, but the entire process went relatively smoothly for me.

also, you could probably add more specific custom searches, as i mentioned earlier in this post.
for instance, searching tags for specific users of del.icio.us or the “blog search” feature in technorati could be configured (just apply the same steps taken above).

to end my experience, i added my entire “technews” tab to the ecosystem to be shared with all netvibes users but there was a message about it needing to be validated before it becomes available to all users. [ Update: It didn't actually take very long to validate and my "TechNews" tab can be seen on the "Tabs" page of the netvibes ecosystem, with all the other shared tabs. ]

so until then (it might already be validated – i haven’t checked in a few hours) and to end this post i’ll add the code i got to let visitors add my “technews” tab to their Netvibes page.

here goes..

if you click on the button, it will add a bunch of tech related sites to your netvibes page as a new tab. your existing tabs will remain undisturbed. so enjoy!