Dan,

RSS feed generates links like this one:
http://www.home-barista.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3710

It works fine in Firefox redirecting to:
http://www.home-barista.com/forum...oasters-t3710.html

However IE generates the following error:
Bad Request
Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
Size of a request header field exceeds server limit.

What feed are you subscribing to and what parameters (if any) are you using? The forum RSS feed (http://www.home-barista.com/forums/rss.xml) should not contain any old style URLs. Also clear the browser's cookies; that error indicates the length of the cookie string exceeded the server maximum.

I am using a customized one:
[obsolete feed removed]

In IE the problem tends to go away when some cookies expire then it happens again. I'll clear out the cookies and see whether it would work and for how long.
I am using FeedDemon for rss which in turn uses embedded IE to show content. Both embedded IE in FeedDemon and stand alone IE have this problem.

That one is no longer supported.

Please use the improved forums RSS feed. Firefox ("live bookmarks") and Internet Explorer 7 ("Favorites > Feeds") will recognize the feeds automatically, or you can use your favorite RSS reader (e.g., Google Reader). You can also subscribe per forum, e.g., Lever Espresso Machines Forum [RSS]. Look for this symbol in your browser:



Clicking it will subscribe to the feed.

Clearing out the cookies did the trick. I'll keep an eye on it if it returns. Also I started using new feed with new links - thanks!
I am thinking about using yahoo pipes to exclude a few forums I am not interested in - instead of the old interface which allowed to pick forums to watch.

Actually I just realized that it shows all the new posts in the feed. I am being overloaded - this is too much.
A much better workflow is to show only new topics (not replies to them) then people can watch the particular threads they are interested in using email notifications.
What do you think? Is it possible?

The feed includes the last 25 updated topics; if there's 20 replies to a given topic, only the last one is shown in the feed. Typically that covers about a week's worth of topics. If you're seeing more entries than that, your reader may be aggregating interim results.

HB wrote:The feed includes the last 25 updated topics; if there's 20 replies to a given topic, only the last one is shown in the feed. Typically that covers about a week's worth of topics. If you're seeing more entries than that, your reader may be aggregating interim results.

It sounds right. One way to address this issue is to configure the reader to get updates less often, I guess. By default it is configured to get data every hour. I am getting a lot of posts this way.
All I am saying is that if possible - getting new topics is (notifications about the topic being posted rather then a reply) makes more sense to me for active forums. But I understand that it may not be possible.

To be clear, you should not see any duplicates in the feed. If there's 20 replies to a thread, it's only shown once. So including only new topics with no replies as you suggest would change the order and length of time the first to last topics span, but most of the content would be the same as the current implementation that prioritizes recently replied topics.

At some point I would like to add members only capabilities to the feed. For example, digests, "watch this thread" links, or RSS filters. The latter two would allow you to follow the feed content and subscribe to topics that interest you. But first I want to verify the site performance doesn't suffer over the next few months before adding new features.

Dan, Thank you for your reply. I am still not convinced we are on the same page about what I am talking about.

You are right - there are no duplicates when feed is downloaded within that particular download. However the following (correct, but undesired) behavior happens:
Let's say rss reader is pulling the feed every hour.
1. 10am - get all the messages (let's say 30 messages are downloaded)
2. 11am - reader will get 30 latest messages correctly detecting and not showing the oldest 5 because those topic where not updated within that hour and messages are the same. Then it shows 20 messages that were updates to the topics already downloaded on step 1 since new messages were posted to those topics. Granted it highlights new messages, but on the topics already downloaded in step 1. The latest 5 are new topics that were created within last hour. As a result I am getting 25 new messages in the reader. If I happened to not check the reader since 10am - I will get 55 new messages overall in the reader and 25 will be the duplicates (means the same topic, but different posts within).

What I would rather have:
1. 10am - get all the topics (or threads) (let's say 30 messages are downloaded)
2. 11am - reader will get 30 latest topics correctly detecting and not showing the oldest 25 because those are not new topics even though the messages were posted to them - we are downloading topics, not messages. Then the rss reader would only show 5 newest entries representing new topics appearing after 10am.

Dan, I hope I am not wasting your time. I have a lot of appreciation for what you do and I understand what kind of effort it takes. Either way - whether you decide to look into it or not - thank you.