Mozilla Planet is a syndication of different blogs written by people from the Mozilla community. This is a great way to follow what is happening in the community. Even better it has an Atom feed you can subscribe to and consume in your favorite feed reader application at your convenience. We also created a Webcompat planet (feed) more focused on the topic relevant to this community.
This morning, on an IRC channel, we had a short discussion on Andy Lam's article about the Reading List UX on Firefox Android. Someone asked:
not published on a planet ?
The person meant that the article was not syndicated in the usual communication channels aggregating blog posts. And that's true, until that link dropped on IRC, I had no idea about the Firefox UX team blog on Medium. And that's kind of sad because it's very interesting. Note that Firefox UX has a dedicated Planet and the Medium blog posts are not aggregated there (no new content since January 2015). Another sad moment.
Then I asked myself, but does Medium has rss/atom feeds in the first place. Looking at the source code of https://medium.com/firefox-ux, I found:
<link id="feedLink" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="https://medium.com/feed/firefox-ux">
Ah! cool! https://medium.com/feed/firefox-ux/. You can today add the Medium Firefox UX channel to your feed reader. But then it means also it could be syndicated on a planet. Let's see.
<item>
<title><![CDATA[This is our Reading List]]></title>
<description><![CDATA[<div class="medium-feed-item"><p class="medium-feed-image"><a href="https://medium.com/firefox-ux/this-is-our-reading-list-c81c4238dd3d?source=rss----da1138ddf2cd---4"><img src="https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/fit/c/600/200/1*VNltQ1NLqCv9o8_VX6DmOQ.png" width="600" height="200"></a></p><p class="medium-feed-snippet">“So… what’s it for?”</p><p class="medium-feed-link"><a href="https://medium.com/firefox-ux/this-is-our-reading-list-c81c4238dd3d?source=rss----da1138ddf2cd---4">Continue reading on Medium »</a></p></div>]]></description>
<link>https://medium.com/firefox-ux/this-is-our-reading-list-c81c4238dd3d?source=rss----da1138ddf2cd---4</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://medium.com/p/c81c4238dd3d</guid>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Anthony Lam]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 05 Apr 2016 19:56:34 GMT</pubDate>
</item>
That means that only a summary of the blog post is available in the Medium feed. Not the full post. Another sad moment.
Wishes
- Medium please, could you publish the full content in the feed?
- Medium please, could you make your feeds atom friendly?
- Anthony Lam, please could you add your feed to Planet Mozilla and/or Planet Firefox UX? Let me help with that.
Conclusion
When choosing a publishing platform, be aware of the consequences for your content in terms of resilience, distribution and permanence? Own your domain name, own your content. Publish on your site and distribute elsewhere.
Thanks.
Otsukare!