How to find an existing syndication feed

[cjsmith]

This is mainly for my own notes. I know I figured this out once before, and because I vaguely remembered it, I spent way too long scanning my memories in a vain attempt to find what I'd written down before simply figuring it out again.

http://www.livejournal.com/syn/raw.bml has a plaintext list of all existing feeds. This can be searched for the web address you want.

Hey Rob! calnhobbes_es: Calvin and Hobbes in Spanish.

(Can you believe there's a whole community where people ask each other "hey, is there a feed for [foo]?" It's at syn_quest.)

Now to put this in my memories.

Comments

[ambar.livejournal.com]

Um, I thought they changed http://www.livejournal.com/syn/ (the thing at the bottom) such that, if an account already existed for the URL you put in, it would add that account to your friends list, rather than creating a duplicate.

IOW, if you want to add feed URL blah, just put it in there, the right thing will happen.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Huh, I've never tried adding one; I've simply wandered around looking for what is there. I guess that fact makes the existence of syn_quest even more odd, doesn't it?

[ambar.livejournal.com]

Well, it didn't always work that way, so syn_quest would make sense in the older context.

[ambar.livejournal.com]

Well, a quick look at syn_quest suggests that many people are looking for the feed URLs for thus-and-so.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Ah, that makes more sense. Finding one that's already been done is often (for me) a quick check to see if the domain name exists in the big list.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm pretty clueless. I am reasonably certain that the blog I was looking for has not been syndicated onto LiveJournal. I am also reasonably certain that the author (or someone) has thought about making it syndicat-ABLE. However, I can't find something with the name .rss in it. I found a link called "Syndicate this site (XML)" through which I can download a "Resource Description Framework" file.

Is there anything LJ can do with a .rdf file? Or do I need to find something different? Or do I need to ask someone else? :-)

[ambar.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure LJ can cope with the XML/RDF files. Try feeding it to the box on the syn page and see. :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Not only did it work, someone's already added it... and neither the username nor the domain name appear in http://www.livejournal.com/syn/raw.bml. Interesting.