nodalpoint.org

Deepak writes:

I wish nodalpoint would aggregate posts from its members

Wishes can come true. If you're (a) a registered Nodalpoint user, (b) have a blog with content related to Nodalpoint and (c) would like to syndicate your posts on Nodalpoint, read on for more information. To jump straight to the content, look for the "News aggregator" link in the right-hand sidebar.

Nodalpoint runs on Drupal and so has a news aggregator module. We switched this off a while ago when the site was having some problems. I've reactivated it, cleaned out the old stuff and set it up again. However, we don't want to aggregate any old feeds - only those of Nodalpoint users from their other blogs.

Why do this?

• For bloggers: you reach more readers by having posts published here as well as your own blog
• For readers: you get a bunch of interesting content in one place, with its own feed

How do you get your feed added to the aggregator?

1. Register as a Nodalpoint user, if you haven't already
2. Check that your feed is not already in the aggregator. So far I've added my blog, Public Rambling, Notes from the Biomass, business|bytes|genes|molecules, Open Reading Frame, RRResearch, Flags and Lollipops, Bioinformatics Zen, YAKAFOKON, Your bones got a little machine, Fungal Genomes and Omics!Omics!
3. Leave a link to your feed as a comment to this post. Note: the feed URL, not the blog URL.
4. Optionally, suggest a category for your feed. So far we have Bioinformatics blogs, Genomics, Microbiology and Open Research. In addition, all feeds will be added to a category "Nodalpoint users". There's also a category "Bioinformatics journals", an experiment that I'll delete unless there's a demand for it.

That's it. Want the feed for all aggregated posts?
http://www.nodalpoint.org/aggregator.

Just the bioinformatics blogs?
http://www.nodalpoint.org/aggregator/categories/4

You get the idea. When you click the sidebar link it expands into categories and sources - each of which has its own feed.

Issues with feeds
The aggregator seems to have trouble with certain feeds - specifically ATOM feeds like those from Google Blogger. I added several of these and most of them refused to fetch new content for about half a day. Then they started to work just fine, with the exception of Your bones got a little machine which has yet to update.

So if you can, send us an RSS feed. You can register your feed via Feedburner and send us that feed URL, which works fine.

Updates: (1) added a few more feeds - check to see if yours is there; (2) all Blogger Atom feeds seem to update eventually, give them time.