MT-Feeds Public Beta.

<p>MT-Feeds is a plugin for publishing syndication feed content into Movable Type templates and the next generation and completely re-written version of my most popular Movable Type plugin <a href="http://www.timaoutloud.org/code/mt/index.html#mt-rssfeed">mt-rssfeed</a>. Today I&#39;m releasing MT-Feeds as a public beta. </p>
<p>This is a long time coming of course and I am deserving of criticism for taking so damn long. (Though not too much, please.) However when you are a consultant whose livelihood depends on paying work its <a href="http://www.timaoutloud.org/archives/000367.html">hard to find the time to focus on such things</a>. This plugin required a great deal of focus since syndication has become far more complex in the past 2 years.</p>
<p>I finally reached the point were I got frustrated with myself having this mostly finished piece of work sitting on my hard drive with few using it. <a href="#Download">It&#39;s here</a> and I still have work to do. See the documentation for specifics. Also know that I am working on a proper <q>business</q> website and other formalities to support this work.</p>
<p>Here is what you need to know about this release.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>It&#39;s a beta.</strong> All warnings apply. Please read the documentation for the known bugs and shortcomings.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>This is a complete rewrite of mt-rssfeed and is not backwards compatable. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>-Currently it requires MT 3.1. I plan on invesigating how to support 3.0 again and perhaps 2.661. (I make no promises of 2.661 support, but will give it a try.) As of Beta 2, version 3.0D is supported. 2.661 will <strong>not</strong> be supported.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Like its predecessor, MT-Feeds will be released under what I call the <q>Classic MT</q> license. Free for personal and non-profit use though a donation is request. Commercial use requires a paid license. There are limitations on the distribution and associated services you can provide with this work. mt-rssfeed was released under these terms though many overlooked it. Thanks to the handful of you who did!</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>I&#39;ve opened an <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mt-feeds-announce/">announcement</a> and <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mt-feeds-discuss/">discussion</a> mailing list for the plugin. Users are encouraged to join them.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Because of the growing complexity and sophistication of user&#39;s needs this plugin is a bit involved to install. I apologize for this, but given the functional requirements there was little I could do. In the future I hope to work on making this easier.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Once released I&#39;ll be offering low cost installation services for this plugin in addition to investigating a zero-install service offering.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>New features include:
<ul>
<li>Atom syndication support.</li>
<li>Additional support and improved mapping of RSS tags including date tags with native MT formatting support.</li>
<li>Easier to configure. (I hope.)</li>
<li>Smarter faster caching of syndication feeds including HTTP ETag support.</li>
<li>Ability to refresh your subscriptions separately or in the background via cron.</li>
<li>Internalization of mt-list functionality.</li>
<li>OPML, CSV and plain-text support of subscriptions lists.</li>
<li>The ability to render the latest entries from a group of subscriptions.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Read <a href="http://www.timaoutloud.org/archives/000348.html">this post</a> for more (though dated) detail if you are so inclined.</li>
</ul>
<p>More to come. I hope the wait was worth it.</p>
<p>This plugin has been officially released under the name <a href="http://code.appnel.com/feeds-app">Feeds.App</a>.</p>