Author name in RSS feed

[tmst08]

I notice that the "Author" field is now populated in my RSS reader for this site. So thanks, Marsh, if that's something you added for us RSS nerds. Right now, the field is populated with the author's email address and if, for some reason, that's not available, the field is omitted.

If you could hack in the screen name along with, or even instead of, the email address, I think it would be an improvement!

-Tom

[Marsh White]

Tom, I didn't change anything.  I know that different RSS readers display information in different ways...some cherry pick the info that they want to display.  Maybe there is some kind of setting where you can select the info to display for a given feed?  It seems like this forum SHOULD send along the screen name with the info.  For instance I know that my default RSS reader in IE shows the e-mail address of the author, but the default reader in Firefox does not show this info.  Which makes me think that maybe a better/more fully featured RSS reader would show ALL the info, or at least allow you to select what to show.  Maybe someone can recommend one?  I don't actually use RSS in my daily life...so I just have the default readers.

[tmst08]

Marsh,

If I know what portal software this site uses, I can do a Google search on customizing the RSS feed for it.

If you're into seeing some details of RSS, feel free to read on.

-Tom

Nerdy RSS Stuff
----------------
I got a little curious to see what the server response to an RSS request looks like, so I typed in the URL for one of the feeds into my browser. As expected, what was returned is standard XML inside some RSS tags.

The XML for each posting adheres to the Dublin Core metadata standard, with the following structure:
      <item>
         <title><![CDATA[Re: Another convert from Yahoo]]></title>
         <link>http://fjowners.com/index.php?topic=177.msg1833#msg1833</link>
         <description><![CDATA[Hey there! Where abouts are you?]]></description>
         <author>ratchet_72@sbcglobal.net</author>
         <category><![CDATA[Introductions]]></category>
         <comments>http://fjowners.com/index.php?action=post;topic=177.0</comments>
         <pubDate>Wed, 18 Mar 2009 02:10:41 GMT</pubDate>
         <guid>http://fjowners.com/index.php?topic=177.msg1833#msg1833</guid>
      </item>

As seen above, the <author> tag contains an email address. I am just wondering whether the forum software can be configured to add some other attribute in there, as well.

[tmst08]

Tom, I didn't change anything.
<snip>

Did you turn off the author field?

[Marsh White]

Nope, I didn't change anything...