Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

DG Aggregation Interface

Author:Walter Ludwick
Posted:8/23/2000; 3:58:40 AM
Topic:DG Aggregation Interface
Msg #:19955
Prev/Next:19954 / 19956

I'm puzzling over a question that perhaps more experienced hands here could easily answer: is there any way to provide an eGroups-type interface to multiple Discussion Groups hosted by the same Frontier server?

If this concept needs further explanation, here's the user experience i have in mind: i receive an e-mail from somebody with a link to a discussion thread on their Manila site at weblogs.com. I click on it, and view in my web browser a discussion thread that calls for my response. I click the "Discuss" button, and am told i can't post unless i subscribe; do i want to add this to my list of DG's at weblogs.com? I say yes, and am presented with an updated list of the various sites and associated DG's at weblogs.com to which i subscribe - some of which are i have configured for e-mail "push" (either regular or daily digest), and some of which i browse through this interface, when i see by the stats on display that i've missed some potentially interesting activity. If this explanation is still insufficient, you can see for yourself how this works at http://my.egroups.com.

I realize that, through my.userland.com, i can aggregate content feeds from Manila websites - all threaded discussion posts, when you come right down to it - along with news from many other sites in syndication through RSS. But this doesn't do anything for sites that don't syndicate through RSS, which would appear to be the case with many at weblogs.com or editthispage.com. And those that do syndicate thru RSS may only be passing through (editor-approved) updates to the home page (as they should). At any rate, this is all about read-only access to material syndicated for public consumption, and does not provide a single-point interface to all the subscriber-only discussions i want to participate in -- or offer, as a Frontier host. Unless i'm missing something obvious, which is quite possible.

At any rate, i'd love to get a quick sense as to whether or not i'm barking up the wrong tree here. It just seems to me that the two most exciting web-aps to appear on the scene in the last year have been ETP/weblogs.com and my.eGroups.com, and i think that if their unique functional strengths (i.e. website creation & syndication, and community hosting, respectively) could be somehow combined in a single service, this could be a HUGE step forward for the web as a vehicle for grassroots empowerment. In fact, i suspect this WILL happen soon (the web demands it); i only wonder if Frontier provides the development platform or not. What do you think?

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