Feeds are not fit for gardening
https://v5.chriskrycho.com/essays/feeds-are-not-fit-for-gardening/
Lots to think about in here that's relevant to this site.
Currently I just chuck the 15 most recent files that have changed, based on their git last modified timestamps, into the RSS feed and call it a day, but obviously a lot more thought and care could be put into it.
I'm thinking something like this would be a slight improvement:
- on creation, every file gets a created and modified date in the front matter
- (I don't currently use front matter for anything)
- I only update the updated date on significant updates
- The RSS feed is the most recent N updates
- The front page has both a "new articles" and "recent updates" sections
- the former is by created date
- the latter is by modified date where modified != created
This doesn't address the issue that I've got three "blogs" on this site
- this link blog
- the "blog" blog where I write more article-ish things
- the music blog
And soon, I'm going to start publishing photos again, either here or on something like photos.billmill.org
Yet they don't each have a feed, so somebody can't subscribe to just what they're interested in.
(Do enough people read this that it's worth worrying about that?)
One possible route would be to generate a feed for each folder. Another would be to add the ability to add metadata to a folder indicating to the generator that the folder ought to have a feed, or to just add a --feeds flag to the generator that told it which folders to generate feeds for.
I think I'm going to do some experimenting with feed generation today and see what feels natural.