One of the things I've wanted to do to WordPress for a loooong time has been to make it a bit more like Radio Userland whence I started this caper.
No, not desktop based, full of bugs and based on .txt files and Frontier ;) But rather so that it includes a backend aggregator which allows users to simply add feeds to their dashboard and have an 'all-in-one' blogging / aggregating experience.
And I think I'm half way there...
The secret seems to lie with the FamilyPress Dasher plugin: http://familypress.net/dasher/
With a few tweaks to the code you can drop it into mu-plugins and each user has a basic aggregator, here's my v. quick go at it:
To edit the default feeds and starting blocks just pop into dasher.php and edit line 37.
It the allows users to add their own feeds (and dashboard 'blocks').
Creating new blocks is easy even for me so you guys should have no problem :)
If this interests people I've got some things that are way beyond me though, so perhaps we could do a collaborative thing in speccing it up?
I'd love to get it, in the first case, so that:
-Users could delete feeds as well as add them
-The 'Add feed' option was operational on the dashboard (rather than just a link from it)
-There was a nice 'refresh feeds' option.
And down the line so that it could offer some genuine aggregator level functionality - folders, configuration etc.
So, if you're interested or know someone who might be, let's see if we can make it rock.
Cheers, James
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