Embed Journal Contents Into External Site?

[charamei]

Title:
Embed Journal Contents Into External Site?

Area:
entries, features

Summary:
Ability to embed journal contents into external sites - not necessarily the style, just the contents

Description:
Like many people, I dislike having to update multiple blogs in multiple places with the same information; one of the great attractions of DW for me is its ability to rmeotely update my other blogs (thanks!). One thing I do miss from LJ is the ability to embed my blog into an outside site, to save me having to update it there, too; it would be lovely if DW could add this feature. Better yet would be the ability to leave the style behind and just embed the journal contents/comments (aaaand maybe the avatars...); although I love the embed feature and the codebase, I've never liked the way LJ forces you to build the site around the journal.

Poll #1130 Embed Journal Contents Into External Site?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 33

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
16 (48.5%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
3 (9.1%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
1 (3.0%)

(I have no opinion)
12 (36.4%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (3.0%)

Comments

[cesy]

Can you explain a little more what you mean by this, please, or give an example, as I'm confused?

Also, I know DW are planning to add some more features for keeping your blog on your own domain name, for instance. Is that what you're after?

[charamei]

I apologise for the confusion. No, I'm not after domain naming.

LJ, and several other blogging sites, has an option to 'embed' a blog fully into an external webpage: for example, rather than using a PHP-driven news page as I'm doing here, I could embed my DW blog straight ito the page: I'd still have the advantages of a DW account, such as the reading list and ability to post to communities, but I also wouldn't have to update two blogs with the same information every time I updated. When the news page was loaded, the blog would download from DW.

It's not quite an iframe, either, since putting an LJ clone into an iframe would still show the user bar at the top of the page, etc.

The only problem I have with LJ's method of doing this is that it always embeds the style as well, forcing you to design the page around your LJ style. That's my second suggestion - allow an option to embed just the contents (post text, comments, icon) while leaving the rest behind. I'm assuming this would be easier to code, although I admit that's based on a very hazy understanding indeed.

I hope that makes more sense.

[snakeling]

Possibly you could use the RSS feed for that. Cull the info from the feed, and post it automatically to your site. It wouldn't be that easy, and definitely not for the faint of heart, though someone could write generic code that everyone can include.

ETA, I'm not sure that every info is included in the RSS feed, especially icon info and metadata, though DW could add it.

[zvi]

I think charamei means something similar to the LJ embed methods which are mostly script based.

(one thing that would make this even more delightful would be if it supported tag arguments.)

[snakeling]

I know what he meant; I've done it myself. :)

But the easiest way to get the info without the style would be to use an XML file that listed the info, culling it from there, and displaying it. Lucky for us, there's already an XML file with the entries' info, the RSS feed. Unfortunately, it lacks a good deal of the info associated with an entry.

[charamei]

Pssst... I'm a girl :)

Personally, I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to go about ripping open an RSS feed/XML file, but I can certainly see that it would be a possibility for a more competent coder.

[zvi]

I wasn't actually commenting so much for your edification as for people returning to this entry later, trying to figure out what charmei's original suggestion was for. Personally, I found the original proposal to vague to vote on, and I'd never seen the technical references for what became a little clearer once she described it, although it was enough for my friend Google to dig up what I linked to.

[kyrielle]

Would allowing embed-with-custom-style do it? That way you could create a style for your embedding (to match the page)....

[charamei]

Yes, it probably would, if that's easier to code than the text-dump. As I said, my main objection is to the current necessity to design the page around the journal, not to the style-dumping per se.

[msilverstar]

This is the kind of thing that would let me switch my work blog to DW, which would be likely. Maybe an extension to the existing RSS?

[stellar_dust]

I've been waiting for embedding for a while - lack of it on DW is the main reason I'm crossposting to IJ.