New version released — please read the latest update.
Good news everyone! I’ve released a plugin! Aren’t I special.. ahem, anyway — read on for the juicy details.
The catalyst
So what’s this all about, then? Well, basically after trying several different methods to thwart the splogging community ripping off content and plastering masses of adsense advertising all over it — I’ve decided on a different tack.
It’s an impossible goal to block all splogs, all of the time. It just cannot be done. Attempting to block, sneaking in splog seeking images, hijacking RSS feeds and all the other cool new tricks in town is, well, it’s pissing me off. It’s a big task to keep the process going and in the mean time genuine readers get inundated with bundles of targeted data that is at best useless and at worst, sends them elsewhere for an RSS fix.
The solution
Enter stage left, sig2feed.
A simple, discrete plugin that injects a small tag-line, © copyright block, or simple link back to the RSS feed origin. Rather than try to stop the splogger crowd — I intend to “cash in” on the potential increase in exposure and then direct folks back here, where it’s all safe and cosy and virtually advertisement free.
So head on over to the plugin page and help yourself. Should you have any questions, or comments, feel free to add some comment love below. :)
≡ This is a code entry relating to the topics of No Tags.
Brendan Borlase is a Systems and Network Administrator living in Adelaide, Australia, having lived, worked and breathed Information Technology for over 12 years. Learn more.
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Oct 8th, 2006 at 7:37 pm
[…] WP Plugin: sig2feed Add any text to your RSS feed including links back to your own blog. Bookmark:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
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Oct 8th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
[…] WP Plugin: sig2feed Add any text to your RSS feed including links back to your own blog. […]
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Oct 10th, 2006 at 5:13 am
[…] Brendan Borlase, a systems administrator from New Zealand got fired up at sploggers and RSS feed bandits, it prompted him to make a cool signature to feed plugin for Wordpress. Well, basically after trying several different methods to thwart the splogging community ripping off content and plastering masses of adsense advertising all over it Ive decided on a different tack. […]
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Oct 10th, 2006 at 6:18 pm
[…] sig2feed - plugin released - This is SmackFoo | pinking the ‘foo.. For adding signature in rss for feeding different aggregators with backlinks and copyright notices… (tags: wordpress-plugin) […]
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Oct 14th, 2006 at 10:14 am
[…] WP Plugin: sig2feed Add any text to your RSS feed including links back to your own blog. […]
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Oct 19th, 2006 at 5:43 pm
[…] sig2feed - plugin released - This is SmackFoo | pinking the ‘foo.. Plugin de Wordpress para “marcar” los feeds con informacion que queramos. Ideal para enfrentar a los ya famosos “splogs” (tags: feeds plugin plugins wordpress RSS splog spam) […]
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Oct 23rd, 2006 at 10:26 pm
[…] sig2feed […]
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Nov 11th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
[…] sig2feed […]
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Jun 15th, 2007 at 9:10 am
[…] Ability to Initiate Feed-Level Promotions. Feeds allow you want to promote a specific project or item outside of the normal post and site structure. For example, if you want to promote an affiliate program through your feeds and not on your blog, all you need to do is to include it within a feed signature. Two of the feed signature Wordpress plugins you can use are Digital Fingerprint and Sig2Feed. […]
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Jun 27th, 2007 at 6:57 am
[…] Ability to Initiate Feed-Level Promotions. Feeds allow you to promote a specific project or item outside of the normal post and site structure. For example, if you want to promote an affiliate program through your feeds and not on your blog, all you need to do is to include it within a feed signature. Two of the feed signature Wordpress plugins you can use are Digital Fingerprint and Sig2Feed. […]
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Sep 14th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
[…] nice little Wordpress plugin on SmackFoo.com. It’s called RSS Signature (previously known as sig2feed). Basically what it does is allow you to include a “signature” at the end of your posts […]
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Jan 9th, 2008 at 7:27 am
[…] sig2feed известен още като RSS Signature. Дава възможност да се […]
Oct 8th, 2006 at 6:31 am
Everytime I see one of those plugins in feeds (there has been another one at Maxpower) I wonder why include this in the footer? My feed reader (FeedDemon) shows me under the title a bunch of icons, as well as time and entry autor name. Afterwards I get the post.
Especially with the purpose of pointing at the copyright I think i would make more sense to have this information at the top. Imagine someone arrives at bitacle, or any other splog, and finds your entry.
Title.
This article was written by PP at Q.
Entry
I would immediately visit the original article in that case, now I’ld have to sta at bitacle and read before I notice the article is a rip. It would at the same time still include your info if only an excerpt is shown. And if the splog ever gets dugg, diggers also first see your info and will be pretty fast to flame the submitter for having entered a linked article. ;-)
But I think digg will soon block bitacle anyway.
Joefish has integrated part of his PGP-key in his feed. I do like that (I have been the victim of online namejacking) and hope services like Feedburner will soon offer the option to integrate a digital ID. Best would even be if there were something like a header for feeds, with metas. But I guess I’m dreaming now
Oct 8th, 2006 at 6:53 am
Good point.
The plugin at present adds the signature/ tag/ notice at the ‘end’ of the content as that’s the easiest way to do it. The meta at the top already points to the right places in most cases.
Feeds that are listed as an excerpt are ‘chopped’ at often highly variable places, thus trying to capture that without hacking the core RSS code for wordpress would be a bit tricky (I’ve not got that far, yet).
Adding a meta key to the top of an RSS feed is one option (and it’s not overly difficult), as that would display similar to the post title, author, etc.. however not all feed readers can handle ‘custom’ meta tags that fall outside of ‘accepted’ norms.. and I really don’t want to add a feature that will break in any number of readers. :)
As for the idea of a digital id - other than for tracking purposes it does little and can easily (sadly) be faked. Anything that is delivered as a ’static’ value can easily be duplicated..
Short of masses of ‘random’ content and ’secured’ feeds there is limitation on what can be done.
Oct 8th, 2006 at 7:57 am
I am totally aware of all the possibilities to change/fake/strip out things we add, I even admit that years ago (and I mean YEARS) I have written bots and know how not to respect things as robots.txt aso. Luckily those days are over. I was kind of a pioneer with organized commercial spam mail and also have a pretty decent SEO background, so I think knowing most tricks. ;-)
Sadly there are that many different feed formats nowadays, which makes it hard to plead for a standard (integration of anything like this). It would also mean that many aggregators need to be changed, but one can hope at least. Maybe something the next generation feeds, although for a service like Feedburner it shouldn’t be that hard to integrate (and push it).
I do understand the danger of breaking a feed, hence why with all the contentjacking, something needs to become standard. And even that will not prevent smart authors to have their splogs, but it were a start. I wonder if the automattic crew considers something like this after they have blocked bitacle at wordpress.com
Btw, sadly your mail notifications are considered spam by gmail.
Oct 8th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
Pretty much why I stuck with adding to the tail of existing content - it ‘just works’ in the majority of cases.
I use it to help point folks back here, but the plugin can be used to add all manner of content.
Oct 26th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
Good plugin, thanks
Sep 11th, 2007 at 6:19 am
Okay. I installed this and activated/enabled the plugin. I use Bloglines as my preferred reader. I don’t see the RSS sig anywhere.
Sep 11th, 2007 at 7:29 am
djbaxter, you will need to post at least one entry after activation for it to show up - it’s a Wordpress quirk to do with post handling.
It is also worth noting that bloglines, like google reader, do not poll RSS feeds more often than every 15-30 minutes, thus you are better off checking with a web browser that supports RSS such as Firefox, Safari or IE 7, as examples.
Sep 14th, 2007 at 11:18 am
I took a few minutes and added a few extra variables to your plugin after i installed it. I added a variables like %link% and %title%.
Basically i used the following “signature”:
Source: From What I Heard | Post Title
Sep 14th, 2007 at 11:22 am
previous comment was cut off. continued:
So it displays like this:
Source: [my site name, linked to my site] | [article name, linked to my article]
Every post in my rss feed contains a link to my homepage and a link back to the posts permalink.
I hope more people steal my feed now so I can get tons of links back to my site. :)
I really dig your plugin, especially after modifying it.
Good work.
Sep 14th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
I added a couple more variables. If you would like the php file for it let me know.
Heres some of what i added:
%TITLE% - Post Title
%postlink% - Post Link
%blogname% - Blog Name
%bloghome% - Main Blog URL
$a_title = get_the_title(); // %TITLE%
$a_postlink = get_permalink(); // %postlink%
$a_blogname = get_bloginfo(’name’);; // %blogname*%
$a_bloghome = get_bloginfo(’home’);; // %bloghome*%
$the_sig = str_replace(”%TITLE%”, $a_title, $the_sig);
$the_sig = str_replace(”%postlink%”, $a_postlink, $the_sig);
$the_sig = str_replace(”%blogname%”, $a_blogname, $the_sig);
$the_sig = str_replace(”%bloghome%”, $a_bloghome, $the_sig);
I hope this comes in handy for anyone looking to add more to their feed signature. It’s a great way to get links to your home page and individual posts if someone feels the need to “syndicate” your feeds.
Oct 22nd, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Hmmm….I’m unhappy to see that no one else seems to be reporting that the plugin doesn’t even show up in their Plugin Management panel to be activated. That must mean I’m missing something very basic - has anyone else had this problem?
Nov 12th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Just wondering if version 1.1 of RSS Signature is compatible with Wordpress 2.3.1
I’ll give it a try tonight, just curious if its documented officially working.
Dec 28th, 2007 at 9:09 am
I am a little bit confused on the variables, exactly what are they? I understand it has to do with your PHP file and an automatic search for the relevant information respective to the variable, such as blog name, url, etc…
Can you point me towards a good reference page for this information?
I have seen your plugin in action and can recommend its’ effectiveness. I am curious about the per post option.
Jan 16th, 2008 at 12:48 am
Would it be possible to have variables such as Post URL & Category URL
Apr 5th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Thanks but in WP 2.5 doesn’t work with per-category feeds. Good idea.