Thread options > Subscribe to RSS Feed Broken?

[#1]

I cannot change the placement of the menu items unfortunately.

[#2]

Yes that is what I get when I click the link, and when subscribed I get the same offer again! But some of the pages simply produce the raw RSS XML when it should be an offer to subscribe, and when subscribed should be an offer to unsubscribe. Does that not make sense?

[#3]

No, it doesn't make sense if you understand how an RSS feed works.

The RSS feed is just a specially formatted web page. You subscribe to the RSS feed using a feed reader on your local PC. Unless the web page could (a) know which of the hundreds of possible different feed readers you are using (b) you had opened a huge great gaping security hole in your firewall and (c) the web server interrogated the application running on your PC there is no way it could change subscribe to unsubscribe.

[#4]

@jaread83

Can you change the text of the items on the menu? If so I'd suggest that you change "Subscribe to RSS feed" to be simply "RSS Feed". I've looked at quite a few other sites and that seems to be more common, or they just have the icon:

Reason: when you click the item in the menu it doesn't actually subscribe you (unless user's feed reader is configured to subscribe to new feeds automatically); what it does is take you to the URL to be used by your feed reader and the user then has to subscribe to that using the procedure for the feed reader they are using. It would remove the confusion about subscribe/unsubscribe for those that don't understand RSS feeds. Lastly those that don't understand RSS are not likely to confuse it with subscribing when they want to be notified by email when new posts are made.

By the way: what does the RSS feed on a post give you - a post is a single entity, so what would a feed give you?

[#5]

I'll answer my last question: the entry in the Post Options menu is for exactly the same URL as the one in the Thread options menu.

I can't see the point of that being there as it relates to the thread and not the post - having it on the Thread options menu only makes sense.

[#6]

@jelv - OK

[#7]

I can certainly change the text on the RSS link to that as I am in agreement that the wording is technically incorrect. I will note it down so I can do it later on when I get a chance.

[#8]

What about removing the superfluous entry on the post options menu?

[#9]

you mean removing the RSS option in the post options? That would mean that anyone interested in the RSS would have to scroll all the way to the top of the page to get that option.

Also, I can't remove any items from one menu and not the others. I can turn off RSS but then it would be gone from all the menus.

[#10]

Understand.

Can you change the text in the two menus independently? If so how about changing the option on the post options menu to "RSS feed (thread)"?

[#11]

I will check if I can change them independantly but I suspect they share the same text key in the system. Will check for this though and update if its possible.