Template Feed/Archive URL Structures for Various Blogging Platforms (Updating)

Being still very interested in web feeds, both practically and philosophically, I subscribe to them often. Occasionally I’ll find a site that seems as though it should have a feed, but contains no link to one within a meta declaration or within the body of the site. Still, most content generators generate feeds, regardless of whether their users make the feed URLs public. In cases like this, it’s fun to poke around and see if I can’t guess the correct URL.

The same goes for archives; certain Blogger users, for example, apparently turn archive links off, so all that’s easily visible are the last ten posts or so on the front page. But, of course, as is especially the case with something as prefab as Blogger, the archives are accessible through a very predictable URL schema.

And what about comment feeds? These are even more scarcely linked to, but in many cases do exist.

Here are the ones I know so far. I plan to update this post as I discover more. This is as much for my reference as it is for yours. So, bookmark it, and, y’know, subscribe to the comments. If you know of any other schemata, please comment. And if you’d like to create your own feeds from any site, give Feed43 a shot. It’s a bit tough to learn, but I’ve successfully made several useful feeds with it.

MySpace

• All blog posts: http://blog.myspace.com/blog/rss.cfm?friendID=[friendID]

WordPress

Note: Sometimes WordPress is installed in a subdirectory of the root domain, typically named “wordpress”, “wp”, or “blog”. If none of the links below work, try inserting these or other directory names (e.g., domain.com/wordpress/feed/).

• All blog posts:
  • /wp-feed.php
  • /wp-rss.php
  • /wp-rss2.php
  • /wp-atom.php
  • /feed/
  • /rss/
  • /rss2/
  • /atom/
  • /?feed=rss2
  • /?feed=atom
• All comments: /wp-commentsrss2.php
• Single post comments:
  • [permalink]/comments
  • /?feed=rss2&p=[post ID]
  • /?feed=atom&p=[post ID]

Blogger

• Archives: /YYYY_MM_01_archive.html
• All comments:: /feeds/comments/default
• Single post comments:
  • /feeds/[postID]/comments/summary (RSS)
  • /feeds/[postID]/comments/default (Atom)
    The value for postID can be found in the post’s page source, within a URL that contains “post-edit.g”
• Posts within a label:
  • http://www2.blogger.com/feeds/[BlogID]/posts/summary/-/[labelName] (RSS)
  • http://www2.blogger.com/feeds/[BlogID]/posts/default/-/[labelName] (Atom)

Flickr

• Photos:
  • http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=[userID]&format=atom
  • http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=[userID]&format=rss_200
• Contacts’ Photos:
  • http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_friends.gne?user_id=[userID]&format=rss_200
  • http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_friends.gne?user_id=[userID]&format=atom
• All comments received: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/activity.gne?user_id=[userID]
• All comments left: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_comments.gne?user_id=[userID]
• Favorites: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_faves.gne?id=[userID]&format=rss_200
  See http://www.flickr.com/services/feeds/. A person’s user ID is visible when you hover over “Block this person” in their profile page. It will look something like 12345678@N00.

Last.fm

• All you need to know is at Audioscrobbler Web Services.

deviantART

• http://backend.deviantart.com/rss.xml?q=by:[username]%20sort:time%20-in:scraps
• http://backend.deviantart.com/rss.xml?q=gallery:[username]%20sort:time&type=deviation
• http://backend.deviantart.com/rss.xml?q=by:[username]%20sort:time%20in:journal
• http://backend.deviantart.com/rss/journal/[username].xml (broken)

LiveJournal

• All blog posts:
  • http://[username].livejournal.com/data/rss
  • http://[username].livejournal.com/data/atom
• Comments:
  

  No, comment feeds are not available on LiveJournal. The FAQ I have referenced above explains how you may propose this as a suggestion to LiveJournal developers.

YouTube

• Favorited videos: http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/[username]/favorites?v=2

Other

If you can’t identify the blogging platform used on a particular site, just give these a shot. They’ll work probably two out of three times.

• /feed/
• /rss/
• /atom/
• /rss.xml
• /atom.xml
• /index.xml
• /index.rdf
• /index.php?atom=1

Thanks to Blogger Buster’s three-part series on Blogger feeds for a bunch of tricks.