I've made some changes to some templates in weblog II. There's a new template called "Weblog Item Full RSS READONLY" which offers a rich set of features for the item element in an RSS feed: title, [new] creator name (NOT email address), [new] trackback ping url, link field, date published, unique id and permalink, comments url, category tags, and the full message body.

If you're using a custom RSS item template, then you could just use the new template as an example if you'd like to update it. (I'm especially interested in seeing everyone support the category tags and the dc:creater tag, they're both quite useful for a new plugin coming out soon.)

The Weblog Wrapper RSS READONLY template was changed. It now includes two "namespace" declarations in the RSS element, like this:

<rss version="2.0"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1"
xmlns:trackback="http://madskills.com/public/xml/rss/module/trackback/">

Again, if you're using a custom rss wrapper template, and you plan to use the "dc:creator" tag/element in your RSS feed, then you should update your wrapper template with the xmlns:dc attribute. (Just to make sure you're serving valid XML.)

Finally, you should be very excited about the new plugin coming out soon, even though I'm not going to tell you about it yet. ;-)

I realized this afternoon -- rather unhappily -- that the outline version of the macro list was lieing to everyone. It claimed that it's reference for the very important macro "weblog.addToWeblogForm" was complete, when it actually wasn't complete at all.

Now it is complete. There were quite a few optional macro parameters missing.

This question is for everybody. I need you all to check something, if you have a minute (shouldn't take much more that that).

If you use categories (channels) on your Weblog II page, would you (please) check your RSS feed? It should have <category>...</category> tags, one for each category/channel you choose for each post. (Look at this site's rss feed for an example.)

If your RSS doesn't have categories, is that intentional? The built-in template, 'Weblog Item RSS READONLY', includes support for the category tag. That's the defautl template for new weblogs, but over the years many of you may have created your own, or started out with something else.

Category tags are a good way to build some flow to your site, because they help services like Technorati index and track your posts, and present it to the right people on their search pages. Apparently Google uses them, too.

Post a question if you need any help setting it up...