Es Tea Double Eye » pubsubhubbub

Pubsubhubbub on Google appspot

Stii — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:36:04 +0000

It is the weirdest thing. I was having issues subscribing to blogs that is using pubsubhubbub.appspot.com using a Python script. It returned a 500 Internal Server error without fail. So I rewrote the process in PHP and like magic, it is gone… I used PHP and CURL to subscribe to the appspot service. In Python I used the urllib2 library. Somewhere in the back of my mind I vaguely remember appspot not liking urllib2, but I haven’t really checked due to time constraints. I’ll have a look soon, but if you’re going to use Python to subscribe to feeds, I would suggest trying to do so with CURL.

The good news is that all is good on Afrigator now. All blogs that are using some form of Pubsubhubbub service will be realtime in no time.

If you’re running on WordPress (not WordPress.com) and you have not yet installed PuSHPress, please do so soon!

Realtime feed updates with Pubsubhubbub on Afrigator

Stii — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 06:34:17 +0000

Okay, I’ve implemented this beast. Feeds that support Pubsubhubbub functionality will now be able to distribute their posts as they are published to Afrigator. Well, all but Blogger or Blogspot feeds as I’m having a weird issue with pubsubhubbub.appspot.com which is the hub for Blogger/Blogspot blogs.

If you are using WordPress.com (i.e. yourname.wordpress.com) your good to go. If you run your own installation of WordPress, I strongly suggest that you install the PuSHPress plugin. Why? Here is a good couple of reasons:

1. It get you more exposure. Your latest post would be published immediately. This results in your content being distributed as they’re published instead of hours later.

2. It saves you bandwidth. We don’t need to check your entire feed every hour. We sit back and wait until you publish a blog post.

3. We’re not the only ones doing it. Other services and aggregators also uses Pubsubhubbub. Services like Friendfeed, etc. Which means you’ll save even MORE bandwidth and your content would be even more realtime.

Okay, I’m still having issues with Blogspot blogs. They use a Google Appspot application to enable the realtime publishing of their feeds. However, when I try to subscribe at pubsubhubbub.appspot.com it always returns a 500 Internal Server Error and I’m not sure why. I tried setting various headers as I thought that maybe it is because I’m using a Python script to subscribe, but to no avail. I checked using the service Hurl and that works every time without fail. I’m a bit frustrated and lost. If anyone have any ideas, I’d welcome it.

Dare you to say Pubsubhubbub when drunk

Stii — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:41:22 +0000

What a crazy name! Anyway, the idea is much cooler than what the name is. Basically, what Pubsubhubbub does is it enable your blog to broadcast your new blog posts as you publish them. Instead of aggregators like Afrigator periodically fetching and processing your feed, you tell Afrigator “HEY! Listen up! I’ve written something new and here it is.”

A lot of services uses it nowadays and it is gaining traction. If you’re on blogger/blogspot or wordpress.com you needn’t worry about it as they have already enabled it for those platforms. If you are on a self hosted wordpress blog, I suggest you check out the awesome wordpress plugin called PuSHPress. Install it now! It would be worth it ;)

Oh and here is a video explaining it in a cool way.

Note: I’m going to churn quite a bit of posts to test our Afrigator implementation of Pubsubhubbub.