RSS feeds have brought a new element of structure and flexibility to the internet. By separating content from presentation, RSS feeds simplify the process of publishing, processing, presenting, and reading information online. In the early days (ca. 1999) of RSS, there were just a few feeds, and it was easy to keep them straight. In fact, at one point I had a homegrown list of feeds which, to the best of my knowledge, comprised essentially all of the feeds then available. Things have changed since then, and there are now literally hundreds of thousands of feeds.
In mid-2001 it was clear to me that it was time to start seriously collecting and organizing all of this great information, and later that year I registered the Syndic8 domain. This was the spark which led me to start designing and building the site (never underestimate the motivational power of a good name or an unused domain). Two years and over 50,000 lines of PHP later, the site boasts a collection of over 21,000 hand-reviewed feeds and a membership base in excess of 5,000. Each and every feed in the Syndic8 collection has been looked over at least twice (once on submission and again on approval) to ensure that the listed feeds are producing fresh and worthwhile content.
Now that we have lots of feeds, the next step is to allow users to create their own personal collections of interesting feeds. Thanks to the foresight and creativity of Syndic8 collaborator Bill Kearney, Syndic8 has a very powerful and flexible mechanism for doing just this.
This article will tell you all that you need to know to take full advantage of the Personal List System. You will learn how to create, view, import, and export lists. You will also learn how to use this feature in conjunction with your news reading tool.
At the end I will briefly discuss the XML-RPC API (Application Programming Interface). Using this interface, external programs can have access to virtually all of the features of the Personal List System. There's a lot to cover, so let's get started!