Free Range Librarian

I located the path for this blog’s comment feed: https://freerangelibrarian.com/comments/feed

To follow the conversation on the posts to this blog, subscribe to this feed as well as to (at least one of) the feeds listed in the post before this. I would like to link to that post, except I would like to make sure I’m using the correct relative path before I do so, and I haven’t sussed that out to my complete satisfaction.

I found a great tweak for the RSS comment feed that fixed something I find aggravating: when you subscribe to posts and comments, the WordPress comment feed isn’t listed next to the post, because the comment feed is named “Comments for” instead of “[Your blog]’s Comments.” Everything may be Miscellaneous, but a good list is hard to find; and darn it, if my blog’s posts and comments can’t be married, at least they should be able to register as domestic partners.

You have to be willing to modify a core file for WordPress to fix this, but if you have shell access , you can use pico or some other editor, and you know the Unix cp command, you should be fine. At the worst, with the original file copied for safekeeping, you can put it back the way it was.

Meanwhile, my .htaccess file has the air of a desperate novice flailing around. I used the suggested mod_rewrite routine, but I was getting a huge number of 404 errors related to feeds, so I added run-of-the-mill redirects. This reminds me a little of a crockpot soup I once made where I kept adding ingredients… canned tomatoes, sauerkraut, piles of herbs… until it was a huge, steaming cauldron of inedible errors.

I’ve left off a section that WordPress added after my pile of stuff, but here’s what I’ve tried so far… anything obviously stupid (or even stupid in a subtle, sotto voce manner)? I’m using Dreamhost and followed their mod_rewrite suggestions.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule archives/0*(\d+).html https://freerangelibrarian.com/index.php?p=$1
RewriteRule index.rdf https://freerangelibrarian.com/index.php?feed=rdf
RewriteRule index.rss https://freerangelibrarian.com/index.php?feed=rss
RewriteRule index.xml https://freerangelibrarian.com/index.php?feed=rss2
RewriteRule preferredrss2feedforFRL.xml https://freerangelibrarian.com/index.php?feed=rss2

#hmmm… still seeing errors… let me try redirects

Redirect index.rdf https://freerangelibrarian.com/index.php?feed=rdf
Redirect index.rss https://freerangelibrarian.com/index.php?feed=rss
Redirect index.xml https://freerangelibrarian.com/index.php?feed=rss2
Redirect atom.xml https://freerangelibrarian.com/index.php?feed=atom

Finally, if you noticed some SQL screen barf (way down on the right sidebar), I had tried to implement a plugin called Top Commentators which did not work. Top Commentators works… though I am not crazy about the formatting, it’s still pretty fun. I’m setting up a test blog on another domain (separate database, even) where I’ll install problem plugins and futz with them there.

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