RSS feed capabilities for members only

HB · phpBB SEO Team Joined: 16 Oct 2006 Posts: 809

One of my site members suggested that the feed should include "watch this thread" links if they're logged in. They prefer to use the RSS feed to find new topics and then subscribe to those that interest them.

Another enhancement for logged in members: RSS feed filtering. Like "watch this thread" in the forums, a "watch this thread's feed" would include replied-to topics in the feed, otherwise they would only appear if they have no replies. That is, a logged in member's RSS feed would by default only show (a) new topics with no replies, or (b) replied-to topics that the member has selected "watch this thread's feed" on. This would enable members to follow a small subset of the forum updates, which comes in handy for active boards.

Of course that means customized per-member content, which could kill performance. Perhaps offer it as a "valued member" option? A similar approach could be taken for digests, i.e., limit long digests to selected members.