I’ve noticed systems popping up that have that magic RSS feed button next to the system name.
That’s awesome, but I can’t find how to get that on my listings. This is one of those posts where I know the answer will be embarrassingly simple, but I’ve moseyed around FAQ, “Edit system details”, “edit account details”, “take a tour” etc and can’t find any reference to RSS.
Can someone help?
EuroPips is an example of a system with the RSS button next to its name. [LINKSYSTEM_28211121]
There is a little orange square button to the left of the system name on the system details page. Try clicking on that orange button. I;m not sure what you do after that.
The Good News: OK, it seems those magical RSS buttons are appearing by magic next to the system titles - two of my three systems now have them.
The Bad News: Unfortunately the data in the RSS feeds seems to have a few problems: mainly with the entry and exit prices showing as the same. Here’s an example:
"Short 4 GBPSGD - $315 profit
18:35 20/11/2007, Latest Trades: TrendSensor Jumbo
11/14/07 19:14: STO 4 GBPSGD @ 1.49577; 11/16/07 3:17: BTC 4 @ 1.49577"
While the $315 profit figure is correct, note how the entry and exit prices are identical (1.49577). The actual entry price was double this figure, at 2.99155, while the number of contracts was 2, not 4. So the contracts have been doubled and the entry price halved. Actual exit price was 2.96865.
Hope the feedback helps. Once the bugs are out, this will be a great new service. It will help those of us who want to better integrate our websites with C2, but aren’t programming geeks. Thanks Matthew!
None of my systems have the magic button yet. I’m not really familiar with RSS feeds. Do you paste the file onto your web-site?
I hadn’t wanted to make a public announcement about C2’s new RSS feeds yet because it will take a bit of time for the feeds to be “populated” – you can see that they are gradually appearing next to each system’s name on the system’s details page. (You’ll also notice an RSS feed on the “Latest Reviews” box on the C2 Home page.)
Murray - thanks for pointing out the error regarding the closing prices that appear in the RSS data. The error has now been corrected (but it may take a few hours for the correct data to be used in all RSS feeds).
If you are unfamiliar with what RSS feeds are, here’s a pretty good explanation:
http://www.sixapart.com/about/feeds
The basic idea is that you can “subscribe” to a feed and be alerted when “new stuff” appears. Most modern browsers, such as Firefox, allow you to simply click on the little orange RSS icon, and then you will be asked whether you want to subscribe to the feed, and - if so - through what methodology. I’m no expert, but - without any fiddling on my part - I could click on the little orange RSS button and immediately see my C2 feeds on my My Yahoo page, my iGoogle page, Google Reader, Bloglines, or Apple Mail (for Mac). There are countless other RSS readers, too.
But I suspect what most of you system vendors want to know is how to make the RSS feed for your own trading system available on your Web site, so that others can subscribe to your C2 feed. I’ll provide more details and a full tutorial later, but the basic idea is that you should copy the little graphical RSS icon (or use your own), put it on your site, and make sure it is “linked” (through an <a href=“filename”> link) to the RSS file for your system. Your system’s RSS file is located at:
http://www.collective2.com/rss/systems/system1234.rdf
where 1234 is your system’s id number, of course.
Again, I’ll put together a full tutorial at some point in the near future, but for now you can fiddle on your own. Let me know how it works out for you, and if this basic implementation sparks any other interesting ideas.
Matthew
Excellent, thanks Matthew. The good stuff from C2 just keeps coming!
The excellent free services of www.feedburner.com is another great place to check out what can be done with RSS feeds.