blog-info-formats

Blog Info Formats

This page documents existing formats that are used to publish when discussing, linking to, referring to blogs beyond just linking to them using a person or organization's name, which is a solved problem (use <cite> and hCard). E.g. listing one or more feeds for the blog being referenced.

Contributors

• Tantek Çelik

Formats

XOXO

As perhaps the original unnamed blogroll format on most bloggers' blogs, XOXO stands out as the clear leader in terms of referencing at least a bit of info about the blog.

Schema:

• Name of blog
• URL of blog
• "title" attribute brief description/summary about the blog
• relationship - via XFN - to the author of the blog

OPML

Even though it is not published as part of the visible Web, OPML is still published on the web (with publicly accessible HTTP URLs), and thus it is worthy of consideration as an existing format.

Schema:

• text="[BLOG TITLE]"
• description="[BLOG DESCRIPTION]"
• url = "[BLOG URL]"
  • htmlUrl="[BLOG URL]"
  • xmlUrl="[BLOG FEED]"
  • type="rss" | "link" | "atom" - provides a hint of what to expect at the xmlUrl and/or url properties. This is not clearly specified (if you know otherwise, please correct this, and link to normative definitions).
• language="unknown" - not sure if this means the language of the OPML contents (e.g. like HTML lang attribute), or of the destination of the link (e.g. like HTML hreflang attribute).

OPML criticisms (see comments on these posts for answers/clarifications)

• http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&entry=3305486922
• http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2005/09/is_opml_a_crapp.html

See Also

• blog-info-examples
• blog-info-brainstorming
• hAtom