I was thinking that the RSS protocol itself should include the ability to automatically receive comments in the feed.

Ah, I understand now. This can actually be done. What you need is a news reader with a threaded news item view, like Apple Mail’s or Mozilla Thunderbird’s threaded email view, and a single feed which includes both entries and comments. (You can make one using FeedBurner’s feed slicing ability.)

At least, you could do that in theory. ^_^;;

I did a little more research and found that the AdSense for Feeds is a beta program and currently full.

Heh, that was exactly what I find out, ironically, through an AdSense ad placed on my news feeds page!

Mmmmm…. WordPress 2.0….

I did a little more research and found that the AdSense for Feeds is a beta program and currently full. I don’t think I’ll mess with the code, I could just see Google cancelling my AdSense subscription if I do. But once they have it available for the rest of us, it looks like you simple select it as one of the Ad Unit options. Pretty simple.

I have thought for a few months, now, that RSS should somehow incorporate updates to comments. It breaks the syndication model when you are forced to return to the original web page just to check on updates to comments.

:) If I understand your question correctly, then I must ask if you are aware that WordPress includes several forms of comment RSS feeds, including all latest comments, or comments only on a specific entry. I sometimes grab a specific entry’s comment RSS feed if, for example, I’ve posted a comment and want to see followups (and there’s no subscribe-to-comments feature available).

As for WordPress… isn’t it fun! I’ve been hacking away for a few months and loving what I can do with it. I’ve designed a few web sites with it that do not even act like a blog.

Have you heard about all the new stuff in WordPress 2.0? I’m excited! Among other things, they have a built-in WYSIWYG editor for post creation. That’s going to score major brownie points with the non-geeks.

Lastly, have you figured out how to include AdSense in your RSS feed?

Honestly, I never tried. It doesn’t sound like it would be too difficult, though. I’d imagine all that needs to be done is to edit the RSS template. If it’s not just a cut-and-paste operation, then I’m sure you can ask that question on Google Groups somewhere and get a pretty good answer. Let me know if you do, by the way, because I’d be very interested in trying it (eventually).

I have thought for a few months, now, that RSS should somehow incorporate updates to comments. It breaks the syndication model when you are forced to return to the original web page just to check on updates to comments.

As for WordPress… isn’t it fun! I’ve been hacking away for a few months and loving what I can do with it. I’ve designed a few web sites with it that do not even act like a blog. Do you know about this site:
http://www.alexking.org/software/wordpress/theme_browser.php

I pick themes that have the overall feel that I want, then change the picture, remove features in the sidebar, or anything else that suits my fancy. So although I love the subscription model, I keep coming back to your site to see what changes you have made.

Lastly, have you figured out how to include AdSense in your RSS feed?