AO3 Fic Feeds on DW

[sweetsorcery]

sholio suggested I repost this from my journal due to its general usefulness, so here we go.


Please note I've made some changes to this, because I screwed up with the naming of the Biggles fandom feed. I didn't realise sidebar filtering doesn't change the feed for a tag. Thank you, black_bentley, for working that out. I'm so sorry! Pardon me while I crawl under a rock. 🤦🏻‍♀️


It's come to my attention that not everyone is using this very handy, highly bespoke, and easy to set up feature to keep up to date with new fic uploads of interest on AO3. If this is an old hat to you, feel free to pass by while rolling your eyes. :D

If not... Rather than requiring you to subscribe to specific AO3 authors, and missing new fic posts of interest by those you're not subscribed to, this is a way to subscribe to a whole fandom tag, a relationship tag, a character tag, a trope, or whatever else you fancy. You can make this as specific as you can make any AO3 search.

Btw, if you go to my profile under "Feeds", there's a whole bunch of feeds related to my favourite pairings there already, because I've set them up, so if any of those are of interest, you can just click on them and subscribe to them.

Otherwise, here's an example of how to set up a feed on DW:

1. Go to AO3 and click on any tag of interest. Let's say you want to be notified of all new fic posts for the Biggles fandom, so you'd go to the fandom tag. From there, you could filter further, by excluding ratings or categories or warnings or characters... whatever. (In my case, I included all M/M while excluding all M/F.) (Edited, because apparently applying sidebar filters within a tag doesn't change the tag's feed. I'm very sorry, I didn't realise.)

2. Once everything is filtered to your liking you've picked your tag, click on the "RSS Feed" button at the top right. Copy the URL that gives you.

3. Go to: https://www.dreamwidth.org/feeds/ and paste that URL into the Feed URL box.

4. Once you've clicked the "Add Feed" button, you can name it something that makes sense to you. (In my example, I named it biggles_slash_feed.) The "_feed" bit at the end is automatically added, so don't include that in your name.
I apologise for naming the feed this, but I genuinely thought I'd created a feed with the M/F category filtered out, and alas, the feed name can't be changed, because apparently there can only be one per AO3 tag. It's now stuck being biggles_slash_feed, but it should, in fact, notify you of everything newly posted under the Biggles fandom tag. This might make pairing or character tags more useful, depending on your interests?
EDIT: I've contact DW support and am trying to get them to delete this feed so it can be set up again with the fandom name only, or to alternatively rename it to biggles_feed from their end.

5. Then subscribe to it and you're done. New story posts matching your filter tag choice will pop up on your DW reading page automatically. You'll usually get the most recent ones to match right away, which is a nice way to be sure you've set it up right. Others can subscribe to the same feed, of course.

EDIT: If you need this info later and have forgotten it, you can find all this easily enough in the FAQ section on Feeds. :)
Also, on the DW Feeds page in the link above, you'll find a list of existing feeds in order of number of subscribers. There's feeds for news, fandoms, cats... all sorts of things.

Comments

[sholio]

Thank you for reposting this! I actually had NO idea you could do this on DW, and I think this is an excellent set of instructions since so much of the Biggles fanfic fandom is on DW these days; we might as well use it to deliver bespoke fic announcements to our doorstep. :D

[sweetsorcery]

No problem. I'm all for bespoke fic announcements. :D

[sheron]

bespoke Biggles fic *_*