Off Topic Posts
I like what our pal Julie Lerman has done with her blog, and was considering doing something similar in moving blogging to my personal site with the ability to cross-post .NET items to weblogs.asp.net. The move would be primarily to accommodate off-topic posts with a possible tie-in to nGallery photos. Since that particular itch started I picked up a charity site which has been filling my latenight hours with meaningful coding and learning, so the weblog probably won't happen. Besides, I like being part of the great aggregated community of .net developers here on weblogs.asp.net.
We've got a sweet setup with ScottW's .Text .95 release with the ability to not only keep Off Topic posts off of the main feed, but to support syndication at the category level. This gives me (and others) the ability to post normally to the main syndicated feel, and if others wish to subscribe to my or any coder's Off Topic feed, there would be no duplication in the posts.
To extend this concept, .Text could be designed with all blogs having a default “Off Topic“ category by default and when selected, the post would automatically not be included in the main syndicated feed. I'm not resolved on whether Off Topic posts should be displayed on the weblogs.asp.net Home Page. I suspect they should not show up there either.
So this is what I'm doing with Off Topic posts. The previous Venti Sumatra post was not supposed to get to the main feed. Sorry. I'm still figuring out the Advanced Options checkboxes...