Phanfare RSS feeds are now dead

MikeLaurel

I used Phanfare's RSS feeds for a few different purposes (primarily Pix-Star photo frames and John's Background Switcher). Well, Pix-Star started being unhappy with Phanfare's feed and didn't want to fix the problem (I read the RSS spec and Phanfare was correct and Pix-Star was expecting additional things the spec didn't call for). Last year I changed to having Pix-Star show specific Phanfare albums instead of my "most recent" RSS feed from Phanfare. But, John's background switcher has been happily putting my Phanfare RSS feeds until today. I guess someone at Carbonite finally figured out they hadn't shut that off. Now it's off

Here's what I get now when I go the the URL of a Phanfare RSS feed:
<rsp stat="fail" error_code="18" code_value="InvalidParameter" msg=""/>

I knew it wouldn't last forever. I've been happy it's continued to work until now.

The RSS feeds at SmugMug are nowhere as useful as those from Phanfare. In addition, you have to have your galleries public to get an RSS feed. I still have to register on the SmugMug User Voice site to vote for some things like fixing this (my general experience services like User Voice is to give customers an impression their vote matters, but it really doesn't). At least SmugMug could let you have an RSS feed available to "anyone with the link" instead of public. I could probably make a smart album go give me the latest uploads.

Even worse, my Pix-Star photo frame isn't working with SmugMug. I have too many galleries and they seem to time out when retrieving them. I don't know if they'll fix it or not. I haven't tried a SmugMug RSS feed on Pix-Star to see if it works yet.

And I see John's Background Switcher has a new version out now that removes Phanfare.

leftquark

@MikeLaurel said:
I still have to register on the SmugMug User Voice site to vote for some things like fixing this (my general experience services like User Voice is to give customers an impression their vote matters, but it really doesn't).

We try to get all of our customers a chance to help shape SmugMug and our Product Team reviews each suggestion and comment every single day. However, with over 2,000 ideas, it's impossible for us to agree with and get to implement each of them. We use the # of votes and comments to help us make decisions, plan priorities, and when selected, shape how we implement the feature.