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Dave Winer, who is just about single-handedly pushing OPML into mainstream consciousness, likes the fact that Rick Ellis has added OPML support to Expression Engine, and points to Ellis's use of the outlining language on his blog.

Ellis, by the way, is CEO of pMachine, the company behind Expression Engine, the lightweight content management system behind my blog.

I was amused at Dave's post, not to mention Ellis's blogroll note that reads, "This is what I'm currently reading via my RSS reader. The links are generated via a PHP script I wrote that parses an exported OPML file." Amused because I looked for just such a plugin last August. Unable to find it, I posted a note in the plugin forum. Yoshi Melrose replied via email that he thought he could create just such a plugin. I answered a few questions and figured I'd see a plugin in a month or so. A few hours later, Yoshi emailed me that the plugin was ready; would I give it a try?

I've managed my blogroll using OPML and Yoshi's plugin ever since. I keep the very simple OPML files in a folder I've added to the Expression Engine directory; the OPML files themselves are available for download directly from my blogroll so you can import them into your own RSS newsreader (assuming it has OPML support). I wonder if Rick didn't notice that Yoshi had already written the plugin, but it works just fine. In fact, I wrote about this back in September.

Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.

As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.