RSS Feed

Overview

An RSS Feed is a User Item that adds a list of articles from a remote RSS feed to a Custom Page. So, for example, you can use the RSS Feed User Item to add your blog entries to your site. You create your blog on a remote server, such as WordPress.com or Blogger, add some entries, then use the RSS Feed User Item to display links to those entries on your genealogy site.

An RSS Feed User Item is a Content Item. It does not create a page of its own and so you must place it on a Custom Page.

You may place multiple RSS Feed User Items on a single page. The blog entries are fetched from the remote server when a person visiting your site accesses the Custom Page and there will be a slight delay showing the entries. For that reason, you should keep the number of RSS Feed User Items on a page to a minimum, one or two.

Second Site's RSS Feed functionality depends on JavaScript that executes when a person visiting your site accesses the page. If JavaScript is disabled, the page will include a link to the RSS Feed rather than a display of the entries in it.

Second Site's JavaScript uses the Google Feed API, and that requires a Google API Key when the site is published on the web. The Google API Key is free. After you generate the key, copy and paste it into the Google Maps Key property in the User Items section. (Google Maps Keys and Google API Keys are interchangeable.)

Properties

Enabled

See Enabled on the User Items page.

Title

The RSS Feed User Item must have a Title, but the Title may or may not appear on the page. If Show Title is checked, which is the default, the title text appears above the feed entries.

Page Section

See Page Section on the User Items page.

URL

Specify the URL of the remote RSS feed. An example RSS feed URL is http://googleblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml.

It's not always easy to determine the proper URL for an RSS feed. When viewing an HTML page in Firefox, you can use the "subscribe" icon to open an RSS feed. That icon is not enabled by default, but you can customize Firefox to display it. Internet Explorer has a similar feature where you click an RSS icon to show the feeds the browser found on the page. As far as I know, Google Chrome does not have a feed discovery feature.

Max Entries

Set Max Entries to the maximum number of articles that you want included in the list. The default value is 5.

Feed Format

Choose one of the following Feed Formats for the entries in the list. The default is Summary.

In all Feed Formats, the title of the article is a link to the version of the article on the remote site.

User Class

The User Class textbox allows you to specify the name of a CSS class that will be added to the container of the list. Add a user class to customize the appearance of a particular RSS Feed. Choose a unique class name, then use that class name in a User Style to customize the appearance of the list. The HTML and CSS Information section below provides information that will help you create User Styles that apply to RSS Feeds.

HTML and CSS Information

The following information is intended for advanced users.

The template below shows the structure of the HTML elements and CSS classes Second Site creates for the RSS Feed User Item.

<div class="feed user-class">
  <h2>title</h2>
  <ul class="feed-list">
    <li class="feed-item">
      <a href="url" class="feed-link ext">article title</a>
      <div class="feed-date">article date</div>
      <div class="feed-snippet">extract of article content</div>
    </li>
  </ul>
</div>

The template above includes a single article. The actual HTML will include an LI element for each article shown. Also, the template above shows the HTML and CSS used when the Feed Format is set to "Summary". If the Feed Format is set to "Full", the "feed-snippet" class is replaced by "feed-content", and the associated DIV will enclose the full article content.

Italics indicate placeholder text that is replaced by text from the User Item or from the RSS Feed.