Creating RSS Feeds

You can keep your users/patrons informed by adding news, information from other websites, and more to your own Stacks site in the form of RSS feeds. These feeds can be added directly to your homepage or any other landing page on your site.

Creating these feeds can be a multi-step process which we will discuss in this and subsequent articles. In this article specifically, you'll see

Considerations
Creating a RSS feed
Configuring the settings associated with the feeds list views

Tip! Administrative users with the Editor, Moderator, or Administrator role all have access to create RSS feeds.

Considerations

Site Labels

Site labels can be updated to ensure field names and other terminology matches what your users/patrons expect to see when viewing fields associated with the feeds.

Important! Only users with the Moderator or Administrator role have access to update the site labels.

Before adding feed(s) to a landing page, there are two components must first be created, RSS Feeds and RSS Blocks.

From the Dashboard, then click the Feeds tile
Click RSS Feeds, then +Add RSS Feed
1. Add a Title for the feed's URL
  1. This will be shown as source in a RSS Block
2. Add the Feed URL
3. Feed Pruning, click to expand the section
  1. Prune Type, with this setting, RSS items created after the identified date/time or duration will be deleted. This can help prevent performance issues due to a large accumulation of items, select from:
    1. Date
      1. Enter the date and time
    2. Duration
      1. Enter a numerical value for the appropriate duration (years, months, days, hours, minutes)
4. Feed Expiration
  1. Expiration Type, with this setting, feeds will be unpublished after the identified date/time or duration, select from
    1. Expiration Date
      1. Enter the date and time
    2. Expiration Duration
      1. Enter a numerical value for the appropriate duration (years, months, days, hours, minutes)
5. Click Save and Import

Important! Feed URL's will typically end in .xml or in some cases .php, you may also encounter some links without an extension, but they will never end in .html or .htm. Use a tool like https://validator.w3.org to ensure you have a valid feed URL.

Once created new feeds could take up to 24 hours to fully import, going forward, Stacks will check the feed on a regular interval and import any new items.

Feeds List Settings

The Accessing Feeds article will dive deeper into the various methods that can be used to present RSS feeds to your users/patrons. But one method we'll briefly discuss here is the option to direct your users/patrons to the pre-built /feeds page of your Stacks site.

Here, visitors can see a list of all feeds that have been created, they can then click on any one feed to view the articles or information the feeds pulls into your site. If you have a large number of feeds, it's recommended to review and configure the default settings that control how this initial list is displayed and the information seen when any one item is clicked for a more detailed view.

Tip! Only users with the Moderator or Administrator role have the ability to configure these settings.

From the Dashboard, click the Feeds tile
Click the RSS Feeds tile, then click the Settings tab at the top of the screen
Click the Listing View sub-tab
1. Enable Listing View, when checked this enables access to the listing view for the content type
  1. If disabled, when a user attempts to load the URL for this content, they will be redirected to the homepage
2. Title, edit the title for the page if desired, the default value is RSS Feeds
3. Description, enter a description for the page if desired, this will be visible to users/patrons
4. Display section
  1. Expand First Group by Default, check this box to expand the items, when they are grouped
  2. Display search form, check this box to display a search bar for entries
  3. Display A-Z Link Index, check this box to display a link on the list view when "Group by None" is selected
  4. Enable Add to saved list button, check this box to enable a save to list button
5. Defaults section
  1. Default Page Limit, select the number of entries to be displayed before pagination is enforced
  2. Default Grouping, select the default value entries should be grouped by
    1. Note: users/patrons can change this when viewing the list of entries
  3. Default Sort Field, select the default value entries should be sorted by
  4. Default Sort Order, select the default order in which entries should be sorted
    1. Note: users/patrons can change this when viewing the list of entries
6. Field Visibility section
  1. Check the box beside each field that should be made visible to users/patrons when viewing the list of feeds
7. Click Save configuration when finished
Click the Details View sub-tab
1. Field Visibility section
  1. Check the box beside each field that should be made visible to users/patrons when viewing the list of feeds
2. Enable Add to saved list button, check this box to enable a save to list button
3. Click Save configuration when finished