Getting Joomla! RD_RSS component working
Rohan December 6th, 2007
Recently needed to get RSS Feeds working on a Joomla! installation, but the default functionality within Joomla! only allows for feeds of items published to the front page. This was too limited for my requirements, as I needed to be able to produce feeds for specific categories of information within the website (nine categories in all).
Enter Run Digital’s RSS Feed Manager (RD_RSS), a 3rd-party Joomla! component, which caters for just this functionality. According to my research, there’s plenty of happy users who claim to have got it working, and it seems to have gained general acceptance as the Joomla! RSS Feed Manager of choice. All good so far.
Only problem is that what little documentation there is, is in German. And the people who wrote the component don’t seem to offer much (any) support for the product: a “here it is, use it as you will” type of thing. Strangely, there also does not seem to be anyone who has documented how they got the component working. So, after a bit of mucking around, I have managed to find a solution that satisfies my needs: a list of feed links located in the left sidebar under the main navigation - see it in action here.
Below are the steps I implemented to achieve my result - I’m sure there are probably other, more efficient and “better”, methods for implementing RD-RSS, but this is what worked for me.
1. Download and Install RD_RSS from the Run Digital website.
2. Once installed, you need to add feed categories to the component; click Components > RD RSS.
3. Click New to add a new feed and fill in the details as required.
(By default there is one feed already present, FRONTPAGE. This feed cannot be removed, but it really doesn’t matter; if you won’t be offering a feed for front-page items, then you can just ignore it.)
4. Repeat Step 3 for each category (or group of categories) for which you wish to create a feed.
5. You will finish up with a list of one or more feeds - take note of the URLs, as you will need them in Step 7, below.
6. In my specific situation, I needed a list of links that users could click on as a means of subscribing to that feed. In order to achieve this, I created a custom module in which I simply pasted links to the URLs noted in Step 5. above. To create a custom module, click Modules > Site Modules to see a list of existing modules.
7. Click New to add a new module (I called my module RSS Feeds), and fill in the following:
- Fill in the Details section (in addition to other things, this determines location and order on the page where the feed links will appear - sidebar, header, footer, etc.);
- Leave the Parameters section (not required for this method);
- In the Custom Output section, add links (from Step 5, above), one for each feed;
- In the Pages/Items section, you can choose which pages will display the list of links. If you want all pages, select All as I have done.
8. Be sure the module is Published, and click Save.
That’s all there is to it. FYI, these instructions are based on my configuration, which consists of Joomla! v1.0.12 and RD_RSS v1.x (the file name, rd_rss_v1_1.zip, implies that the component is at v1.1, but under Installers > Components it lists RD_RSS as being v1.0.0, dated December 2005, and authored by Robert Deutz).
