Out of the Rough

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).

The Web , Design & Development , Work

54 Responses to “Getting Joomla! RD_RSS component working”

# Barthon 18 Jan 2008 at 10:23 pm

Thank you! With your help I have it working!
# Brent Edwardson 31 Jan 2008 at 1:06 am

Thanks for the great howto, it was just want I needed to get rd_rss going quickly.

I do have a question about this tool, that I though you or others my shed some light on. It seems rd_rss is removing all of the html formatting on the rss feeds. Is their an easy way to keep that formatting with this tool? I suppose the other side of the coin would be do you recommend a different tool for doing rss feeds that has html functionality.
# Rohanon 31 Jan 2008 at 8:44 am

Happy to hear this post has been of some help to you!

@Brent
Unfortunately I’ve not researched rd_rss to that extent, and not being an expert in this area, I can’t really add much more than what I’ve included in my post
Perhaps someone else may be able to shed some light on the matter…?
# Jialingon 03 Feb 2008 at 12:37 pm

Thank you for your instruction.
Especially after creating the rd_rss links, you give a very easy way to create a link by creating a custom module. Thank you.
# miskairalon 17 Feb 2008 at 12:49 pm

Thanks for the info. I’ve just spent hours of googling trying to get this thing working and finally found you I think I might try a different component before following your instructions but I just wanted to say thanks for going to the trouble of getting this info on paper so to speak.
# costason 20 Feb 2008 at 11:21 am

nicely done!!!

I only have one problem with the component, i can not get it to display more than 5 items.
Have you got any clues?
# David W.on 22 Feb 2008 at 7:51 am

Man, this post was a savor to me. I downloaded this component because it looked like what I needed, and had some fairly good reviews. I configured the feed, but had no idea how to get it on my front page.

Thanks to your directions, we have our feed up and active. The only problem is the last directions on the Custom Output section took me a while to understand. I literally pasted the feed in there, and when I looked at the results, I saw the URL displayed as plain text.

Only then, did I realize I had to actually wrap it in HTML code. This is my HTML code I used, and it might be useful for people who want a normal feed icon on their website:

<a href="http://etzahaim.org/index.php?option=com_rd_rss&id=2" rel="nofollow"></a>
# Brennyon 23 Feb 2008 at 8:45 am

Thanks a lot for your help! Great!
# Bobon 04 Mar 2008 at 8:05 am

Your post made this a simple task! Thanks very much!

BOb
# Markon 05 Mar 2008 at 10:05 pm

Using Joomla 1.5, I have this working (almost) but only the page titles appear in the RSS reader and the main article is not extracted. It seems that the links to the articles have the main site URL added in there twice, so for example:

http://www.mysite.comhttp//www.mysite.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=55&Itemid=44

There are therefore not valid URLs and don’t work.

I confirm in the actual link for the RSS feed, they are not there twice!

I checked your example at : http://www.melbourneathenaeum.org.au/ and that works fine.

Anyone any ideas?
# Jaredon 11 Mar 2008 at 1:23 pm

Just a thank you for your instructions! Running ver. 1.0.13 and had some issues when I tried to paste the URL using the editor. Each time I clicked the ‘link’ (chain icon) button it popped a new window and asked me to log in (was kind of a pain but it worked).

Thanks so much!
# darrellon 12 Mar 2008 at 1:43 pm

Hi. I’m completely new to website design and stumped trying to put some RSS feed material up on my site. Ultimately, I would like to have a few feeds up on the left side like the author, and also feed generated material in the center column of the front page. I’m not sure if RD RSS is even capable of doing all of this, put I would like to see what I can do with it. I have downloaded and installed the component (in joomla 1.5 on a comp running mac osx). I’m confused about how to add additional feeds though. I’m given places to state/change the feed name, title, category, and description, etc., but I can’t figure out where I change the feed url from that of the frontpage. When I try to add new feeds, the url stays the same…just with a different id number at the end of the address. I know I’m probably missing something that should be obvious, but I just can’t see it myself. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
# darrellon 16 Mar 2008 at 10:37 am

Please ignore previous comment. If I had just read this post with a little more focus, my own question would clearly have been answered. Great tutorial…even for the reading impaired such as myself lol
# Jenson 17 Mar 2008 at 5:43 am

Thanks a lot, I had a nice display of feeds up and running in a jiffy thanks to your simple walkthrough!
# darrellon 18 Mar 2008 at 3:39 am

Hey. I’ve been able to use the RD RSS to put feeds up (using created modules as described here) in the left and right columns of my page, but would like to also have feed generated content in the main central column (I’m using the JA purity template). Is that possible? Thanks in advance.
# Steveon 22 Mar 2008 at 12:03 pm

Thanks a ton. Could not make too much sense of the german site. Well done, actually veru simple when all the bones fall into place….
# kongondoon 06 Apr 2008 at 3:53 am

Thanks Rohan for the instructions

@darrell - !I would like to also have feed generated content in the main central column (I’m using the JA purity template). Is that possible?”

I think you can achieve this in at least two ways:

1. Since RD_RSS produces links, you can create a joomla article/page and have these links there. Either link them to a text or icon or image - which would display the RSS feed when clicked

2. The other way to do it is to use the mambot mosmodule. With this bot you can display your modules in any page. So, after creating your Module showing your RSS, you can have it display in a content page using the syntax
{mosmodule module=”name of your module”}
# ubillon 22 Apr 2008 at 8:08 pm

Hi there, thanks for this RD RSS article. It really helped me a lot. Before that I was using DS-syndicate, but somehow couldn’t ever get it to work for months.

Although the impression I got initially was that DS-syndicate is somehow ‘newer’ and should be ‘better’, but RD RSS did the thing that I wanted, so that’s good

I have a question here though, for Comments RSS, I am using !JoomlaComment, however, for this I get an error when clicking on the comment’s RSS link, as below:

###
Warning: fopen(feed.xml) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /MyJoomlaFolder/includes/feedcreator.class.php on line 711

Error creating feed file, please check write permissions.
###

Any experience you have with that? Any advice?
I don’t know where this feed.xml file is supposed to be, nor can I find it.
I tried already to set the /includes/ folder permissions to 777 from 755, but that doesn’t help.

(Apart from that, !JC is a very good component.)

Thanks and Cheers.
# ubillon 22 Apr 2008 at 8:28 pm

Oh… another question,

Is there any way that I can display the full article (with pictures, and full html formatting, as in my original page) ?

Such as in this example below:
http://www.dannychoo.com/rss/jpn/

As it is, I can only set RD RSS to display all the text, but not the pictures or html formatting.

Is it possible with RD RSS, or do I have to use something else?
# Rohanon 22 Apr 2008 at 9:18 pm

Hi ubill,
Glad my post has been of some assistance to you (and others too). Unfortunately, I am not able to provide much in the way of help with your questions - my knowledge of RD_RSS really doesn’t extend beyond that which is in my original post.
Hopefully, someone may stumble across this page, see your questions, and either contact you directly or post a response that will prove to be helpful.
# pvckon 09 May 2008 at 1:54 pm

Very helpful, thank you!
# Dugaldon 11 May 2008 at 9:23 pm

Hi Rohan,

Great instructions, but I must be missing something. After following your instructions, my feed link seems to be bypassing the RSS Feed Manager (RD RSS) component and being served up by the Syndicate component. This is because the feed only shows my front page content items and not the content items in the categories that I selected when setting up the RSS Feed Manager Feed. In fact, the id parameter seems to be ignored as the I can enter anything into it (e.g. http://www.skicow.com/index.php?option=com_rd_rss&id=xxxxxx results in the same as fhttp://www.skicow.com/index.php?option=com_rd_rss&id=2 which is the URL detailed in the RSS Feed Manager admin page under the URL column).

Note that on my site I have used the URL feed://www.skicow.com/component/option,com_rd_rss/id=2 which is equivalent to that detailed above as I have SEO enabled in my configuration.

Do you have any ideas why my feeds don’t show items in the categories I have selected for it (which are ski articles under the Articles menu at the top menu bar of my site www.skicow.com).

Thanks in advance.
# Rohanon 11 May 2008 at 10:41 pm

Hi Dugald,
Unfortunately I didn’t dig so deep as to get a full understanding of every nuance of RD_RSS feed; I learned just enough to get the feeds working as I required them (which is what you see posted here) and left it at that. As a result I’m not really in a position to be of much assistance, except to suggest you perhaps retrace your steps through the post above and see if there may be a small derivation that might be the cause of the problem - a task you’ve probably done repeatedly already…
# Dugaldon 12 May 2008 at 10:14 pm

After much trial and error, the thing that fixed this for me was uninstalling and then reinstalling the Run Digital RSS Feed Manager.
# Rohanon 13 May 2008 at 10:17 am

Thanks for taking the time to post your solution Dugald - and I’m glad you were able to get it working.
# Susanon 03 Jun 2008 at 2:41 pm

Wow! This is fantastic. I have been playing with this mod for awhile but haven’t been able to figure it out. And then while perusing the joomla forums I found your link to this page- your tutorial had me set up and going within 15 minutes! I am so chuffed.

Thanks heaps,
Susan
# Andreason 22 Jun 2008 at 7:07 pm

I am having the same problem as Mark (# Mark on 05 Mar 2008 at 10:05 pm)

All items are presented in the feed as “http://www.mysite.comhttp://www.mysite.com/index.php?……”

Any ideas please?
# xpon 28 Jun 2008 at 10:32 pm

Thanks heaps!
# JOnon 24 Jul 2008 at 10:55 pm

How do you change the title of the feed to not be “”Powered by Joomla! 1.o
# Nickon 01 Aug 2008 at 5:17 pm

Another grateful user. I too was using DS Syndicate and finding it a bit unreliable. With that I seemed to be limited to only adding categories in the same section. RD RSS really lets me add categories from anywhere. I do find that it can take a few attempts to get the chosen categories to “stick” and that my choices can disappear and revert to “all” categories. I seem to get this worked out by choosing only one category initially and then going back to add the rest once I am passed the initial problems. Thanks again for sharing your time and experience, it has been really important to me.
# Tonyon 02 Aug 2008 at 3:04 pm

Has anyone found a solution to the lack of html formatting in the feed emails? I’m using RD RSS and Feedburner, and the emails delivered via feedburner are not in html, so lose all links, images etc.

Anyone got any ideas?
# Cathyon 11 Oct 2008 at 1:55 pm

Hi, Thank you so much for a savior quick documentation of RD. It is however very stubborn and won’t appear like any other module I got using my template. In other words, it is floating somewhere in my right or left side of my page depending on where I position. Have any idea why? I’ll show you what it looks like if willing to help. THank you
# Rohanon 11 Oct 2008 at 2:21 pm

Hi Cathy,
The positioning problem sounds to me like it might be specific to your template’s style sheet (possibly to do with where Custom Modules are displayed) rather than to the RD_RSS component itself.
Hopefully if someone reads this they can help you get it sorted.
# Ty Rockon 12 Oct 2008 at 1:55 pm

Blessings to you. I thought I was a moron as I could not figure out how to get it to work. You have saved me hours of stress.
# Zechon 22 Oct 2008 at 2:42 am

My RSS feed is displaying the improper item ID. How can I make the output = the ItemID that I need?

Thanks,
# Ulfon 13 Nov 2008 at 7:47 pm

Hi, great software but not working properly. The links produced is not complete.

The RSS links should point to this as an example:
http://www.hmjf.se/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=1&id=1&Itemid=2

But the produced links is missing the last number in the URL:
http://www.hmjf.se/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=85&Itemid=

The result is a text on the site saying “you don’t have the access to the page. Please login”.

BR
# Ulfon 13 Nov 2008 at 7:58 pm

Sorry the first link was wrong.

Should be ofcourse.

http://www.hmjf.se/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=83&Itemid=1

The only differerence is the last item number.
# mithayon 22 Nov 2008 at 4:58 am

thank you! i couldn’t get it working on my own. with your help, it took less that 15 mins!
thanks again.
- m
# Haryation 17 Dec 2008 at 8:05 pm

Dear Rohan.

Thanks a lot for your step by step on how to setup RSS Component. It really really helpful for a beginner like me…

-yati
# Ken Ramirezon 21 Dec 2008 at 4:49 am

Worked like a charm. I added the module to our News Room page (http://www.axsystechgroup.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=3&Itemid=28) and even borrowed the URL for our FaceBook business page (http://facebook.axsystechgroup.com) and everything is working smoothly.

Thanks for this blog. Couldn’t have done it with it.
# deejayon 24 Dec 2008 at 10:14 am

Great instructions …. very clear.

I’m having an issue with links within an article item. Instead of formatting the linked text, I’m getting the url info. in brackets … example:

…. If you find a problem on the website, or have difficulty accessing or using the site, please email (index.php?option=com_contact Itemid=3) us. …..

In the example above, the word “email” is actually hyperlinked.

Is this normal? Is there any way to remedy this so the linked text actually works?

Thanks.
# m con 28 Jan 2009 at 3:59 am

Thanks for the info - really appreciated!
# boardtcon 18 Jul 2009 at 12:39 am

Has anyone figured away to show an RSS link in the sidebar with 1.5. It seems one can’t produce a custom module but just select from the prepackaged/installed ones
# Lily Prasadon 27 Jul 2009 at 8:22 pm

Hi!
With your help I was able to setup the RSS Feed on my website but when i click on it it opens a box for “Add Live Bookmark”. Can you please tell me how to setup so that it opens up on the site itself.

Regards,
Lily
# Ali Awadhon 28 Aug 2009 at 8:24 am

Excellent,
Thanks for the tips.
Regards,
Ali
# sobesanon 05 Sep 2009 at 11:29 pm

Hi and thanks for great article that got me much further than i was this morning!

My question is sort of similar to boardtc’s….did anybody figure out how to adjust this step by step for 1.5 as you can’t create a custom module in the way described here.
The ones you can create you have to pick a prefixed type, so half ways step 7 i’m lost

I will spend the rest of the day googeling this, if i find a 1.5 solution i’ll post it here
# sobesanon 06 Sep 2009 at 3:32 am

I’m so embarrassed, please ignore my previous post (not the part where it said how great your step by step is ;)).
As many of my ‘hit the wall moments’ with Joomla, it all came down to proper reading;
Make a custom html module in v1.5…don’t pick any of the prefab ones
..done..working like a charm!.. thanks again for this.
# Reythielon 21 Oct 2009 at 5:39 pm

Thank you so much!!! It helps a lot
# Paulaon 24 Oct 2009 at 1:49 am

Thank you very much for taking the time to share this.
# Jennon 06 Nov 2009 at 1:42 pm

Thanks a bunch for this!
# Kulturagotikaon 11 Dec 2009 at 6:49 pm

Thanks thanks thanks thanks, and thanks.
# Joeon 15 Dec 2009 at 8:54 am

Love the extension and your comments. I am running in to 1 problem, it is not grabbing my latest updates for the RSS feed I created. What setting I am missing?
# George K.on 05 Jan 2010 at 10:41 am

I took about 20 minutes to get it working - including the localhost sandbox install and test. Many thanks and Happy New Year
# leanneon 09 Mar 2010 at 10:07 am

Hi there I have been trying to upload the rd_rss component which I downloaded from run digital, but as it is not a packaged file I am not having any luck. Can you please help?