Mastering Joomla: How to Get RSS News Feeds on Your Joomla Website

RSS, or "Really Simple Syndication," is a scripting language used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries and news headlines to your website. RSS is an easy way to update your website because you can simply receive feeds from other sites - far much easier than adding information manually. Far more content can be obtained for your site by simply adding RSS feeds from the numerous online publishers who syndicate their content.

An RSS document, or feed, is sent to a specified location on your site where the information is displayed. RSS feeds can be read by an aggregator application. Joomla comes complete with an RSS aggregator, so you don't have to worry about downloading an extension. Joomla's RSS aggregator called "Syndicate," and it can display news ordered by categories.

Given the simplicity of the Joomla content management system, adding RSS Feed content into your Joomla pages is actually a fairly simple process. This tutorial will walk you through the process. You can view screenshots in the slideshow that accompanies this tutorial, which you can view at this link: www.associatedcontent.com/slideshow/1442/how_to_get_rss_news_feeds_on_your_joomla.html

Step #1
In this first step you will log in to your Joomla administrative page and define categories.
=> Click Components and then the News feeds button on the drop-down menu that appears.
=> Next click Manage Categories.
=> Now add a new category by clicking New.
=> On the page that appears, you will need to enter information related to your category.

*Under the Category Title field, you need to enter the name of the category that will appear on menus.
*Under the Category Name field, you will need to type in the name that will appear on the web page that will display your news feeds.
*Under the Image field, if desired, you can input an image file related to the category.
*Under the Access Level menu, you can also add access levels so that only certain users can view your news feeds.
*You will then need to enter a description related to the category.

=> Once you are done, click Save to save your information.

Step #2
Now that you have added a section, you will just have to find websites which syndicate their content, and decide which ones you will use to get your news feeds. Any page that contains the RSS logo (see Picture 1) is capable of supplying news feeds. Websites such as online newspapers, fan sites, community forums and certain game sites provide RSS feeds.

You will now paste it onto Joomla's news feeds component. To do this, you will use the component's drop-own menu as before:
*Click Components and then the News Feeds button on the drop-down menu that appears.
*Next click Manage News Feeds.
*Select your category and then paste the RSS feed on the field labeled Link.
*You can also indicate the maximum number of articles to be posted and the cache time.
*Make sure to click Save upon completion.

Step #3
You can test your new feed by subscribing to it via a feed reader. This way you can verify that your readers are getting the information you want them to.
Your website is now set to receive RSS news feeds.