In this article I shall be providing details of how to add a news feed to your web site by using the DotNetNuke standard module, News Feed (RSS). Throughout the Internet more and more web sites are making some of their content available as RSS news Feeds. This method of providing content for use by others is called syndication. An RSS news feed uses XML, an open standard, to provide headlines, links and article summaries.
Incorporating this information is a greeat way of adding dynamic content to your web site. If the source is carefully chosen then it may be used to add news information relevant to the content of your web site. For example if the web site is for a golf club then the source chosen should relate to either a general sport news stories or better still golf stories.
The RSS News Feed standard DotNetNuke module enables us to connect a news feed from another (or even our own) web site into a page. The module can accept any RSS standard feed. However, it does provide links to Moreover as a good starting point.
We edit the RSS newsfeed module in the usual way, by placing the mouse over the edit pencil associated with the module and clicking on Edit Newsfeed. We now have three main options to configure.
The first option allows us to select either an internal or external feed. For the purposes of this introduction, select the external option. The file we are going to associate with this option we will collect shortly. We can now select an extra file which will enable us to format the feed to our web site styling. For the purposes of this introduct we will leave this option blank.
To complete our example, follow the link to moreover.com. For one of the feed descriptions copy the red text in the right hand Feed URL column. Place this copied text in the external box of our Newsfeed configuration form. Select Update. You shjould now have a working RSS newsfeed on your web page.
When initially configured the news feed will show 10 articles. However, if the space on the web site is limited we may wish to reduce this to, say, 5. There is an option to add a News Feed Stylesheet. This may either be an internal or external file. Create your own file, by referring to this article. Having saved the article, upload it to the web site and choose it as the stylesheet for the news feed.