If your use Joomla as a Blog, or if you just want one section of your site to setup as a Blog, you might have run into some trouble.
You want a feed to go with your Blog… but the standard Syndication Component of Joomla is to limited….
The Standard RSS Feed problem of Joomla
No, I don't mean the integration of Feed content into Joomla pages, there are several components that can do that very well.
That's a topic to write about some other time.
We are now facing a bigger problem, and that is getting your content out of your Joomla Blog section into a Feed reader.
And possible with all the layout of your page, including pictures, hyperlinks and paragraph layout.
If you use the standard Syndicate Component, you can set some parameters, but you can only syndicate the front page.
And all off your nicely placed page layout is stripped of all HTML coding one the Feed is created :-(
Leaving you with one big blop of text in the feed that you provide to your readers….
Joomla RSS Feed with Layout and other then the Frontpage
Is it possible? Keeping your post – page layout and using another part of the site for the Feed?
Yes, it can be done, with a special component.
There are two components that let you create a feed other then the Frontpage.
The first on is from Run-Digital and is called RSS Feed manager, and is an easy to use component if you limit the feed content to just a number of introduction words and then the link to the whole page.
The other one is much lesser known… probably because most people just syndicate the Intro.
But what if you want to Feed the whole post content? and with all the layout and stuff…
I that case you need DS-Syndicate from www.joomlafun.com !!
This Component lest you choose if you want a categorie content, or several ones to go into the feed, or just the Frontpage, or both.
But the best part is… the complete layout is still there !! No HTML stripping, just as you wrote it it gets it's way into the Feed.
Now you can create and use your Joomla based Blog with an RSS Feed the way you alway wanted.
And if you still are not ready to use this feature of Joomla, then I suggest you read my post on seo4joomla.wordpress.com
Thanks for the tip. I just relaunched http://bestnetworksecurity.com as a Joomla site and noticed today that the formatting was stripped on the syndication and Run Digital components, which is definitely unacceptable. Does the DS-Syndicate component replace Run Digital or do I need both? Does it let browsers find the feed? Run Digital doesn’t. By the way, I burned the feed here:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/bestnetworksecurity
Would also be cool to have a plug-in for joomla that redirects feed requests to the feedburner feed like we have in wp.
@Jon
DS-Syndicate is a separate RSS Component.
You don’t need to have Run Digital along side, so you can deinstall it if you want to.
To make sure the Feed is Found, and easily to subscribe to, I alway use Feedburner as you did now.
What I do then is to create a new Module in Joomla where I copy and past the Code from the Chicklet Chooser at the Publicize Tab of FeedBurner.
Make sure you work without an WYSIWYG editor, or use one that doesn’t effect your HTML code.
Publicize and Postition the Module, and you done.
I will look into a way to have it Found by IE7, didn’t notice that before.
I tried initally with a module, but I guess it didn’t work because of the wysiwyg, so I’ll try without, then I tried with a mambot, which had unexpected consequences, but I can live with it for now. If I can get it into a module, I can stick it up in user 1 where I want it. Thanks again for the tip. The DS module works great so far. Live bookmarks for IE7, Firefox and Safari would be great. The built-in syndication comp did this.
@Jon
Problem with the Life Feeds is easy to overcome I learned today, will write a post on it later.
Just checkout http://blogs.msdn.com/rssteam/articles/PublishersGuide.aspx
Copy the < link rel="alternate" line , give it the right options and put it in the head section of your Joomla Template. Clean any caches you might have and go to your homepage with IE. Works for me in http://www.pathos-seo.com :-)
“Because of people who are bothering other people (crackers) this site is closed. ”
Looks like joomlafun.com is down. Does anyone have an alternative way to download this?
@Hipath 400, You can download the the Component on http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/dssyndicate/ where it is still resides. Please note that this is a Joomla 1.0.x component, Joomal 1.5 is better in HTML Output.
@HiPaTH 4000, yes you can download the component at http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/dssyndicate/ but do keep in mind that this component is for Joomla 1.0.x and not J 1.5.
There is a great RSS component for Joomla 1.5 at http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/bca_rss/
I’m hoping you can help with a problem I’ve been having with standard RSS Feed on our Joomla site.
Do you have any idea why deleted articles that were once published to our front page would continue to appear in google reader?
I’ve emptied the article trash, the menu trash and purged the cache and expired cache, but test layout articles we created back in December that have been totally removed from our Joomla installation appear in google reader and are still available.
I’ve searched forum after forum with no luck and you seem to be the “RSS Guy” so I’m really hoping you can help.
Thanks,
Harry
@Harry: Google reader has its own cache that you can not empty, there are a few solutions mentioned on http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/reader/thread?tid=677bcc4ae33bb7c8&hl=en
First one is to overwrite the articles by publishing new articles with the old ID, but then you need to know the old article id’s.
Second one is the send the feed through Googles FeedBurner that will only show the real articels that are in the feed right now.
How you can do that is explained in the free chapter5 of my Joomla 1.5 SEO Book. You can donwload that free chapter from here http://joomlablogging.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/joomla-seo-and-blogging/
You can then redirect all RSS Feed request to the FeedBurner Feed.
A million thanks!!! Will download the chapter and then buy your book. I’m about get on a plane and was wondering if you knew off hand how long, if I take the feed burner approach, it will take for the old posts to go away?
@Harry: In your Google readere they will not be removed as they are cached in the reader.
For new RSS Feed readers they will NOT appear!
Hopefully the Google Feed reader team will come with a solution for the old cached post in a new release.
As you can tell, I’m new at this…:-)
So when you say my google reader, you mean my personal reader.
If I make the joomla feed pulling articles from my home page live, and people click on it and add the feed to their reader or igoogle, they won’t see the articles? It’s just me because I already have it in my reader? In which case, I could just make it live now, yes?
Thanks for your patience…:-)
@Harry: No, if you set it live now, without it going through FeedBurner, Google reader wil show the posts from their cache…
You can send met the rss link to check it for you (I wil put a contact form on the about page), but as I understand the old posts wil be with Google forever :-(
Thanks, Herbert. Finally getting back to this. Just read your chapter (looking forward to reading the book) and I understand how to run my feed through feedburner. So just want to make sure I really get this before going live. If I run it through feedburner and use that feed, THEN when people subscribe to the feed on our site by clicking on the icon in the browser window, they will only get the new articles. The old one will still be in Google’s cache, but unless someone new exactly what to search for they would never see it.
Is this right?…:-)
@Harry: That is exactly what should happen, try it and see what happens :-) Send me the FeedBurner RSS link and I will test it as well.
Thanks. Will do… Fingers crossed…:-)
Herbert… Well… I’m closer…:-)
I followed the steps in the chapter from your book and created the following feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/RenewingAmericanLeadership
If I put it an custom HTML module it works.
Got a couple of issues:
1. When I put it into iGoogle the feeds come up, but if you click on the title of the “module” it goes to the following url instead of the main one:
http://www.torenewamerica.com/component/content/frontpage
The problem is that we have the component turned off and are just publishing articles to the front page, so this doesn’t work for us. Is there a way to change it to go to the main url?
2. When I turn on show feed link in the Home Page menu, so that the feed icon will show in the browser window, if you click on that icon to subscribe it sends people to the original feed we put into feedburner, not the one it created. How do I change that?
3. In Google Reader, when you click on the articles it’s shows both the administrator’s email address as the author as well as the author’s alias that we assign to each article, because our authors don’t post articles themselves. Is there a way to change this?
Thanks as always for any help you can be. Don’t think I could have gotten this close without you…:-)
Best,
Harry
@Harry: 1. Could you tell me at what position you placed the module? Can you send me the HTML you put in that module bij seperacte email (use the contact form aon the about page).
If nothing is there that produces this problem you can alwasy do a 301 redirect to the main page in your .htaccess file.
2. You need to change the rss feed line in the HTML code of your template to point to the new feed link. See http://www.petefreitag.com/item/384.cfm
3. I am not really sure, but could you check what happens when you turn off the display of the authors name in the advanced parameters on the article level?
Thanks, Herbert. Will email you momentarily on 1 and take try your suggestions on 2 & 3
Nice .. I’m having this problem too hope this can be solve
Can anyone check out what’s my problems is?
Here is the link of RSS not working >
http://minhthanh.com/home/index.php?format=feed&type=rss
@conq ty quang cao: Try to run it through Googles Feedburner system and see if that works.
If you use Firefox and click on the RSS feed button in the addres bar the feed works fine.
So from a technical point of view the Feed works as it should, be the persentation is not correct, by using Feedburner you can overcome that problem.
@Herbert : Did you check out my site yet ? they all not work … I think something conflict inside joomla