RSS Displayer Blocks

IMPORTANT: only use RSS Displayer Blocks when linking to an RSS Feed on an external site. If you need to show posts from your own site, please use the Posts List Block

If you need to have the RSS Displayer block added to your site, please contact WebSanity.

  1. Set Feed URL.

    Enter the address of the RSS feed; for instance:

    • http://feeds.granneman.com/granneblog
    • http://feeds.habitatstl.org/habitat_stl_news
    • http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml
    • http://rss.macworld.com/macworld/feeds/main

    NOTE: The title of this block is “Add RSS Displayer”, but you can also display ATOM feeds as well. ATOM is a technology that is very similar to RSS. For all the technical details, read the Wikipedia article on ATOM.

  2. Set Data Format.

    Enter the format of dates in this box. Unfortunately, you’re asked to use some pretty nerdy symbols for the date format. Here are some common formats that should cover most people’s needs:

    • F j, Y (January 1, 2011)
    • j F Y (1 January 2011)
    • M j, Y (Jan 1, 2011)
    • n/j/y (1/1/2011)
    • g:i a (10:06 pm)

    If you really want to learn all the geeky details, head over to http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php and start reading.

  3. Set Feed Title.

    Enter the title of the RSS feed, if you’d like—as you can see, this is optional.

  4. Set Number of Items to Display.

    How many items from the RSS feed should be displayed? Common numbers are 3, 5, and 10. Of course, the number of items you choose to show is going to be based in large part on the type of content you want to display in the first place, which brings us to the next field…

  5. Set Display.

    Select Only Titles if you just want headlines to appear.

    Select Titles & Summary if you more than just headlines to appear.

    Your choice really depends upon what you want visitors to your website to see. Headlines are useful if you don’t have much space in an area on your webpage, but a summary can help give viewers the information they need to actually go ahead and click on the link.

  6. Set Open Links in a New Window.

    When a visitor clicks on a link in the RSS feed, do you want the link to open in the current window, or in a new window?

    WebSanity recommends that you allow the link to open in the current window, and that you leave this checkbox unchecked.

  7. Press Add to update the contents of your Block.

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