Building a Better RSS Feed for you Joomla Blog

If you have worked with Joomla, you know about its syndication function, right?

If not, go publish the module called “Syndication” but most likely you hae seen it on the Frontpage after a new installation of Joomla!

Click on the RSS 2.0 icon and look how it turns out…. o, and the articles you see there are ONLY from the frontpage!
Here are some screen shots of you standard Joomla Syndication option.

 

As you can see, there are no layout options, no images, just text..
Why, becouse the standard Joomla syndication components strips all html coding from your articles… so you beautifully crafted pages from you Joomla blog gets scrabeld to just text.
And it takes only articles that are on the frontpage.

Improving your Joomla Blog Feeds

But there is help, via a great component called DS-Syndication!

DS-Syndication is installed like a normal component and comes with some great features, like a button maker for your RSS Icons, but there is a lot more that this component does.

Like giving you the oppertunity to create feeds for each section or categorie, or bundeling more sections or categories end even create a feed for a section and than exclude a categorie… oké this might be a little overwhelming I guess.

So lets take a look at some screen shots of this component:

Like there is the Button maker, which is Fun, but not why you should use this component:

Are there is also a Ping manager and a Ping functionality build in, Ping is just ping…

Setting up the good stuff for your Joomla Blog

Now we go in the into the functionality why you want this component…

Configuration of your Feed(s) from your Blog section and / or categories.

First you can see how to get to the screen and then I will tell you about some of the settings to use:

Now after this you get a big screen with lots of settings:

And in more detail!

So there it is, a lot of settings to choose from, most of them can stay the way they are, but some of them you really should change!

• RSS Type: leave this or set it to RSS 2.0
• Number of messages:  set it to what you want, for SEO purposes choose a number like 12 or higher
• Frontpage only: You should really set this to NO, unless you really want a special frontpage feed!
  becouse this means really just get the stuff from the frontpage.
• Section: This is where you can make the difference.. select the section you crated for Blogging!
  Remember the post about Blog categorie and Layout  ? well, the section you created there is the one to choose here!
• Exclusion: If you really want, you can exclude a categorie from getting into the feed, like a special FAQ categorie.
• Categories: This is were you could single out one or more categories for your feed, Just make sute you use the real categorie titel! For more cagories, fill in each titel separeted by a comma.

Leave the rest the way it is as standard.

You see, you can now have several feeds for each section of for each category, just setup a new feed.

You want to check how the feed looks, just click on the Feed URL:

You should see the articles form your blog with all the layout and images in tact, just as you want them to be!

There is also a special module you can install that shows you all the feeds you created, but I suggest you run your feeds through www.feedburner.com for optimal settings.
Feedburner will take you feed and ping the right services for you!
If you want to read how this is done with this DS-Syndication component, please read my article on Running your Feed though feedburner.

You can also see some real live feed on the site of SEO for Open Source CMS

The DS-Syndication component is brought to you by www.joomlafun.com and can be downloaded from http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/dssyndicate/

Have fun building a Better RSS Feed for you Joomla Blog!

Technorati Tags: , Joomla Blog, blogging, DS Syndication, Joomla,, Joomla Component, RSS, Feed, Syndication,