User Documentation

Download
Launch

News Feeds

News Display

The Feed Display Module

There is a core Feed Display module available to display news from other sites. The following screenshot shows the data entry form with the URL of the Joomla Announcements news feed. Notice the Word Count is set to 100. Otherwise, the length of an announcement can be excessive for a sidebar module.

Feed display module data entry

The result can be ugly but can be improved with some custom styles in user.css:

Feed display module data entry

Feed Display Pages

As an alternative to display of news in a module you can create a menu item to display a news feed in a web page. From the Administrator menu:

  • Select Components / NewsFeeds / Feeds. You could first create a Category for news.
  • Select the New button in the Toolbar.
  • Fill out the News Feeds: Edit form:
    • The Link is the RSS link copied from a remote source.
    • The Description is optional.
    • The Otions tab has items to control the feed Display.
  • Save & Close

NewsFeed component data entry

Create a menu item starting from the Administrator menu:

  • Select Menus / Main Menu or any other menu for this item.
  • Select New from the Menus: Items Toolbar.
  • In the Menu Item Type use the Select button to find and select News Feeds / Single News Feed.
  • Fill out the rest of the form as appropriate.
  • Save & Close

NewsFeed menu item data entry

Test it: go to the Site menu and select the Feed menu item.

NewsFeed display

Each item in the feed is a <li> within a <ul> tag so by default it appears marked by a bullet. This is not so obvious if the items are long. You can apply your own styles in user.css. The following will place each item in a distinct box:

ul.com-newsfeeds-newsfeed__items {
  list-style-type: none;
  padding-left: 0;
}

ul.com-newsfeeds-newsfeed__items > li {
  padding: 1rem;
  margin-bottom: 1rem;
  border: 2px solid navy;
}

Which appears like this:

NewsFeed custom display

List News Feeds in a Category

The Joomla! RSS News Feeds page lists eight separate news feeds. You could make a feed for some or all of them and assign them to a Category, say Joomla News. Then you can create a menu item with Menu Item Type set to List News Feeds in a Category and the Category set to Joomla News.

News feed by category menu form

Try it to see the outcome!

News Feeds

Introduction to News Feeds

Once upon a time it was common practice for one website to display news items from remote websites in a page or panel. Browsers even had built-in News Readers to do just that. Times change and the major browsers no longer offer that option. And there are new methods to share site content, espcially with social media sites.

The method to share news is Really Simple Syndication, usually abbreviated to RSS, and this still has a place in website promotion. The following screenshot shows NetNewsWire, a free and open source RSS reader for Mac. Other RSS readers are available for other platforms. The illustration shows the Joomla! Announcements RSS feed selected. Ten announcements are listed with Title and brief description. The selected announcement is shown in full in the right column.

RSS feed of Joomla Announcements

Imagine what one or more RSS feeds might do for your website!

Setting up a News Feed

Your website has News Feeds set up out of the box. A newly installed Joomla 5 website has these two lines near the top of the Home page source:

<link href="/j51/index.php?format=feed&amp;type=rss" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Home">
<link href="/j51/index.php?format=feed&amp;type=atom" rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Home">

These lines allow automated systems to use either RSS or Atom Feeds. Atom is a later and slightly different news syndication specification. The lines will be present in all Featured pages and Category Blog pages but not in most other page types. You may disable inclusion of these RSS feeds if you wish.

Toggle RSS Feed Link

The Global setting of the RSS Feed Link is found in the Integration tab of the Articles: Options page. Set to Show or Hide as you see fit. The default is Show.

The Global setting can be overridden in a Category blog menu item. Again, select the Integration tab and set the RSS Feed Link to Show or Hide.

The Syndication Feeds Module

There is a core module that you can place on Featured or Category Blog pages to provide a Syndication link. Fill in the fields in the Module tab. Most have suitable defaults. If the Label field is left blank the default English label is Feed Entries. In the Menu Assignment tab select On all pages. The module will only appear on Featured and Category Blog pages.

Syndication feeds data entry

Remember to assign the module to a Position and maked it Published.

In the Site page view the module displays a link. It is not intended for clicking unless you have a local Newsreader configured. The link needs to be copied for use in a Newsreader on another site or Newsreader application.

Syndication feeds display

Note that the link is for the items on that page. So if your site has several category blog pages you will have several different RSS feeds.