Luu Tien Dao: Create RSS Modules

First you have to configure the RSS feeds that you want to use. As an admin-level user, click the RSS feeds link from the Admin (click!) section of the Application menu to enter the Admin RSS modules screen.

The Create a new RSS module panel can be used to create and configure incoming RSS feeds. Complete the fields on the form to create a new RSS module:

Field	Description
Name	Name of the RSS feed. This could be the website or publisher.
Description	Short description of the RSS feed.
URL	The URL of the RSS feed. Normally this will be an XML file. E.g., http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rdf
Refresh rate	Specify how often Tiki should refresh the feed, from once per minute to once per day. Normally you don't want to refresh the feed each time you display it since that can make the site offering the feed slower. So Tiki caches RSS feeds and refreshes them using the interval of time you indicate here.
Show feed title	Specify if the feed's title (as defiend by the publisher) should be displayed when you include the RSS module on a wiki page.
Show publish date	Specify if the publication date for each item in the feed should be displayed when you include the RSS module on a wiki page.

The module (the RSS feed from another site) can then be included in a Tiki wiki page. When you save the new module, Tiki will assign a unique ID to the module and your new module will appear in RSS channels.

In this example we have 2 feeds configured:
- The Slashdot feed is refreshed each 60 minutes and the URI is http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rdf
- The Salon feed is refreshed each 360 minutes and the URL is http://xml.newsisfree.com/feeds/83/783.xml
The righthand column of this table contains actions you can do to your channels: remove, edit, and view.
- Clicking view previews the feed--showing a bullet list of a site's content. E.g., from Slashdot:

RSS Channels also shows the last time the feed was updated. Unlike other weak RSS systems, Tiki won't crunch the cache if it cannot connect to the external site when it needs to refresh it. If a site goes down, Tiki will show the last cached version of the feed without errors or problems to your site.
Note that the RSS channels panel also assigns an ID number to each channel. You'll use this to import RSS feeds into your Tiki.

Incorporate RSS Channels Into Your Tiki

User Modules

Now your Tiki is ready to receive RSS feeds. So, how do you insert them into your site? If you'd like to have them appear as a module in one of your columns, you must create a new user module. For full information on module creation, please see Module Admin.

As an admin-level user, click the Modules link from the Admin (click!) section of the Application menu to enter the Admin Modules screen. Scroll down to the Create new user module panel.

First time administrators of Tiki may think that this means you are creating a module for a new user. But no! You are creating a user module for the first time--that is, a new one!

Enter:

A Name for your module, which will be used to identify it later.
- E.g., Slashdot
A Title, which will appear on screen when the module is displayed.
- E.g., Slashdot News
data, that is, a bit of code~~HTML permitted~~that incorporates your channel(s) into the module. RSS-channel data is displayed using the following syntax (remember the ID number that we created for each RSS channel?):
- Replace x with the ID number of the channel.
- Replace y with the maximum number of items that you want displayed.
  - In this example, we've used the channel-feed ID number for Slashdot on our system and limited it to five items.
- Tiki will automate this process for you:
  - From the Objects that can be included side of the panel, pick a channel from the drop-down list labelled RSS modules. Then click the link, use rss module to automatically insert the channel data into the data box.
    - However, it will not set a max number for you.
- You may now embellish the module data by adding HTML tags. In this example, we wanted the Slashdot headlines to be numbered and so we added a ordered list tag to it.
  - Tiki provides a basic WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor to facilitate HTML coding. Click Use wysiwyg editor to try it out.
  - Tip: You can include more than one RSS channel in a single module.
Click create/edit to complete the module-creation step.

Next, you must tell Tiki where to display this new module. In other words, you must assign it to the Tiki layout.

Once you've create your RSS user module, it'll appear in the Module name drop-down list in the Assign new module panel. Select it.
Decide on its Position in the left, center or right column of your Tiki.
Give it a number to determine its relative Order (top to bottom) in the column.
Select which Groups will be permitted to see this module. Select more than one group by Control-clicking.
- Group permissions are explained further in PermissionAdmin.
Click preview to see what your module will look like. When you're satisfied, click assign.
- For example, here's how our Slashdot module turned out: