If you want to pull content in from other websites, then we have a control called the RSS Feed Reader.
This control is designed to pull content from any web accessible RSS feed and display it directly on a webpage.
A simple syndication from the BBC updated every 20 minutes.
Syndicating Content from the BBC
In this example we are looking at syndicating content from the BBC website, but in actual fact any RSS feed could be used.
All we need is the URL of the feed and we can then paste this into our syndication control.
Once done, your page will automatically update as the feed changes and new items are added. To improve performance the RSS Feed Reader can also cache the data for a time duration of your choice.
See the original RSS feed
This screenshot shows the standard RSS Feed Reader, taking a feed from twitter.com
This screenshot shows the standard RSS Feed Reader, taking a feed from twitter.com
Syndicating Content from Twitter
The RSS Feed Reader is also designed to properly handle Twitter feeds.
This means that you can have a Twitter feed up-and-running showing the Twitter source without any extra configuration.
Because Twitter sets the title and the description of the feed item to be the same, we recommend hiding the description, which is just another one of the standard options available on the control.
To see this live and in action just visit our homepage.
This screenshot shows the typical source code from both a paragraph-based or unordered list-based control.
Formatting Options
The RSS Feed Reader can either be formated as an unordered list or a series of paragraphs.
The control comes with a standard theme that will style it automatically if your designers have not prepared a specific stylesheet for it.
As with all Contensis controls the source code is accessible, semantic and XHTML compliant.
A screenshot of the Syndication controls working with the What's New control
RSS in Standard Controls
Syndicating content out to other sites couldn't be simpler. In Contensis most of the standard controls support RSS and Atom nativley.
In this case we are looking at the What's New control. All you need do is leave all the options as defaut when you insert it into your page or template, and the RSS Link and Atom Link will automatically appear.
Virtually every Contensis list control supports RSS ranging from social networking to jobs.
An RSS feed created to filter data from a specific section of a site.
Creating a Custom RSS or Atom Feed
If the RSS produced by any of the lists is not appropriate then you can create a custom RSS feed using the RSS Feed Writer control.
This control allows you to include/exclude any content from your entire site, and present it on a URL of your choice.
The selection of content is driven by query, so as new content is applicable it will start appearing in the feed.
The website visitor is presented with a standard RSS feed output when visiting a URL that is served by the RSS feed.
This screenshot shows how AutoDiscovery works when you access the BBC website; if there are multiple feeds on a page multiple items will appear.
RSS AutoDiscovery
Contensis fully supports RSS AutoDiscovery.
RSS AutoDiscovery is a technique that makes it possible for browsers and other software to automatically find a site's RSS feed, whether it's in RSS 1.0 or RSS 2.0 format.
Supported by Mozilla Firefox 2.0, Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 and other browsers, AutoDiscovery has become the best way to inform users that a web site offers a syndication feed. When a browser loads a page and discovers that a feed is available, Firefox and Internet Explorer display the common feed icon in the address bar.
See RSS Advisory Board for more information