What is it?
The News Feeds tool allows you to add News Feeds from other sites into your website. You can add links to these feeds by creating a News Feed layout under the Menu Items tab.
How to Access
To access News Feeds, browse to Website > News Feeds from the drop-down menu in the admin section.
Adding a new News Feed
1. First, hover over the Website tab and click News Feeds.
2. Click on New to set up a new feed.
3. Next, give the feed a name and an alias. The alias should be the lowercase version of the name, with dashes in place of spaces (ex. MemberClicks Blog = memberclicks-blog)
4. Make sure that the feed is set to Published if you want it to display on your site.
5. Enter the URL for the feed in the Link box and set the number of feed articles to display at one time.
6. The Cache Time is the time in seconds before the feed will refresh.
7. Finally, you have the $order (which can only be changed when editing an existing feed or from the main feed manager page) and the RTL Feed option which allows you to choose the direction of the feed. It is recommended that this is left to the default of "Site Language Direction".
Video
Here's a short video of the process.
Column Headers
Click on the column heading to sort the list by that column's value.
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#: An indexing number automatically assigned for ease of reference.
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Checkbox: Check this box to select one or more items. To select all items, check the box in the column heading. After one or more boxes are checked, click a toolbar button to take an action on the selected item or items. Many toolbar actions, such as Publish and Unpublish, can work with multiple items. Others, such as Edit, only work on one item at a time. If multiple items are checked and you press Edit, the first item will be opened for editing.
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News Feed Name: The name of the feed. Make it as descriptive as possible.
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Published: Whether the item has been published or not. You can change the Published state by clicking on the icon in this column.
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Order: The order to display items. If the list is sorted by this column, you can change the order by clicking the arrows or by entering the sequential order and clicking 'Save Order,' which is the green checkmark icon next to the word Order. Note that the display order on a page is set in the Parameters - Advanced section for each Menu Item. If that order is set to use something other than 'Order' (for example, 'Title - Alphabetical'), then the order value on this screen will be ignored. If the Menu Item Order parameter is set to use 'Order', then the items will display on the page based on the order on this screen.
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# Articles: The number of articles set to display.
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Cache Time: The number of seconds to cache the feed locally.
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ID: The ID number. This is a unique identification number for this item assigned automatically. It is used to identify the item internally and you can not change this number.
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Display #: The number of items to display on one page. If there are more items than this number, you can use the page navigation buttons (Start, Prev, Next, End, and page numbers) to navigate between pages. Note that if you have a large number of items, it may be helpful to use the Filter options, located above the column headings, to limit which items display.
Toolbar
At the top right you will see the toolbar:
The functions are:
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Publish: To publish one or more items, select them and click on this button.
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Unpublish: To unpublish one or more items, select them and click on this button.
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Delete: To delete one or more items, select them and click this button. The selected items will be deleted.
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New: Click on this button to create a new item. You will enter the New page for this item.
- Parameters: Allows you to set certain default settings for all news feeds, such as whether the Feed Description and Name Column items automatically display.
List Filters
- Filter by Partial Title: You can filter the list of items either by entering in part of the title or the ID number. You can also select a combination of Category and Published State.
- Filter: In the upper-left corner just above the column headings is a Filter field and two buttons, as shown below:
If you have a large number of items on the list, you can use this filter to find the desired item(s) quickly. Enter either part of the title or an ID number and press 'Go' to display the matching items. You can enter in whole words or part of a word.