On this page
What is the News Feed tool?
The News Feed Managers allows you to pull external content feeds (like RSS feeds from an industry blog, a partner site, or a news outlet) directly into your website. Once you add a feed in this manager, you can display it to your website visitors by creating a "News Feed Layout" menu item under the Menu Items tab.
To access these settings, go to Website > News Feeds.
Adding a news feed
- Select New (+) in the top toolbar.
- Add the following details:
- Name: Enter a descriptive name for the external feed.
- Alias: Type the exact same name in lowercase, replacing any blank spaces with dashes (for example: "MemberClicks Blog" becomes "memberclicks-blog").
- Published: Select Yes to make the feed active. If set to No, the feed will not appear on your site.
- Link: Paste the exact external URL address for the feed.
- Articles: Enter the maximum number of feed articles you want to display on your page at one time.
- Cache Time: Enter the number of seconds the system should wait before refreshing the feed content. Caching a feed locally prevents your page from loading slowly every time a user visits.
- RTL Feed: Controls the reading direction of the text. We highly recommend leaving this set to the default option, "Site Language Direction".
- Click Save.
Using the list
The main News Feeds dashboard lets you search, sort, and manage all external content streams using the following controls:
Finding and filtering feeds
- Filter text search: Type a partial name, full word, or unique ID number into the search bar in the upper-left corner and click Go to find a specific feed.
- Drop-down filters: Use the menus above the column headings to narrow down large lists by specific categories or active publishing states.
- Column sorting: Click any text column header to sort the entire list by that value.
Understanding the list columns
- #: A standard index number automatically assigned by the system for easy tracking.
- Checkbox: Select this box to target feeds for bulk toolbar actions like publishing or deleting. Note: The Edit button only opens one file at a time. If you check multiple boxes and click Edit, the system will only open the first selected feed in the list.
- News Feed Name: The descriptive title given to the feed. Click the name to edit its settings.
- Published: Shows whether the feed is currently active. Click the Status Icon directly in this column to instantly toggle a feed between published and unpublished states.
- Order: Dictates the display sequence of your feeds. If your list is sorted by this column, you can change the order by clicking the up and down arrows or by entering numbers into the text fields and clicking the Save Order icon (the green checkmark next to the word Order) in the header row. Note: For a webpage to respect these manual numbers, the Advanced Parameters inside that specific Menu Item must be set to use Order. If the menu parameters are set to overrides like Alphabetical, these numbers will be ignored.
- Articles: Displays the number of external posts configured to show at one time.
- Cache Time: Displays the update refresh rate in seconds.
- ID: A unique identification number assigned automatically by the platform for internal system tracking. It cannot be changed.
Understanding the toolbar
Select the checkboxes next to your chosen news feeds, then click a button in the top-right toolbar to manage them:
- Publish / Unpublish: Instantly activates or deactivates the selected feeds on your live site.
- Delete: Permanently removes the selected external feeds from your website database.
- New: Opens a blank configuration form to build a new feed connection.