How to embed an RSS feed into an article in Joomla

Written by Cory | February 28, 2009 | (0)

In my most recent blog post about my 10 favorite Joomla! extensions, I embedded a news feed from Twitter to show the latest posts using the #t10jx tag on Twitter. Initially, I thought about finding a plugin that handled displaying an RSS feed in an article, since that would be the easiest way to accomplish what I wanted. Then I remembered the "Load Module" plugin and the "Feed Display" module that are part of a core Joomla! installation. I realized that I could embed the feed without installing any 3rd-party extensions. Read on to find out how to do it.

Step 1: Set up the Load Module plugin

The first thing you need to do is navigate to the plugin manager in your Joomla! Administrator panel. In Joomla! 1.5, you can access the plugin manager by clicking Extensions->Plugin Manager in the administrator main menu. In the plugin manager, locate the "Content - Load Moudle" plugin. If you have a lot of plugins, it might help to filter the list to only show content plugins. The filter is in the top right hand corner above the page just above the list of plugins. Under "Select Type", select "content."

Once you have located the Load Module plugin, click on it to open it in the plugin editor. First, make sure the plugin is enabled. Then set its style however you choose. The style is the way in which modules will be loaded via this plugin. I prefer to choose "Wrapped by Divs", "Wrapped by Multiple Divs" or "No wrapping (raw output)" because those offer cleaner, more semantic output. Once you have set the parameters how you want them, save the changes you have made to the plugin.

Step 2: Create module you wish to display

You can display any type of module you want to display through this plugin. To display an RSS feed, you need to create a Feed Display module.

First, navigate to the module manager by clicking Extensions->Module Manager in the administrator menu. Then, click new in the toolbar to create a new module. A list of module types will be displayed. In that list, select "Feed Display" to create a module that displays an RSS feed.

Module position

You can choose any module position to display this module because the Load Module plugin lets you specify any module position. A good idea is to choose some name that will not interfere with the other module positions on the site because you do not want to display this module anywhere but in an article. For my article, I chose "tjx", but you could use anything. For the "position" parameter, simply delete the position that is currently selected and type the position name you wish to use.

Module parameters

Under the module's parameters, be sure and set the feed URL. Otherwise, the module won't work properly. The rest of the parameters can be set however you want according to how you want the module to display.

Step 3: Embedding the module into an article

Now that the Load Module plugin and Feed Display module are set the way you want them, you are ready to embed the module into an article. To embed the module, you simply need to add the following plugin tag to your article:

{loadposition position_name}

Make sure you set position_name to the name of the module position you chose in Step 2. In my case, the tag looked like this:

{loadposition tjx}

That's all there is to it. The module position is now loaded into your article with the Feed Display module that you set up, so you now have an RSS feed embedded in an article.

Questions/Comments

Questions and comments are always welcome. I hope you have found this useful.

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Comments (21)

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Great but not working for me
written by vickie, March 05, 2009

Does this work with legacy turned on?
I use modules and positions all the time so I knew exactly what you were explaining. Everything is set up, enabled and/or published. The feed shows up when I use position right or left, so I know the feed url is correct.

Any thoughts why it wouldn't show use the load module tag in an article?

-2

...
written by Cory, March 05, 2009

Hi vickie,

I just tried it with legacy mode turned on and it worked. Make sure the module position name you load is the same as the module position name you set for your module.

Good luck!
Cory

Awesome
written by Darryl, March 05, 2009

Thanks Cory, short sweet and simple and worked perfectly!

-1

Thanks!
written by jason abalos, March 06, 2009

this is indeed very helpful Cory. I have been googling some simple steps on joomla and this is one of the simplest i got.Thanks a lot!

-1

Doesn't work for me
written by Adam, March 11, 2009

Followed your instructions exactly, but i'm just getting a blank page...

...
written by Cory, March 11, 2009

Hi Adam, I'm not sure why it's not working for you. Can you give me some more specific information about how you are setting it up?

...
written by Adam, March 11, 2009

Hi Corey - that was a quick response! I've solved the problem, and it was all down to a rather embarrassing boob... I left the position name in italics! My bad, I'm feeling rather silly! Thanks for your help.

It was really helpful!
written by Jagjit, March 14, 2009

Thanks. It was really easy and helpful to get feeds into article.

Is there a way to format the feeds displayed in articles? - it may be asking too much.

...
written by Adam, March 16, 2009

Is there any way to add page breaks automatically to feeds one loads into articles?

...
written by Cory, March 16, 2009

Hi Adam, I'm sure it's possible (anything's possible), but you'd have to modify the feed display module.

Vern Gosdin Music
written by Nash, April 01, 2009

The only problem with this solution is if you try to use it on the front page, your RSS fedd will read . If there's a fix, somebody say something cuz I need to feed the front page forVern Gosdin

Cool
written by Olivier, April 07, 2009

Thank you very much !! I though there were easiest way to do that, but with this solution management of RRS is much more easy for the future.

Regards,

...
written by Teresa, April 07, 2009

I did everything step by step and it just shows a blank page. Not sure what I am doing wrong

didn't work either
written by Shyam Karki, April 29, 2009

Embedding the rss feed module into an article, really didn't work. I did all the step very carefully with right attempt, but still i didn't get the result... i dun know where did i go wrong?

Shyam

Don't waste your time!
written by Mikey, June 10, 2009

No need to waste your time, it doesn't work for a rss news feed in 1.5.10. But you will pull your hair out while your getting blank pages.

Scrolling?
written by gubbles, July 16, 2009

Hi there

This was very helpful - thanks. I've been searching for info on how to do this for a long time now. Only think is I wold like the news feed to scroll acfross the module from right to left like a news ticker across the bottom of a TV screen rather than in a list format as is with this module. Is there a way to modify it to get it to scroll or could you perhaps suggest a scrolling ticker I could use? I'ce tried a few but they haven't had the option to change the background colour.
Thanks

Works fine... thanks for the tip :)
written by Crusader, August 07, 2009

Works fine for me, just be sure to put your position name tag in properly, if you copy and paste the tag from this page then overwrite your position name it ends up in italics and as a previous poster mentioned that will stop the feed from loading. I think half the problem people have had is from the copy paste, remember to take off the italics folks!!

This was much appreciated i literally bought the domain name late last night and am getting some news stuff up quickly while I format the game guides so this was a great help, thank you!

How do you add a plugin tag to an article?
written by Erok210, August 08, 2009

You say "To embed the module, you simply need to add the following plugin tag to your article." But, I'm a "neebee" and I don't see how that is accomplished.

I have the feed working in the "right" position, so I know it is working. Now, I want to put it into an article.

Thanks

Same Plugin Tag Issue
written by Neuronic, August 12, 2009

Right, I too am a newbie... How do I add the plugin tag to the article? Is this something I need to do in the coding?

...
written by Matt, September 22, 2009

I read through all the instructions above. Followed the exactly as they are laid out but its not working. Can someone please help? I am running 1.5.14, does that make a difference?

Thanks in advance

Matt