Cory Webb's How to Joomla!

Website content syndication has been around for a while in the form of RSS, or "Really Simple Syndication." If you want to know more about RSS, you can either ask the source of all knowledge (search for "RSS"), or read about it at Wikipedia. For the sake of brevity, I will only discuss how to use Joomla!'s Syndicate component and third-party RSS services, and I will try to provide a list of other RSS components for Joomla!

RSS in Joomla! 1.0.x

Most of this article will discuss RSS in Joomla! 1.0.x. To syndicate your content in Joomla!, you need to know about two core extensions: com_syndicate and mod_rssfeed.

com_syndicate

The component that generates the RSS feeds for your website is called com_syndicate. You can configure your syndication settings by clicking "Components->Syndicate" in your Joomla! administrator panel.

On the next screen, you will see a list of parameters that you can set for your content syndication. Here is a list of the parameters, along with a description of what each does.

• Security Check: If you set "Security Check" to yes, you can control whether or not your syndication feed is published by publishing or unpublishing the module mod_rssfeed.
• Cache: This paramter determines whether or not your syndication feed will be cached, which means that the server does not have to generate the feed every time it is accessed. Instead, it will pull the feed from the cached version, and refresh at a pre-determined time interval which you set in the "Cache Time" parameter.
• Cache Time: This is the pre-determined interval at which the cache is refreshed.
• # Items: This is the number of content items that will be in your feed.
• Title: This is the title of your feed. I usually just put the title of my website, but you can make this whatever you want it to be.
• Descirption: This is just a brief description of your RSS feed.
• Image: With this, you have the option of having an image linked to your RSS feed.
• Image Alt: This is the alternate text that will go along with your image.
• Limit Text: With this parameter and the "Text Length" parameter, you have the option of limiting how much text is fed from each content item.
• Text Length: This is the length (in number of words) that the feed for each content item will be if you choose to limit it.
• Order: With this, you can set what your content items are ordered by in your feed. The most logical choice is "Most recent first", because people who subscribe to your feed will want to see teh most recent items first.
• Live Bookmarks: With this, you can enable support for Firefox Live Bookmars.

Once you have set your parameters in com_syndicate, it is time to set up mod_rssfeed.

mod_rssfeed

The module for content syndication is mod_rssfeed. This module displays a link to your feed in your choice of 5 different formats: RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom, and OPML. You can choose any combination of the 5 formats to display. I usually just pick one, and I'll explain why in a later section.

Before you use mod_rssfeed, you will need to configure it. Here's how you do it:

• In your Joomla! administrator panel, click Modules->Site Modules to access the Module Manager.

  

• In the list of site modules, find the one with the Type of mod_rssfeed. It is probably the one with the Module Name of Syndicate.
• Click on the module name ("Syndicate") to open up the Module Editor for mod_rssfeed.
• Beneath the "Module Details", you will see "Parameters". Here is a list of the parameters and what each one does.
  • Text: This is text that you can display in the module along with the links.
  • Enable Cache: This tells Joomla! whether or not to cache the content of the module. If you do not understand what this is for, you can just keep it set to "No".
  • Module Class Suffix: By putting a value here, you can add a suffix to the CSS class for this module. You should only do this if your template will apply a different style based on the module class.
  • RSS 0.91: This parameter is used to show or hide the RSS 0.91 link.
  • RSS 1.0: This parameter is used to show or hide the RSS 1.0 link.
  • RSS 2.0: This parameter is used to show or hide the RSS 2.0 link.
  • Atom: This parameter is used to show or hide the Atom link.
  • OPML: This parameter is used to show or hide the OPML link.
  • RSS 0.91 Image: With this parameter, you can choose which image to display for your RSS 0.91 link. It gives you a drop-down list of images to choose from, and it pulls those images from your "images/M_images" directory in your Joomla! installation. If you do not see an image in that directory that you want to use, you can use the media manager to upload an image of your choosing. It will automatically be added to the list of images to choose from.
  • RSS 1.0 Image: Same as RSS 0.91 Image parameter.
  • RSS 2.0 Image: Same as RSS 0.91 Image parameter.
  • Atom Image: Same as RSS 0.91 Image parameter.
  • OPML Image: Same as RSS 0.91 Image parameter.

Once you have set your mod_rssfeed parameters, you will want to publish it to a module position of your choice. If you have done this successfully, you now have a published syndication feed for your website. Be sure and go to your home page, and make sure that your Syndicate module is published and visible to your site's visitors.

Drawback in com_syndicate for Joomla! 1.0.x

The biggest drawback for com_syndicate in Joomla! 1.0.x is that it only syndicates items published to the frontpage. If you wanted to have separate feeds for separate categories, you could not do that with the core syndication component.

Other options

The good news is, there are options around this drawback. Joomla! is a highly extensible application, which means you can either create your own syndication component or use one of the third-party syndication components available for Joomla! Click here for a list of RSS extensions for Joomla! in the Extensions Directory. You want to get a syndication extension and not an RSS reader extension.

More good news: Joomla! 1.5

With Joomla! 1.5, the syndication functionality has gotten a much-needed overhaul. You can syndicate content for any section or category you want, and you can even syndicate content from there components. For example, you could provide an RSS feed of the contacts in your contacts component.

When I have had more time to play with it and understand it, I will post another article on how to use the syndication functionality in Joomla! 1.5.

Advanced Techniques

The syndication component is pretty limited in what it can do for you as a webmaster. Luckily, there are several feed services available the provided extended functionality for your RSS feed. For HowToJoomla!, I am using a service called FeedBurner. With this service, I have several tools at my disposal. Among other things, I can track the number of subscribers to my RSS feed, and I can give visitors the option to receive automatic e-mail updates when my RSS feed is updated. Pretty cool, huh?

I mentioned earlier that I typically only use one of the feed choices (RSS 2.0) available in com_syndicate. That is because FeedBurner only needs one link to your feed, and the format you use is really not that important if you are using FeedBurner.

Here's how you use FeedBurner:

• Sign up for an account at FeedBurner.com. A basic account is free, and you can upgrade to advanced features for a fee.
• On your Joomla! site, get a link to the RSS feed that com_syndicate generates. The links will look something like this:

  your_joomla_directory/index.php?option=com_rss&feed=RSS2.0&no_html=1

• FeedBurner will ask your for a link to your RSS feed. Use the link you got in the previous step.
• FeedBurner will give you a new link to use as your RSS feed. The link to the HowToJoomla feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/howtojoomla.
• You will now want to hide mod_rssfeed, and create a new module that displays a link to your FeedBurner feed. The best way to hide mod_rssfeed is to publish it to a module position that your template does not use. That way, you can keep the module published, but it will not display on the front end of your site. To create a new module, just go to your module manager and click "New". Then, enter your link just like you would enter content, and click "Save".

Another benefit to using a service like FeedBurner is that you can change the location of your RSS feed (for example, if you decide to use a third-party syndication extension), and your visitors will not have to re-subscribe to your feed. You would just need to change your link information through your FeedBurner account. Your visitors will never know the difference, because the link they see (http://feeds.feedburner.com/yourfeedname) stays the same.

Once you make sure that your FeedBurner link module is displaying on the front end just like you want it, you are now set. Your visitors can now subscribe to your RSS feed via Feedburner.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Thanks to Craig Watkins from IllustratorTips.com for suggesting RSS feeds in Joomla! as a "How To" topic. If there is a feature of Joomla! that you would like for me to discuss, please feel free to contact me and suggest the topic.

As always, please feel free to post any questions or comments.

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Amy Stephen: ... http://AmyStephen.us

Very good, thanks Cory!

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December 03, 2006
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Cory: ... http://www.howtojoomla.net

Hi Amy! I'm glad you liked it! Any suggestions for future topics?

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December 03, 2006
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Troy Hall: ... http://www.treeturner.com

cory, how about an article on how to reset ALL of the permissions properly when you don't have shell access. What should they be set too, certainely not global 7777. somehow after using the built in permission configurator, it hosed everything and now I can't get RSS to work. I get Warning: fopen(/home/n6rej/public_html/cache/rss20.xml) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /home/n6rej/public_html/includes/feedcreator.class.php on line 711

Error creating feed file, please check write permissions. even after setting includes and cache and feedcreator.class.php to 777

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December 03, 2006
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Cory: ... http://www.howtojoomla.net

Hi Troy, I'm certainly not an expert on what the security settings should be, but I can look into that and try to get an answer for you.

When you install Joomla!, there is a list of directories that need to be writable. I'll try to find that list and post it here.

In the global configuration, you can set the permissions for files on newly installed extensions. You can set them all to writable if you want to, but that is probably not the best option for security reasons.

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December 03, 2006
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Amy Stephen: ... http://AmyStephen.us

Cory - to me, the most important missing topic of Joomla! educational material are easy to use instructions for how to backup and restore your Joomla! environment.

This is tough because of the varied web hosts and operating systems that come into play. It is also complicated because one must consider their database and website and the implications of third party extensions, upgrades and image files and stupid mistakes.

Might be an elephant to be eaten in pieces, but, after a year of hanging around this joint, I would have to say, sadly, I'll bet well over half of the Joomla! websites are not properly backed up. And, of the ones that are properly backed up, many nervously hold backup files that they hope they never have to use because they haven't a clue about how they would go about doing that.

We are encouraging nontechnical people to use Joomla! to build websites -- but then sort of brushing over the stuff that might keep them from jumping off the top of a building one day. (just kidding, of course)

Even if a tutorial started with XAMPP on the PC and walked through the process -- Cory -- that would be filling an enormous gap.

There - now you won't ever ask me again for another challenge! hehehe!

Everyone, download the podcast and hear this guy from Texas talk about Joomla!, the world finest CMS http://www.podcastpickle.com/casts/18089

Cory - you rock. Love your site and appreciate your help.
Amy

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December 04, 2006
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Craig: ...

Cory,

Awesome! Awesome! Awesome! Especially breaking down what each of the parameters are and what they mean. Makes a lot more sense to me now. I always like the way you explain things.

Thanks for doing that!

Craig

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December 06, 2006
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Cory: ... http://www.howtojoomla.net

Craig, I'm glad you found it useful. Thanks for the suggestion!

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December 06, 2006
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Chris Chee: ... http://rangit.com

Hi Cory.

How do you redirect users from your old feed to your new feed in feedburner?

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December 12, 2006
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Cory: ... http://www.howtojoomla.net

@Chris: I just looked at your website, and it looks like you've already done it. All you do is provide a link to your feed in feedburner. If you look at the menu on this site, you will see a menu item called "feed". That is just a link to http://feeds.feedburner.com/howtojoomla

If your users are using your old feed, it should still be active. I would recommend writing an article on your site about the new feed link. That's really all you can do, because there is no way to automatically redirect users' feed readers to your new feed.

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December 12, 2006
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shashi: ... http://www.indianinside.info

hi
thanks a lot .. nice tips ..

it helped me in my site..

thanks
www.indianinside.info

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December 24, 2006
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Jonathan: ... http://www.jonathanvanee.com

this looks really helpful. my question, which i didn't see the answer to right up front, is how to i publish other people's RSS feeds on my site with joomla. either i missed the reference, or you don't have a link/explanation for that. i'll keep looking. thx for putting this together!

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January 22, 2007
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Cory: ... http://www.howtojoomla.net

Hi Jonathan. I did not mention publishing other people's RSS feeds in this article because it is a different process. Thanks for the suggestion, though. I will see what I can do about adding a tutorial on publishing other people's RSS feeds in Joomla!

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January 22, 2007
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Guest: ...

I'm sorry, this is really not very useful. You basically repeat the information that is available in Joomla's online help system. What is the point of that?

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January 28, 2007
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Cory: ... http://www.howtojoomla.net

Hi Guest,

I'm sorry you feel that way. I actually wrote this article in response to a reader's question. He must not have been able to find it on the online help system.

Also, I think you will find that if I have "copied" anything from the online help system on this site, I have cited the source and given full credit. Nothing from this article is copied in any way. If you read the entire article, you would have found the "Drawback in com_syndicate for Joomla! 1.0.x" section and the "Advanced techniques" section, which I assure you are not covered in the Joomla! online help system.

Instead of complaining that this wasn't very useful, perhaps you could suggest a topic that you would find more useful.

Thanks,
Cory

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January 28, 2007
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chris3243: ...

I want to find out how to use other peoples feeds on my joomla site, I cant figure out if I can even do what im thinking. I want to have an RSS feed that will update on my website with out me having to pull the article every time. Not my own RSS feeds. I know im a noob but I cant seem to figure out how to do this. I am trying to put it into the top right module. I appricate the time you took to write this article but I couldn't figure out what how to solve my problem with it.

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February 05, 2007
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Cory: ... http://www.howtojoomla.net

Hi chris,

That's a great question. To give you a quick answer, just follow these steps:

1) Login to your administrator panel.
2) Click Modules->Site Modules
3) Click the "New" button in the toolbar.
4) Enter your module details.
5) Select the pages/items where you want to publish this module.
6) Under parameters, enter the URL of the RSS feed you wish to publish, and modify the other parameters to suit your needs.
7) Click the "Save" button.

I hope that helps.

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February 05, 2007
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chris3243: ... http://www.alamodefense.110mb.com

Corey,

Thanks for your speedy reply, and your time to type all of that out for me. I hope I could bug you, for your expertise with just another question. I am still having no luck please let me know what i am doing wrong in filling out my parameters I have the following info:

Modual Class Suffix: ( I have this blank dunno what it is) maybe this is my problem?

Modual cache: No

Mambots Yes

RSS URL http://www.nraila.org/xml/newsRSS.aspx
Feed Title Yes
Feed Description Yes
Feed Image No
Items 5
Item Description Yes No
Word Count 20
RSS Cache time 3600

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February 06, 2007
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Cory: ... http://www.howtojoomla.net

I got it to work, and here are the settings I used:

Details
Access Level: Public
Published: Yes

Parameters
Module Class Suffix: blank
Module Cache: No
Mambots: Yes
RSS URL: http://www.nraila.org/xml/newsRSS.aspx
Feed Title: Yes
Feed Description: Yes
Feed Image: Yes
Items: 3
Item Description: Yes
Word Count: 0
RSS Cache Time: 3600

I hope that helps.

Cory

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February 06, 2007
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Chris Stockton: ... http://www.alamodefense.110mb.com

I copyed that exactly and still no workie, I notice you are going to do a write up on what we are talking about, so I will wait for that. I think I am missing a plug in or something extra because all I did was add that custom modual and wanted the feeds in the top right corner of my website, however nothing shows up. I want to thank you for all the time it will take you for doing the write up on this process and I will wait for that, and wont bug you with any more questions.

God Bless

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February 06, 2007
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David: ... http://www.kinaportalen.se/bloggar

Hi,
and thank you.
However, it doesn´t work for me, and I can´t really see WHY??? There are simply no feeds!

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February 20, 2007
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Hummerbie: ... http://www.pathos-seo.com

Hello Cory,

There is one Mayor thing that I don't like about the Standard Syndication component of Joomla!, and that is the fact that it strips all HTML coding, so you never get the layout and images of you postings..

I wrote an article on http://seo4joomla.wordpress.co...promotion/ that I updated later on because of this really great Syndication DS-Component of JoomlaFun.com

I use it on my dutch Joomlasite http://www.itmentor.nl/blog/ and although you probaly don't read Dutch :-) You can still check the feed to see how well it is brought into feedburner, all HTML and layout including pictures remains as shown on the content page.

I think the component of www.joomlafun.com would be a great component for any Joomla! based site that want to Syndicate there site or parts of it.

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March 24, 2007
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Cory: ... http://www.howtojoomla.net

Hi Hummerbie,

Thanks for the information. I agree with you about Joomla's core syndication component. It is lacking in functionality. Syndication is a lot better in version 1.5, but for now it is better to use a 3rd party component like the one you mentioned.

Thanks,
Cory

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March 25, 2007
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Chris Davies: ... http://www.beingthegaffer.com

Hi Cory.

This article has helped me a little bit but im still unsure on what files are needed to be writable for the syndication of my site to work.

Thanks in advance

Chris

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April 27, 2007
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Cory: ... http://www.howtojoomla.net

Hi Chris,

As far as I know, you do not need to make any files writable for the syndication to work. Are you having problems getting it to work?

Cory

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April 27, 2007
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Elles: ... http://Http://www.SuperSmartGames.com

I know I am way late on asking this, but how can I use feedburner (btw thanks a ton for putting this up!) to get my site to feed only from certain categories? I've looked for months for a joomla extension that will let me only feed my news and blog categories. But all of them just seem far to complex (read=potential site breakers tricky to set up). If anyone knows of a nice and easy one, I will be mucho grateful!

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August 28, 2007
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Cory: ... http://www.howtojoomla.net

Hi Elles,

I use RD RSS (http://www.run-digital.com/dow...nager.html) from Run Digital. It enables me to specify sections and/or categories to include in different feeds. You can see my various feeds here http://www.howtojoomla.net/content/view/47/31/. I use a combination of RD RSS and Feedburner.

Cory

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August 29, 2007
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Elles: ... http://www.SuperSmartGames.com

Hi Cory,

Excellent! Thank you! That component is dead easy and does the trick. I just have one quick question if you would indulge me once more.... here is the link to my feed,
http://feeds.feedburner.com/SuperSmartGames/cmoe . The problem I can't solve, is how to make the title stop saying "powered by Joomla" rather than the titles that I gave the feed in both the Run Digital component and on Feedburner. Strange right?

Thanks again for this article and the others you have written. Really, really helpful stuff.

Elles

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September 04, 2007
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Cory: ... http://www.howtojoomla.net

Hi Elles,

I don't know what to tell you about that. Sometimes that sort of stuff gets cached on the Feedburner side. It could also be a setting in your component that is not quite set correctly. Without seeing it, I could not tell you.

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September 04, 2007
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Elles: ... http://www.SuperSmartGames.com

Cory, you rock!

thanks anyway, I'll sort it out.

Cheers!

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September 04, 2007
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alvin: ... http://chisutra.com

Hello Corey, I want to use www. feeddigest.com to add content to my site. I want to use the php rss code, so the content can be read by the search engine bots. I am confuse of how to go about this. I was told to paste the code into a new created module,after I turn of my wysiwyg editor ....etc on the joomla forum. I have tried this but it does not work. You seem to have a deep understanding about this rss stuff.
Can you help me?
Very Grateful
alvin

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November 07, 2007
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Chris S: ... http://www.northcentraltechnology.com

Ok--hopefully this is a new one for you--I have designed a variety of joomla sites in the past, and the syndication worked fine. On this latest one, all the versions of RSS' work fine, except RSS 2.0. When I click on the logo or the one in the URL bar, it takes me to a 'Powered by Joomla!' title, where all the other logos take me to the title I put in the component. Really weird. Any ideas?

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December 08, 2007
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Cory: ... http://www.howtojoomla.net

Hi Chris...That is really weird. Did you make any modifications to the component?

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December 08, 2007
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Chris S: ... http://www.northcentraltechnology.com

No, haven't touched a thing. This is a brand new install of Joomla! (same day actually), and the first time I tried playing with it at all.

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December 09, 2007
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Chris S.: ... http://www.northcentraltechnology.com

Ok--this is one of those Twilight Zone Things (that usually occur in using Linux for me, but I switched templates, and it's working. Is that even possible to have a bug in a template? Anyway, it works. Thanks for your help--I discovered your site accidentally, but I'm excited to continue to use it now that I found it!

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December 09, 2007
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Adam: ... http://www.build-muscle-gain-weight.com

Cory help! I'm having the same problem as Chris. S did above - I can't get rid of the "Joomla! Powered Site" title, despite changing the title in the syndications settings section. Any ideas as to how I can fix this?

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March 26, 2008
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Cory: ...

Hi Adam,

That problem has to do with caching. If you are using Feedburner, it has probably already picked up the "Joomla! Powered Site" title, and you can either wait it out or contact Feedburner to update your feed. Another thing you can do is turn caching off temporarily in the syndicate component so your new title comes across, then turn caching back on.

Good luck!

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March 26, 2008
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Adam: ... http://www.build-muscle-gain-weight.com

I'll give that a try - Thanks!

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March 28, 2008
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sonia: ... http://www.chypps.org.uk

Hi Cory - thanks for that - very helpful...
but I seem to be missing a trick.

will the sydication work with out feedburner? I have never used RSS feeds myself now regret it.

I have set up the module and the component, but not feedburner. Not sure to it's role?
when you click on the RSS 2.0 icon on the site, it just opens Outlook and pastes alot of code into a window. I'm sure this is not right.

Any thoughts?
Sonia

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May 08, 2008
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Gino: ...

Great article,
Do you know if it's possible to create a feed for content items that would usually have "Registered" user acess level?

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June 18, 2008
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Cory: ... http://www.howtojoomla.net

Hi Gino... Yes, anything is possible with Joomla. However, I don't know if there is a component available that does that. You would have to build your own or hire someone to do build one for you.

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June 18, 2008
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Edward: ... http://firm.uk.com

Hi

sorry if this is a dumb question, I've just installed Joomla 1.5 and I'm looking everywhere for some way of syndicating my content. On this article I saw the 'Syndicate' component on J1.0 but on 1.5 I can only see a way to present other people's feeds.

Do I need to install a component or something to do this?

Thanks

Edward

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June 25, 2008
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Cory: ... http://www.howtojoomla.net

Hi Edward... Syndication is handled a bit differently in Joomla 1.5. There is a syndication module available that automatically generates an RSS feed based on the page/component it is on. For example, if you have a menu item for a blog category layout, and publish the syndicate module on that menu item, it will automatically generate an RSS feed link for that blog category.

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June 25, 2008
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