Syndicate Press – a wordpress plugin for RSS feeds

12/13/2011: Version 1.0.5 now available.  See the changelog for details!!!

Easy RSS aggregation for WordPress

Syndicate Press is a brand new WordPress plugin from henryranch.net. Syndicate Press lets you include RSS feeds directly in your WordPress Posts or Pages at a location YOU choose. This plugin provides a very easy to use administration page and includes great features such as feed caching, filters and several display options.

Unlike a number of the RSS syndication plugins for WordPress, Syndicate Press is actively maintained and regularly updated with new features and enhancements. The Syndicate Press development team at henryranch.net has focused on ease of use, performance, stability and functionality to bring you a great plugin that will help keep your WordPress site up to date with the latest in RSS feeds from every corner of the world.

Features:

• Easy integration into your wordpress site!
  • Feeds can be placed within Pages or Posts with simple bbcodes.
  • Feeds can be inserted anywhere in a Theme by a simple php function call.
• Feeds honor your site CSS
  • The plugin does not impose any style constraints which allows your feed content to match your sites look and feel.
• Caching of input feeds
  • Configurable cache expiration
  • Protect your feed providers from excessive downloads
    • Some feed providers will block websites that repeatedly access their RSS feeds
    • The caching methodology used by Syndicate Press will effectively remove this as an issue
• Caching of formatted output
  • Caches the parsed and formatted output so that pages serve faster and reduce server CPU load.
    • For example, with 4 large feeds on a single page, full parsing and formatting can take approximately 1.6 seconds without output caching enabled.  When output caching is enabled, the page is processed in ~0.001 seconds to ~0.13 seconds.
• Filtering
  • Some feeds may contain content that you don’t want on your site.  Syndicate Press’s filtering allows you to define custom filter keywords that help control what type of content is displayed to your users.
  • Syndicate Press supports 2 types of content filters, inclusive and exclusive.  These filters operate on the feed item level.  This means that an item from a feed can be filtered out due to content, while another item from the same feed will not be filtered out due to content.
    • Inclusive keyword filters: Only feed items that contain one of the inclusive filter keywords will be displayed
    • Exclusive keyword filters: Feed items that contain one of the exclusive filter keywords will not be displayed.  The exclusive filter is applied after the inclusive filter.
• Insert customized content between feeds, including advertising code such as Google’s Adsense.
• Identify feeds with a short, easy to remember name
  • The feed name can be used to reference the feed in your Page or Post
• Configurable description text location
  • Below the title link
  • In the title link’s hover over “title” attribute
• Limit the number of items from a feed
• Limit the length of the feed description to a given number of characters
• Custom feed and article formatting
  • Enter custom html tags to format the feed and/or article titles

Usage:

Configuring and using Syndicate Press is easy.  To begin using Syndicate Press, simply follow these steps:

1. Install Syndicate Press
   1. Via WordPress ‘upload’ feature
      1. Download the “WordPress upload compatible package” from the release page.
      2. Use the WordPress Plugin ‘Upload’ feature to install the plugin.
      3. Activate the plugin via the ‘Activate’ link once the install completes.
   2. Via FTP:
      1. Unzip and copy the syndicate-press directory into your wordpress plugins directory
         1. Make sure that you copy the syndicate-press directory that contains the plugin php code.
         2. Thus, your install directory structure should look like this:
            1. …/wp-content/plugins/syndicate-press/syndicate-press-plugin.php
               1. There are other files in the syndicate press directory.  This is an example so you can see the correct directory path…
      2. View your Plugins list
      3. Activate the Syndicate Press plugin
      4. Open the Syndicate Press configuration page by clicking the ‘Syndicate Press’ link under the WordPress ‘Settings’ menu.
   3. Automatic: Use the wordpress ‘Add new plugin’ feature to add the plugin from the plugin repository
2. Open the administration page from within WordPress
3. Select the “Enable” radio-button
4. Enter an RSS feed URL into the feed list box
   1. You may enter more than 1 feed URL in the list.
      1. Simply place each feed URL on a separate line
   2. Before syndicating a feed, make sure that you have permission from the feed producer to use their feed on your website.  Most publishers are happy to allow syndication of their feeds because it provides free, community based advertising for thier content.  There are feed producers who do not want their RSS feeds syndicated.  You are responsible for following the terms of use set forth by a feed producer.
5. Configure any other settings as you wish…
6. Click the “Update Settings” button
7. Create a new Page (or Post)
8. Add your desired feeds to the page or post.
   1. Setting the feedname to ‘all’ will display all of the RSS feeds that you have defined in your feed list
9. Save and publish the Page
10. View the page with all of the  excellent RSS feed items in your browser…
11. Sit back and relax, knowing that you just syndicated your first RSS feed on your site…and it was easy!

Adding feeds to a page, post or theme file…

Adding one or more feeds to your site is easy.

Configuration screenshots:

Adding and naming feed URLs:
Setting inclusive and exclusive keyword filters:
Configuring the cache settings:
Setting the display modes:

FAQ:

1. Does Syndicate Press support Atom feeds?
   1. Yes, as of Beta version 0.6.
2. Does Syndicate Press support RDF formatted RSS feeds?
   1. Yes, there is base support of RDF formatted feeds as of Beta version 0.9.2
   2. RDF formatted feeds can be challenging due to the custom nature of the feed, so only basic support for RDF feeds is implemented as of Beta version 0.9.2
3. I installed the plugin and when I try to activate it I get the following error: “The plugin does not have a valid header.”
   1. This is typically a result of an extra syndicate-press directory in your path…
      1. CORRECT: …/wp-content/plugins/syndicate-press/*
      2. INCORRECT: …/wp-content/plugins/syndicate-press/syndicate-press/*
4. I installed the plugin and when I try to activate it, it fails with a fatal error message.
   1. Syndicate Press requires PHP 5+.
5. Can I see an example of Syndicate Press in use?
   1. Yes, take a look at http://henryranch.net/news/

Donations:

A donation is a great way to show your support for this plugin. Donations help offset the cost of maintenance, development and hosting. Everyone who donates will get a link back to their website, posted prominently on the main site for this plugin.

There is no minimum donation amount. If you like this plugin and find that it has saved you time or effort, you can be the judge of how much that is worth to you.

License:

• Beta and Release Candidate versions (versions less than 0.9.9) are licensed under a non-transferable, restricted license.  Read the license terms in the download for details.
• Version 1.0 and greater is released under the GPL.  Certain internal components (TinyFeedParser and TinyHttpClient) that are used by the plugin are not licensed under the GPL.  See the files for details.

Download:

Syndicate Press is now available through your WordPress admin Plugin ‘Add New’ page or on the WordPress Plugin site.  To install Syndicate Press from your WordPress admin page, simply search for “Syndicate Press” and install it like any other plugin.

Credit:

Syndicate Press is designed and developed by Henry Ranch LLC and is copyright © 2009-2011, Henry Ranch LLC.