Creating a RSS Feeds Page
Have you ever wondered if there’s a way to create a page that displays all your friends’ recent entries so you don’t have to visit their sites individually every time you want to see if they have updates? Well, I have created just the post for you. I still need to find a way to display full entries though, and possibly categories the entries fall under, the author’s name, and a comments link with the number of comments already posted. Basically, I’m looking for something like Livejournal’s friends page or Xanga’s subscriptions page.
Here’s the bit of code you will be needing:
<?php
require_once (ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss-functions.php');
$url = 'http://sue.com/feed/';
$rss = fetch_rss( $url );
if ( $rss ) {
echo "<h4>" . $rss->channel['title'] . "</h4>";
$i = 1;
foreach ($rss->items as $item) {
$href = $item['link'];
$title = $item['title'];
$pubdate = $item['pubdate'];
$author = $item['author'];
$category = $item['category'];
$description = $item['description'];
echo "<span style=\"font-size:16px\">$title</span><br /><b>$pubdate</b><br /><div style=\"padding:0 20px 0 20px\">$description</div>";
if ($i == 1 ) break;
$i = $i + 1;
}}?>
The only part you really need to change is the part that says
http://sue.com/feed/
Change that to whatever URL the feed page is to your friend’s web site. Usually they provide a link for you. If you have Firefox, you can view that page by clicking on the orange square icon on the very right of the address bar. Otherwise you can right click and view source to find where it says link rel=”alternate” and find the URL of the feed after that. Be sure it ends with rss, or feed. Somehow atom feeds don’t work with this code.
For each new feed URL you want on the page, you’ll need to copy and paste that code again and insert the URL.
For an example of a working Friends/Affiliates page, click here.
Edit on 1.30.2008: To display full entry feeds, use this bit of code in place of where it says $description = $item['description'];
$isset = $item['content']['encoded'];
and replace where it says $description with $isset.
To display the author’s name use this:
$author = $item['dc']['creator'];
And be sure to include echo “Author: $author”;
Oh yeah, and here are the instructions for how to apply the code:
To set up the dailies page, you need to create a template. Let’s call it “Feed”. To create a template, basically copy the code from page.php or if you don’t have that use index.php, but delete wherever they call the comments function, the date, and anything else you don’t want to show up on your dailies page.
Create feed.php with that copied code from page.php or index.php. At the top you should write <?php /* Template Name: Feed */ ?> or whatever you want the template name to be. Then you should paste that bit of code I mentioned in this post in place of where it says <?php the_content(); ?> or something similar to that.
Create as many duplicates of that bit of code as there are feeds you want to read from people. It only creates one entry per site. Be sure to replace the URL with whatever feed URL you want. After that, save the feed.php, and upload it on your server under your theme’s folder.
Then create a page in Wordpress, and name it “Dailies” or something like that. Be sure to select the template “Feed”. You don’t have to write anything on that page. Hit publish, and you should be able to view that page.
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I think you mean we should change http://x.nuwen.com/feed/
Sorry. I had the other link there but then somehow I copied and pasted the wrong code when I edited the post. It’s changed now though.
Ooh, nifty! Thanks for the code tidbit.
Hehe, I just use Google Reader.
Instant live updates!
But that looks like a nifty piece of code. Perhaps I’ll try it out one day if I have the time.
it look like “get recent posts from feed” plugin
anyway, thanks fro this post, still useful 
This is wonderful. I’m planning on using it. This would save me so much time, cause I like to check my affiliates/link exhanges at LEAST once a week. I know that’s not alot, but I try for more.. and now with this I’ll be able to. Thanks
Ahaha thanks for telling me
Well anywho I won’t be updating my wordpress site anymore, because I finally got the hosted one up :). You can change my link if you want, I’ve put up yours on mine :). Anyways, I think that I’m a tad old-fashioned considering the fact that I just visit the site to see if there are new updates. I find it more fun, for some odd reason :P.
Hey Sue! In response to your question, I use an archive plugin called Clean Archives Reloaded. (:
Here’s the link for your reference:
http://www.viper007bond.com/wordpress-plugins/clean-archives-reloaded/
(*Hopes that this wouldn’t break your site structure. :(*)
Thanks for the link Brenda. I ended up finding one myself though, called wp collapsible archive. It shows the number of posts per year, then when you expand that, it shows number of posts per month, and then under each month it shows the posts. You can view entries by year, month, and day, and it’s a widget, which I just figured out how to use so I’m pretty excited.
Wow, thanks for this post!! I never thought of doing that, but it looks awesome!! I might do that for my next layout, not quite too sure yet!
Hi Sue, I found your site through WP Forums, dropped you a question there but I figure I’d try here too. I’m curious as to how you created the Dailies page - was it using the “Page” feature in WP or using a plugin, if so, which one?
Thank you so much,
Lisa
I created a template and named it feed. In that template I basically used the page template but in place of where it says
< ?php sf_content(); ?>I used the bit of code mentioned above as many times as I have feeds. I then created a page named dailies, in which I wrote nothing, but I used the feed template.It worked great! Thanks a lot ^__^
Wow did you come up with that?
That’ll come in handy some day. =)
Thanks for your input! Hopefully I fixed it so that it is viewed a bit better!!
Do you really use the RSS page?? ^_^
It’s an awesome tutorial but I don’t know where I would add it ^_^
woah. neat gimmick. i’ll try that out sometime.
Oooh, thanks for the code! Sounds really useful, will have to try it out sometime.
I love your layout.
Take care,
x x x
Whoa..that is pretty cool. I think I’m going to have to try that out some time; it seems like a huge timesaver and a good idea. Thanks!