Drupal Basics-Feed Categories

I was asked by a good friend if I could merge the NPSL Offside Links and the Deli.cio.us NPSL links feeds into a single feed on nonprofitcommons.com in a block on the left side of the site.  I took care of it this evening, and it is actually a piece of cake to do.  These steps work in Drupal 5.x.

  1. Log into your Drupal site in an administrative capacity
  2. Click on "Administer"
  3. Click on "News Aggregator"
  4. Click on "Add Category"
  5. Create your Category
  6. Click on "Add Feed" and add the RSS feeds you wish to draw from

After you have a Category set up, the next step is to add exterior feeds. 

  1. Click on "Add Feed"
  2. Fill out this form, and make sure you check the box that has your category
  3. Repeat for as many feeds that you want to aggregate into a single list.

Next step…you need to go to your administrative menu and click on "Site Building"

  1. Click on "Blocks"
  2. You will find in your list of inactive blocks an item named "xxxx category latest items".  Click on "Configure".
  3. You can override the default name of the block (which is currently the category name) by entering something in the title.  Next you choose the number of items you want to have show up in the block.
  4. Choose the additional parameters you’d like to turn on or off such as the roles to see the block, what pages the block should show up on and so forth.
  5. Save the block.
  6. Assign the block a location and a weight.

Keep in mind that your feeds won’t update unless you have cron running.  If you want to manually run cron to see the fruits of your labour, type in your URL bar http://yoursite.com/cron.php.

Written by: rikomatic