RSS Feeds and News Pages

What is RSS?

Remember that the setup block will affect all folders below unless those folders have a setup block with an alternative definition. Be careful you don’t step on other people’s toes with that! Also, since this affects the whole directory structure beneath the setup block, you will need to publish all pages under the setup block to have the change spread.

An RSS feed is a mechanism used by some news sites and blogs to make their information available on other web pages and in special news readers. These feeds update automatically everytime the originating site changes content. Rowan Today offers news feeds as do some functions of Proflink. So when College of Science and Math, for instance, publishes a news story through Rowan Today, anyone with their feed address embedded in their site or news reader will see their latest story listed there. Usually news feeds are indicated by a news icon such as this:

Displaying RSS feeds in your site

There are two ways you can display an RSS feed on your Cascade web site. You can add a short list of headlines from the feed to the left column under your navigation or you can create a full page of stories by creating a "News Page." Ether way, you first need to create an asset or block in Cascade for that RSS Feed. If you've ever created an "External Link" asset, this is somewhat similar.

Creating the RSS Feed Block

1. Find an address to an RSS feed. (For instance, College of Science and Mathematics produces their own feed through Rowan today at this address  https://www.rowan.edu/home/news/feed/75/rss.xml).
2. Using the Add Content item at the top of your Cascade site, choose "RSS Feed."
3. Give the feed a machine readable name (no spaces, no special characters, etc...).
4. Paste the URL to the feed in the 'Feed URL" field at the bottom of the dialogue.
5. Save and submit

Again, this will not change the apperance of your pages. To do that decide where you want your feed to appear (side bar of all your pages or on a single full page) and follow the directions below.

Add your RSS Feed to your sidebar

1. In the folder where you want to start adding the feed, open your setup block for editing (or create a new one). The setup block is named "setup-block" and has an icon that looks like this .
2. Scroll down to the area titled "Sidebar Feature" and click the "RSS Feed" radio button.
3. "Choose Block" area and browse to the block you created above.
4. If you want a title to appear above the list of items in your feed, you can add that in the "Title" field
5. If you want fewer or more items in the list, you can adjust the "Max Post" field.
6. Save and submit

Create a full page of news

1. From your "New Content" drop down at the top of your Cascade window, choose "News Page."
2. In the "name" field give it a machine readable name (no spaces, no special characters, etc...).
3. As with any page, make sure you choose the folder you want to put it in.
4. Give it a human readable "Title" just as you would any page.
5. Fill in the "heading" field so that a heading will appear above the feed.
6. Adjust the number of posts you want to appear on a page.
7. Click the "Choose Block" area and browse to the RSS block you created above to select it.
8. Save and submit