Feed Importer
EasyArticles allows you to import RSS feed from other sites into your blog. In this section, we will briefly guide you on how to set up RSS feed imports. Feed imports can be configured at Components > EasyArticles > Importer > RSS Feeds.
Configuring Feed Details
On this page, you will see the list of feed importer on your site. If you have not setting up any feed importer, here are a few steps which you can use as a guide.
To begin, click on the New button located at the top left of this page. This button will bring you to the feed importer setup page. All you need to do is to provide the necessary information required to complete this process.
- Title
Every feed requires a title as it's identifier. Give a title for your feed so that you can easily identify the feed. - URL
Specify a valid RSS feed URL for the feed importer. You may validate the feed url at Feed Validator for it's validity. - Published
Publish or unpublish this feed on your site. - Process In Cron
This option determines whether the system should process this feed to retrieve new items when the cronjob executes. - Cron Interval
Specify the time interval between feed processes. - Show Original Author
Determines whether the original author of the post should be displayed. - Include Source Link
Determines whether the source link of the post should be displayed in the content of the imported feed. - Items For Each Import
Determines the total amount of feed items to be fetched each time the importer is processed. Default value is 20.
Configuring Feed Publishing Details
On this section, you will able to configure the attributes of the articles when they are first imported through the feed importer.
- Publishing Status
Determines whether articles should be published automatically when they are imported through the feed importer. - Language
Determines the default language that will be associated with the imported articles in the feed. - Import Image As Cover Image
When this option is turned on, EasyArticles will import the first image in the media tag of the article as its post cover. - Auto Post
Determines whether each article created from this feed is autoposted into your configured social sites. - Notify Users
This option allows you to send notifications to all subscribers on the site. If you do not want to send any notification to subscribers when importing feeds, you should turn this option off. - Category
Determines the associated category for newly imported articles. - Author
Determines the associated author for newly imported articles. - Store content as
Determines the content type that newly imported articles should store as. - Allowed HTML tags
This option allows you to specify the allowed html tags for newly created articles from this feed. You may add more here in a form of comma separated values. E.g:<a>,<b>.
Testing Feed Importer
After you have completed the above sections, click on the Save button to save your changes and add this feed. To test the feed importer on your newly created feed, you will need to click on the Test Import button located at the feed importer listing page.
Automate Feed Importer
To automate the feed importing process, it is essential to utilize a cronjob process specifically for importing feeds. To understand more about cronjobs, you may refer to this page.
Generally, the cron url that can be used for importing feeds is as below:
########################################
##### Configuration options.
########################################
// This should not contain http:// or https://
$host = 'site.com';
########################################
Replace site.com with your site. Once you've modified this file, add the following command to your cronjob.
http://site.com/index.php?option=com_easyarticles&cronfeed=1