RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication, or Read Something Stupid for some sites with really bad content (hopefully this blog doesn't fall under that category!), but this blog isn't about fixing your content its about fixing your RSS in Joomla. I'm going to touch on two things, Joomla syndication and integrating Joomla with Feedburner, so if your already syndicating with Joomla, then check out our Feedburner integration blog entry. Let me give everyone an overview on what RSS does for you. Basically RSS is like an email, it takes what you have written and sends it out to your reader base. The difference is, with RSS, people subscribe to read your content whereas with email, you send it to people who may or may not care for your content. RSS is also important because it is automatic, for instance, this blog post is fed via RSS to people who have been here to my blog before and have deemed it useful to them, they've subscribed to Joomla Packages' blog . Once I'm done with writing this and click save, it is placed in my feed's buffer to be syndicated to those individuals. The best part is when inevitably I find a spelling error or some grammatical error in my content I can change it and it will be reflected in my feed. Try that with an email newsletter! So how does this work?..

Joomla Syndication via RSS

Joomla Syndication has two pieces to it, a component and a module. You must use both for RSS to work on your site. Here's how you enable RSS feeds on your Joomla CMS. First, go to the component drop down list in the administrator (admin->components->syndicate) and select syndicate (this is Joomla 1.0). Most of the elements in the component Interface are self explanatory, but I just want to turn your attention to three elements:title, description, and image alt. Let me start out by saying, Joomla is ready out of the virtual box to syndicate your content, you don't need to adjust these settings but the aforementioned elements should be changed to personalize your feed. I've subscribed to many Joomla sites and they all have the same default “Powered by Joomla 1.0” text in them. There is no need for that especially when it is so easy to change. Modify title, description, and image alt to fit your site's content and save. Next we need to go to the syndicate module (admin->modules->site modules) and filter (right top right hand select box) the “select type” filter box for all “mod_rssfeed”. One result from your filtering should pop up. Make sure it is published, presto!, you are feeding.

There are other things to think about with the Joomla Syndication, such as caching and which feed option you are using, but because I'm trying to simplify things right now I won't go into much detail. You may just want to know that all the various RSS versions that Joomla offers have to do with the format of the XML that is being fed. Joomla will feed RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom, and OPML XML formats. They correspond with different readers that have been around since the beginning of RSS. It is my estimation that RSS 2.0 is the mainstream preference for syndication. So if you ever have to choose which format you want to read, RSS 2.0 should suffice.

Lastly caching is important only because we always forget about it. Nothing is worse than cached RSS when we are troubleshooting our edits to our feeds. For some reason caching always slips my mind and I find myself after 20 minutes of debugging my application, half crying half cursing, only to find that my edits were right and cached content was why I didn't see my edits. So, if this happens to you, remember, turn off caching when making edits, and turn it on when you are done. Cache will save you when you begin dealing with 1000's of hits to your RSS a day. It is super important, so make sure it is on. Another thing that will save you is Feedburner, but this blog entry has already become too long, so I'll save Feedburner for my next entry.

So did any of this help? Got anything to add?

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