Creating customised PhpBB feeds using Feed43!

March 5, 2006 20063 7:51 pm | In Tech |

I'm sure there's a shorter way to do this but this would be very useful for the newbies/PhpBB-ers who doesn't like to tinker with mods too much.

As you would all know by now, Feed43 offers a free online service to convert any webpage to an RSS Link. The coolest thing about this is that you'll get to customise how your feed will appear to your users and this is extremely useful for forum admins who wants to give their users an easy way to check back on the latest postings in the forum.

Anyway, let's cut the crap and proceed to the steps needed:

Basically there's 2 main groups of instructions:

1. First, you need a PhpBB mod which doesn't need any tinkering with phpBB's files nor your templates - phpBB Fetch All
2. Then, you'll use part of phpBB Fetch All to create a feed on Feed43!

So, now for the phpBB Fetch All installation:

1. Download phpBB Fetch All here - Link
2. Create a directory 'mods' within your phpBB2 directory if it does not already exists.
3. Upload the complete 'phpbb_fetch_all' folder into the 'mods' directory.
4. Open the following file in your browser: http://yourforum/mods/phpbb_fetch_all/examples/portal.php to confirm it works!

Then, once you're done, proceed to Feed43:

1. Goto Feed43 and click on 'Create your Own Feed'
2. After all agreeing to all the TOS, etc, you'll reach a page that says "Specify source page address (URL)" - this is where you put the page created in phpBB Fetch All i.e. http://yourforum/mods/phpbb_fetch_all/examples/portal.php

3. Click on Reload and Feed43 will fetch the codes from the page and a new section that says 'Define extraction rules' will appear.

4. Under 'Global Search Pattern:', copy and paste this code:

5. Under 'Item (repeatable) Search Pattern*:', copy and paste this code:

6. Click on Extract and Feed43 will fetch the information from that page and gives you a summary of the info fetched in terms of {%1}=…., {%2}=…. , {%N} and so on…
7. Now you're almost done, as Feed43 has successfully managed to extract the necessary info for creating a feed!
8. Finally, we get to go to the 'Define output format' section and follow these instructions:

RSS feed properties

Feed Title*: 'Enter the name of your feed e.g. Boringest's Feed'
Feed Link*: 'This is where you put the link of your forum e.g. http://blorc.com/forum'
Feed Description*: 'The description of your forum'

RSS item properties < -- Just enter the info as follows:

Item Title Template: {%1} (by: {%2})
Item Link Template: {%5}
Item Content Template: {%3}<br /><br />{%4}
Merge all items into single one, optionally applying global template: "Leave it blank!"

Click on 'Preview' and you'll get to see how your feed looks like and also get hold of the feed link in the form of:

http://feed43.com/7221461187210168.xml

And that's it - really easy isn't it? Now you can announce in your forum or if you want to make it easy for everyone, edit part of your template to put up a feed icon and link to it. You can use the following icon if you want: