Mar 18 2008

RSS feeds in Joomla: DS-Syndicate bug fix

Written by David Towers

Tuesday, 18 March 2008

Having attractive RSS feeds is really important. If your feed is dull and unattractive, you are unlikely to get many subscribers and the click-through rate from your subscribers runs the risk of being low.

The best way to have good looking RSS feeds in Joomla 1.0.1 is to use the DS-Syndicate component.

In this post we will talk briefly about why DS-Syndicate is great choice for creating RSS feeds in Joomla. We will then share with you how to solve two very irritating bugs in DS-Syndicate: (1) The component adding open and closed brackets (parentheses) to the feed title and (2) the component outputting the author's email address in the news feed.

Why DS-Syndicate is a good option

With DS-Syndicate you can render images and HTML in the news feed and select which sections and categories to include in the feed. There is also an extensive list of feed types DS-Syndicate can output including RSS 2.0 and Atom. Another important function that DS-Syndicate offers is being able to add a read more link to each item in the feed.

Two bugs with DS-Syndicate

After downloading, installing and configuring DS-Syndicate, we experienced two problems:

1. Feed titles were followed by open and closed parentheses: ()
2. The author's email address was included in the RSS feed

How to resolve these bugs

We resolved these two issues by changing the components PHP files. The simple solution we found was to prevent the author tag from being outputted and to delete the code which was adding the () to the end of the feed title.

If after downloading and installing DS-Syndicate you too are experiencing these problems, you can resolve them by simply overwriting two files in the DS-Syndicate component directory. Follow these steps:

Download this file and extract the files
Replace ds-syndicate.php in http://www.yoursite.com/components/com_ds-syndicate/ with ds-syndicate.php included in the zip
Replace feedcreator.class.php in http://www.yoursite.comcomponents/com_ds-syndicate/includes/ with feedcreator.class.php included in the zip

Changing these two files should enable you to output a RSS 2.0 feed without the author email tag, and without () being attached to the RSS feed title.

It works here at Good Web Practices, just click here to see our news feed which is generated by DS-Syndicate in action!

32 Comments



bob March 28, 2008 Votes: +0	The two files pretty much blew out my feed "No Feed Available". I will reinstall my two original files. How about indicating the lines of code you changed so I can changes those lines in the original files. This has nothing to do with your fix, but I also have an issue with a blank line being generated in the xml file so that I can't use Feedburner. Seems to work in Google Reader. report abuse vote down vote up


David T March 28, 2008 Votes: +0	Hi bob! Thanks for your feedback. What feed were you trying to output? RSS 2.0? Which version of Ds-Syndicate are you using? The fix has worked on other installation, I'm curious to know it hasn't worked for you. I'll try and route out the lines of code I changed for you Bob. report abuse vote down vote up


bob March 28, 2008 Votes: +1	Version 1.1.1 RSS 2.0 report abuse vote down vote up


David T March 28, 2008 Votes: +1	Bob, the changes made to the two php files can be seen here: http://www.goodwebpractices.com/downloads/ds-syndicate-changes.txt report abuse vote down vote up


bob March 28, 2008 Votes: +0	David Thank you very much. Those fixes worked. I have no authors, author emails, or (). Great work. I was hoping these fixes would solve my other problem with not creating a valid feed for feedburner. I get the message: XML parsing error: :2:0: xml declaration not at start of external entity. I know the problem is the blankline at the beginning of my code. I've search forum and the recommended fixes but still have not been able to validate a feed. Are you aware of a fix. The feed on your site looks very nice. report abuse vote down vote up


David T April 01, 2008 Votes: +1	Bob, delighted the changes worked for you. I don't know a fix to address the XML parsing error, but how about try changing your feed output from RSS 2.0 to RSS 1.0? report abuse vote down vote up


andy April 08, 2008 Votes: +0	How do you add the little feed icon to the address bar? I thought ds syndicate was like the original joomla syndicate module, you had to have published on the site. So all you actually have to do is use the component and ignore the module? Where do u get the RSS subscribe module you have? Im pretty confused about RSS feed to be honest Its not something i ever thought about using before. report abuse vote down vote up


miskairal April 09, 2008 Votes: +0	Just wanted to say a big THANKYOU for this little gem. It is really nice to get things all tidied up and how I wanted them. Cheers report abuse vote down vote up


andy April 09, 2008 Votes: +0	Im pretty confused about RSS feed to be honest Its not something i ever thought about using before. report abuse vote down vote up


David T April 10, 2008 Votes: +0	Hi Andy - RSS feeds are really useful you should definately consider adding one to your site. You can get the RSS icon in the address bar by adding this code in your template: < link rel="alternate" type="application/rss xml" title="RSS 2.0" rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/goodwebpractices" /> Just check out our source code to see how we did it! Miskairal glad you found these tips useful and that they tidied up your RSS feed :-) report abuse vote down vote up


Jonathan April 11, 2008 Votes: +0	Good Fix, Thanks a lot report abuse vote down vote up


ultrabeast April 14, 2008 Votes: +0	Hi there... I see that this site (goodwebpractices.com) has an excellent RSS feed page generated (displayed when you click that "RSS Subscribe" link on the upper right part of this page... with the same template and display style as the rest of this site. Apart from that, the article order there follows exactly the article order of the articles on the main page. I'm trying to use ds-syndicate on my site too, and the display is really nothing like the way that I would like it to be; that is, how it is for this site. Am I missing something? What are the things that I should do or look out for? Next is the URL that I keep on getting from ds-syndicate. Whenever I've done something wrong in creating the feed and I delete it from the administration interface to start over... The URL I get is incremented by 1 http://virtualestate.org/ultra...&feed_id=5 as in feed_id=1, then =2, ... But in feedburner, the URL that I submit is =1 ... how do I force DS-syndicate to just create a certain URL with a certain ID? If anyone could please take a look at my site. I'm facing a lot of problems from time-to-time specifically with file and folder writable permissions. report abuse vote down vote up


Mark April 16, 2008 Votes: +0	I have the problem with DS-Syndicate that it orders content by Modified Date, not by Create Date. So every time you update a story, even if it's 1 year old, it goes back to the top of RSS feed list. Is there a way to change this? report abuse vote down vote up


GreatGatsby May 14, 2008 Votes: +0	Do you have a recommendation for RSS on Joomla 1.5? It appears that this component only works with Joomla 1.0.X, right? report abuse vote down vote up


glen May 15, 2008 Votes: +0	"I have the problem with DS-Syndicate that it orders content by Modified Date, not by Create Date. So every time you update a story, even if it's 1 year old, it goes back to the top of RSS feed list. Is there a way to change this?" we have the same problem - has anyone found a fix for this ? report abuse vote down vote up


David T May 15, 2008 Votes: +0	GreatGatsby - DS-Syndicate is for Joomla 1.0 yes. For Joomla 1.5, you could try Rss Factory: http://extensions.joomla.org/c...Itemid,35/ I haven't used it yet, however I have heard good things about it. If you give it a go, please let me know how you get on with it. Glen - Sorry I haven't seen anyone mention a fix for that issue. report abuse vote down vote up


GreatGatsby May 15, 2008 Votes: +0	David, Is RSS Factory used to syndicate my site's articles to others, or as a RSS reader inside my site? report abuse vote down vote up


GreatGatsby May 15, 2008 Votes: +0	Also, have you used the standard Joomla 1.5 RSS Syndication and Feeds modules? report abuse vote down vote up


depika May 18, 2008 Votes: +0	Hi I applied your changes and the feed works fine in firefox but in IE6 and IE7 I see plain text and the html is not rendered. What may be wrong? You can check it here http://www.kolonaki-press.com/index2.php?option=ds-syndicate&version=1&feed_id=1 report abuse vote down vote up


Alin May 22, 2008 Votes: +0	Hi, Anybody has any idea why my images do not appear in rss page? they are added with {mosimage} in article but do not appear: http://www.webcms.ro/index2.php?option=com_ds-syndicate&version=1&feed_id=1 Many thanks in advance. report abuse vote down vote up


Rafael June 08, 2008 Votes: +0	I added the code to include the RSS link in the address bar: < link rel="alternate" type="application/rss xml" title="RSS 2.0" rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/nabaima" /> But I still do not get the RSS link in the address bar... (see nabaima.com) any ideas on why it might not be working? Thanks, Rafa report abuse vote down vote up


David T June 09, 2008 Votes: +0	Hi Rafa, you missed a plus sign between the rss and xml, so it should be: rss[PLUS-SIGN]xml That will make it work! (The plus sign doesn't format with in the comments section...) report abuse vote down vote up


Jimmy June 10, 2008 Votes: +0	The "modified date" issue mentioned by Mark and Glen is a real issue. Anybody have a recommendation on where to look in the code to fix this? report abuse vote down vote up


David T June 11, 2008 Votes: +0	Hi Jimmy! Sorry I still haven't come across a fix for the modified date issue. report abuse vote down vote up


David T June 17, 2008 Votes: +0	Here is a great article about RSS feeds in Joomla 1.5: http://blog.joomlatools.org/2008/06/leveraging-feeds-in-joomla-15.html report abuse vote down vote up


Kaz July 04, 2008 Votes: +0	Will this work if the RSS feeds are valid but no feeds are going through? I'm not techy enough to understand what adding the brackets actually causes to the feeds. Does it stop the feeds from working? My feed URL is http://money-magnets.net/index...&feed_id=1 Thanks for any help. Kaz report abuse vote down vote up


David T July 04, 2008 Votes: +0	Sorry Karen I don't really understand your question. Maybe you should try putting some articles through the feed so we can see how the feeds are formatted. report abuse vote down vote up


Kaz July 04, 2008 Votes: +0	I guess I don't understand your initial problem with the brackets to know if that's my problem. Did the problem with the brackets mean that the feed didn't show the articles? I have feeds and I have articles on my website. I have checked the feed with a feed validator and it says its okay. However when I click on the RSS and go into google reader nothing is loaded. When I click on this sites RSS all the articles are loaded, so I'm unsure why I'm not getting the same thing with my website. I hope that is clearer and thanks for replying so quickly! report abuse vote down vote up


David T July 04, 2008 Votes: +0	You're welcome. The problem that we had with the brackets was that the was a set of open and closed brackets with nothing in them. I see that on your site the RSS feed has (Property Investment) in the brackets so that's not a worry. Google Reader can take a few minutes to update so it might just be a matter of time. The feed that you showed us here: http://money-magnets.net/index...&feed_id=1 is just for the property investment section... report abuse vote down vote up


Kaz July 04, 2008 Votes: +0	Okay maybe I'm being a little impatient. I'll wait awhile and see what happens. Thanks again for your reply! report abuse vote down vote up


Kaz July 04, 2008 Votes: +0	I waited and you were right that the feeds did appear. However only the public ones so now I'll research how to do RSS feeds with registered articles :-). Thanks. report abuse vote down vote up


Graham July 17, 2008 Votes: +0	There appears to be a fix for the () problem on line 171 of ds-syndicate.php of the current version, but it's still not quite right. I'm not sure exactly what's supposed to go within the parentheses so I'm not sure what the proper fix should be. report abuse vote down vote up