Project Documentation
Overview
The primary objective for WNPA Syndication is to ease the sharing of news stories between several organizations.
This plugin offers a central area for content from multiple external sources to be stored. Content is republished through a single feed that can be used to augment local news collections.
External Sources
External sources can be any standard RSS feed. At WNPA, these are the feeds of weekly newspapers throughout the state of Washington.
External sources are added and managed through the corresponding menu option in WordPress.
- Go to External Sources under Add New in the left menu of the admin area.
- This can also be accessed via New in the top toolbar.
- Enter a valid RSS feed URL in Feed URL
- e.g.
http://news.wsu.edu/feed/
- e.g.
- Save the source. Information indicating success or failure of item retrieval will be displayed.
- Click Save Draft if you would like to save the source without retrieving items yet.
- Click Publish or Update if the items from this source should be published.
Hourly Updates
Once an external source is added, it will be processed on an hourly schedule for new feed items.
Additional Feed Attributes
While any standard RSS feed can be used, specific item elements in the feed can help categorize content and assign visibility.
- category Category elements with no specified domain will be used to assign general tags to feed items.
- category domain=”wnpalocation” Category elements with the
wnpalocation
domain assigned will be recognized under a location taxonomy. - dc:accessRights (Default
public
) Can be set to eitherpublic
orprivate
in a feed to indicate the visibility of an item to the general public. - dc:creator can be provided on each feed item to specify the author(s) of the article that should be highlighted in the byline. We will also fall back to the author tag from either the RSS specification or the Atom specification.
These same item elements are provided in the RSS feeds produced by WNPA Syndication.
Example item in an RSS feed
<item>
<title>WSU partners with sustainable, quality food providers</title>
<link>http://news.wsu.edu/2014/02/10/wsu-partners-with-sustainable-quality-food-providers/</link>
<pubDate>Mon, 10 Feb 2014 12:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[dining services]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[food]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[local]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[healthy]]></category>
<category domain="wnpalocation"><![CDATA[Pullman]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://news.wsu.edu/2014/02/10/wsu-partners-with-sustainable-quality-food-providers/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[PULLMAN, Wash. – Dining Services supports the community by building a strong base of local and regional suppliers to provide quality food responsibly grown.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Story content formatted in HTML</p>]]></content:encoded>
<dc:creator>Author Name</dc:creator>
<dc:accessRights>public</dc:accessRights>
</item>
Feed Items
Feed items are the individual articles pulled in through the external source RSS feed and can be accessed under the Feed Items menu in WordPress.
Central Feed
Once items have been pulled in from external sources, they are immediately republished through a central feed.
- If the permalink option in General under Settings in the left menu of the admin area is set to anything other than Default, the URL of the feed will follow the structure of
http://wnpa.wsu.edu/feed-items/feed/
. - If the permalink option is left at its default setting the URL will follow the structure of
http://wnpa.wsu.edu/?post_type=wnpa_feed_item&feed=rss2
.
Only feed items that have a visibility of public will be shown in this central feed. To see items in a feed that have been marked as private, an access key is required.
Access Keys
Access keys are used in combination with the central feed to gain access to items that have been marked as private. Each user has the ability to generate their own access key through their profile.
- Go to Your Profile under Users in the left menu of the admin area.
- Scroll to the bottom of your profile page. WNPA Access Information should be listed.
- Click Generate to populate the field for Access Key.
- Click Update Profile at the bottom.
- Copy the generated Feed URL that now has an appended access key.
- e.g.
http://wnpa.wsu.edu/feed-items/feed/?access_key=154379977f67e13d26c77fd519ce5124
- e.g.