Not strictly a moodle question but I'm hopeful it isn't too far off.
I want to use the news feed block to display our own college news because we have 17 Moodles and I want to display the same news on all of them. I've found several tools (mainly paid for) to build your own xml file to create the rss feed that fits nicely into the Moodle news feed block, my problem is now I need something to create the page that the feed takes from- if I build a static page it is fine, but the instant I start using dynamic pages (from a CMS system) it all goes belly up. Has anyone done this already and if so what did you use? Or is there something in Moodle that I just haven't spotted yet?
Many thanks
Heather
Heather - Moodle has two separate aspects of RSS.
One is the RSS News Feed block which you have obviously discovered.
The other is the ability to create RSS feeds from Forum posts, Glossaries, etc.
You could create a master news forum in your main Moodle site (or indeed any one of them) for your college news and then display that feed to your 17 Moodle sites in the News Feed block.
RSS syndication needs to be enabled in your main Moodle site - in the Admin Variables page, again in each of the Module admin pages, and then again in each of the instances of the Modules.
Have a look at the following pages in the Documentation:
http://docs.moodle.org/en/RSS
http://docs.moodle.org/en/RSS_in_Forums
One is the RSS News Feed block which you have obviously discovered.
The other is the ability to create RSS feeds from Forum posts, Glossaries, etc.
You could create a master news forum in your main Moodle site (or indeed any one of them) for your college news and then display that feed to your 17 Moodle sites in the News Feed block.
RSS syndication needs to be enabled in your main Moodle site - in the Admin Variables page, again in each of the Module admin pages, and then again in each of the instances of the Modules.
Have a look at the following pages in the Documentation:
http://docs.moodle.org/en/RSS
http://docs.moodle.org/en/RSS_in_Forums
There may be some info on this page which might help or provide inspiration:
http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/03/09/how_to_create_a_rss.htm
a search on "create rss news feed" at the same site yields quite a few additional entries.
http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/03/09/how_to_create_a_rss.htm
a search on "create rss news feed" at the same site yields quite a few additional entries.
Your right, I hadn't discovered the second aspect of RSS in Moodle. I will investigate it more thouroughly as it may well do what I need and why have two tools if one will do!
Many thanks for this.
Heather
Many thanks for this.
Heather
This did in deed seem like the solution. However I got this working for all of 5 minutes and then it just died and displays as Rss error.
The only thing I'm aware of doing to it was to change the number of recent rss to display from 3 to 5 having read something in the forums suggesting that the number should be higher.
I then ran the cron on both the moodle I was hoping to see it on and the one it was coming from just to be on the safe side.
No luck still an Rss error rather than the few bits of news I was hoping for.
If it hadn't worked at all it would not be so bad but it worked for about five minutes.
Any ideas?
Thanks
Heather
The only thing I'm aware of doing to it was to change the number of recent rss to display from 3 to 5 having read something in the forums suggesting that the number should be higher.
I then ran the cron on both the moodle I was hoping to see it on and the one it was coming from just to be on the safe side.
No luck still an Rss error rather than the few bits of news I was hoping for.
If it hadn't worked at all it would not be so bad but it worked for about five minutes.
Any ideas?
Thanks
Heather
If anyone else runs into this same issue I've finally solved it.
Even if you turn all the Rss stuff off and back on again the error persists. Even running the Crons doesn't help.
I checked the file on the server and that seemed fine so go back to your forum click the rss button, press ctrl F5 and hey presto it all starts working again. Moodle seemed to have got hold of a bad xml file and just would not let go of it even after waiting three days!
Anyway a forced refresh seems to take care of it.
Regards
Heather
Even if you turn all the Rss stuff off and back on again the error persists. Even running the Crons doesn't help.
I checked the file on the server and that seemed fine so go back to your forum click the rss button, press ctrl F5 and hey presto it all starts working again. Moodle seemed to have got hold of a bad xml file and just would not let go of it even after waiting three days!
Anyway a forced refresh seems to take care of it.
Regards
Heather
you could use joomla or drupal to maintain a news page thoses CMS will generate the necessary RSS feed you can subscribe your block to