Following up on our recent release of Twitter Search in Social Feeds, I'm excited to let everyone know that we have added the ability to add RSS feeds to your network's Activity Feed. You might be asking, "How can this help me?" Well, if you have a Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr, etc., blog for your network, you can now grab that RSS feed and plug it in to your Social Feeds page to have those posts appear in the Activity Feed.
Don't have an external blog? Grab the RSS feed from just about any blog or website that has information you think your members will like. You can add up to three RSS feeds, so don't be stingy with them. Experiment to see what works best for you and your members. This is still a beta feature, so you'll want to head to the Ning Labs section of your Dashboard to enable it. Let us know how you plan on using it or how we might tweak it to make it better.
Want to learn to more RSS feeds? We've got a great intro article right here.
A few ways you might use this
The easiest way to use this is to just pull in blog RSS feeds from a service like Wordpress.org or Wordpress.com. Both work since they both provide RSS feeds. Maybe you run a Harry Potter fan network, and you know that your members all follow the author's personal blog. No question about it -- that blog is relevant for your members and deserves center stage on your network. Pop in the blog's RSS feed and have that be yet another news source for Top News. Maybe you write a separate Wordpress blog for your community? This is new way to integrate it into your Ning Network.
Let's say you run a network for paramedics in the tri-state area, and you want to include updates on the latest news from three important public agency websites. Grab the RSS feeds from the three sites and pop them in your Top News feed. They will update according to time stamps, providing your members with up-to-date alerts about fire-related news. You can go even further and rename "Top News" in the Language Editor to something like "Rescue 411". Or, maybe you run a site for film buffs and want to provide up-to-date movie news about the latest releases. You find a great feed from Rotten Tomatoes that reports on movie openings, which is something you know your members pay close attention to -- so why not put that within easy reach in the Top News section?
You run a network for design nerds. You've noticed there are tons of Tumblr feeds that are based on beautiful images your members would probably dig ( like this one). Why not create your own "Inspiration" feed from multiple Tumblr image-based feeds? Grab the RSS feeds you want to include and paste them in. If an RSS feed contains an image, they will show up in your Top News feed. Change "Tops News" to "Design Inspiration" or something that fits your new feed.
Replies
hoping that RSS functionality will appear soon on 3.0. I've been creating a few work arounds if not, but my fingers are crossed.
Hey JFarrow, it's definitely still on the roadmap. The engineering team is is discussions about what features to work on next, so we'll hopefully be able to update the In Progress section of the roadmap shortly after the Design Studio Release.
Since this discussion is a couple of years old and RSS is not yet available in Ning 3.0, it's a little confusing to have this thread popping to the top right now, so I'm going to close this discussion to reduce potential confusion.
+1
and if you'd like a whole wall of feeds to filter your content, take a look at this
Magic RSS Feed Walls For Ning and Facebook Pages for both 2.0 and 3.0
should now..thanks Diane
RE: Content Creation / Feeds
Just a quick note to let you know that I tried paper.li for a couple of weeks and found it to be so buggy I could not use it. I then moved to scoop.it and love it. Here's one of my projects - I call it a clog (curated blog) - http://www.scoop.it/t/atlanta-food-wine/ - scoop.it allows you to generate a widget which you can embed in an HTML page. They also have an RSS feed but I tried to use it on a LinkedIN group and the LI interface did not accept it. Other than that I have been very impressed with the functionality as well as the look and feel of scoop.it - hope someone finds this helpful.
Is there any way to embed a RSS feed directly into an HTML page OTHER than the main activity page?
Thanks Eric, I will try to be more specific when searching for discussion topics ;-/
What does " Social Feeds page" refer to? Where is this page? And how can RSS be added to the Top News feed? My "Top News" box on the top page has nowhere obvious where an RSS feed can be installed.
The only place I am currently able to add an RSS feed is on a group page that has RSS enabled, and there I can only add one RSS feed. Is it true that we can now add multiple RSS feeds on a single page, somehow? I would love to be able to add multiple feeds on a group page, in order to introduce diverse items related to the topic of the group.
Perhaps I will find out about these basic matters by digging deeper into the links provided above, but it would be nice if the new RSS options could be presented in a way that does not assume prior knowledge of the new terms being used.
Thanks, Peter
Hey Peter, head to your Dashboard and find the Ning Labs section. Here you'll be able to turn on both Social Feeds and Top News. Click the "Settings" link under each to make changes such as entering an RSS feed.
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