Communities create news but it is always a good idea to mix with the outside world. If you run a niche community, it is a good idea to stay on top of what is going on in the world related to your community. One way to do this is to pull in relevant news into your community. Google is obviously one of the best sources for news but up until recently there really wasn't a way to aggregate Google News without scraping and hacking. Luckily that has changed. Here is how to bring Google News feeds into your community.
Using the RSS Feed Module inside Ning
- You need to manually create a RSS feed URL.
- You can display them by “Top News”, topic, or search query.
- For Top News use the following format:
https://news.google.com/news/rss
To display the news by topic, use:
https://news.google.com/news/rss/headlines/section/topic/{topic} If your topic has more than one word, separate the words like this: Land%20Surveying
If you want to have the news listed by the search query, use:
https://news.google.com/rss/search?q={query} If your topic has more than one word, separate the words like this: Land%20Surveying
Example: https://news.google.com/rss/search?q=Land%20Surveying will bring in latest news about Land Surveying like i have on this test page for Land Surveying News
- If you wish to have news in English and located from the United States sources, add the following query string to the URL to change country and language:
&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
Simply add a RSS module and plug the RSS feed into your page.
Using a RSS Feed Widget
If you have an RSSGround account, creating the Feed Widget is incredibly simple. If not, simply create your account and explore all the awesome things you can do with RSS feeds, including creation of a robust widget to add to your community.
Let me know if you need any help! There's an app for that!
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Is there anyway to bring in the thumbnails with these Google rss feeds?
probably....but you might have to run the RSS feed through a spreadsheet using the IMPORTXML function first...