Feed manager? What does it do for me?

1/20/2011 2:00:51 PM

Phill

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Thanks Squire Dude

Hi,

I have been looking at the Feed Manager in the hopes of making my site more attractive or content rich. Well was I surprised when I go to try and setup the FeedRinse tool... it asks ME for the URL to include.... If I knew the URL of other sites I wouldn't be here now would I? The whole reason is that I have no idea who or where the best sites with content I want to add are!

I came to Feed Rinse so they could find additional content for me. Seems a total waste of anyones time.

If anyone has a better experience or can show me how to make this thing work I'd love to hear from you.

Disappointed
Phill

1/21/2011 7:35:49 AM

Joe Audette

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Re: Feed manager? What does it do for me?

Feed Rinse is not a source of additional content, it is a tool that can be used to filter out things from an existing feed like you can filter out bad language or keywords. So if you find a feed that you want to consume on your site but are afraid it might include some content you don't want you can run the feed through Feed Rinse and use the output feed url from Feed Rinse to get a sanitized version of the feed that you can consume.

There are lots of feeds on the net that you could consume on your site if they have relevant content but you'll have to do your own searching for them.

http://www.mojoportal.com/usingthefeedmanager.aspx

Feed Manager is a tool that can aggregate feeds from multiple sources into your site.

Lots of people also subscribe to feeds using Feed Readers such as Google Reader which I use myself to subscribe to about 100 or so technology blogs.

Hope it helps,

Joe

1/21/2011 9:49:00 AM

Phill

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Thanks Squire Dude

Re: Feed manager? What does it do for me?

Hi Joe,

Thanks for this explanation.. Now I understand the process and meaning... I had it backward. I thought that you could go to FeedRinse (or where ever) and put in your criteria (in my case Sailing, So Ca, Islander Boats) and it would return a list of links to site that are pertinent to my criteria, I would then add additional filter words to narrow the list down. etc. etc. etc.

Now I understand it. Got any ideas where I could find the opposite? As I outlined above! Somewhere I where I can go to find sites that are of interest to me?

Thanks
Phill

1/21/2011 9:54:21 AM

Joe Audette

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Re: Feed manager? What does it do for me?

Hi Phil,

I would just google for "feeds about sailing"

Best,

Joe

1/21/2011 10:20:01 AM

Phill

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Thanks Squire Dude

Re: Feed manager? What does it do for me?

Hi Joe,

That is an excellent idea... I just tried that and although there are not that many it is a start and I can search under different key words.

Thanks for the tip.

Phill

1/21/2011 2:27:30 PM

Phill

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Thanks Squire Dude

Re: Feed manager? What does it do for me?

Hi Joe,

I have read your docs, several times, and I still can not get the Feed Manager to work in the fashion I expect!

I have a feed I would like to include on my Home page.... (http://feeds.thesailingchannel.com/TheSailingChannel original site http://www.thesailingchannel.tv ) I do not see the RSS icon on the page but it does offer several dozen other methods.

I opened the FeedManager here and added the site URL manually and what I could find as the Feed URL... no matter what I enter when I go to my Home page all I see is two links...

"Feed" hanging off to the left
The Sailing Channel then the content of the feed page! (also hanging off to the left!)

(I'll leave the site with this off content for you to see)

Neither give any data flow, if I click on The Sailing Channel item it is just a plain HTML link and takes me to the site.

I have looked everywhere for an XML code as noted in your docs but I do not see it anywhere!

How can I get actual content from the feed?

What am I missing?

Phill

1/22/2011 2:09:19 PM

Phill

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Thanks Squire Dude

Re: Feed manager? What does it do for me?

Hi Joe,

I assume that the alignment issues I am experiencing are related to the CSS settings.

Which file should I be looking in to correct this issue?

Thanks

Phill

1/22/2011 2:39:12 PM

Joe Davis

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Re: Feed manager? What does it do for me?

Hi Phill,

You probably need the stylefeedmanager.css file. You should use the FireBug Firefox extension to identify which classes you need to modify. The Feed Manager isn't really designed to be in such a confined space unless you only show the headings of the feed entries. To do this, tick the "Show Headings Only" option under "Excerpt Mode Settings" in the module settings for your feed manager. If you don't want to show the feed links, there are options for that under the "Navigation and Layout" area in the module settings.

HTH,
Joe D.

1/22/2011 3:25:00 PM

Phill

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Thanks Squire Dude

Re: Feed manager? What does it do for me?

Hi Joe D.

Thanks for the direction. I have installed FireBug and will use it on this task. The Excerpt mode did most of the trick though.

Thanks
Phill

1/23/2011 12:10:45 PM

Phill

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Thanks Squire Dude

Re: Feed manager? What does it do for me?

Hi Joe,

I am using Firebug (or trying to) on the FeedManager... using the stylefeedmanager.css file... I am trying to locate the Title of each item in the feed. I think it is called "rsstitle" but when I change the font size from 15 px to 12 or even 11 nothing happens!

("Home" page, right column, 3rd down ("More Feeds"), of http://www.allislander.com)

What am I forgetting to do?

Thanks

Phill

1/23/2011 12:47:03 PM

Phill

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Thanks Squire Dude

Re: Feed manager? What does it do for me?

Hi Joe D,

Feed Manager ... Feed Item Title (font-size & color)

I was unable to locate the tag using FireBug, but was able to find it using the MS IE Developer Tool...

It is the "h3" tag... inside the "div class=rsstitle" tag... Changing the "rsstitle" font-size value failed to produce any change to the site... changing the "h3" font-size did change the font-size.

Now to find the appropriate "h3" tag for the Feed Manager.

I have looked in several of the style files (stylefeedmanager/stylemojo/style-artisteer-override) and so far no luck!

Can you please point me in the direction of the "h3" tag for the feed manager object?

Thanks
Phill

1/23/2011 1:01:08 PM

Joe Audette

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Re: Feed manager? What does it do for me?

Hi Phil,

You need to get beyond the mindset that everything boils down one to one with css class names. You also need to realize that not all possible CSS selectors are going to be pre-defined already in the css files, it is ok and expected to contsruct your own selectors.

If you want to style an h3 inside a div with class="rsstitle", it does not require another class on the h3, you can do it like this:

.rsstitle h3 { font-size: 15px;}

the selector above means style any h3 contained inside another element with the class rsstitle with the style rules inside the {}

this document is the key to mastering CSS:

http://www.mojoportal.com/css-its-all-about-understanding-selectors.aspx

Hope it helps,

Joe

1/23/2011 1:26:24 PM

Phill

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Thanks Squire Dude

dRe: Feed manager? What does it do for me?

Hi Joe,

Thanks for the explanation and example. You should teach classes as explain things so well.

I was afraid that if I messed with the style and added a new item that it would cause something someplace else to crash and burn or at the very least look strange!

Thanks again
Phill

1/23/2011 4:01:39 PM

Phill

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Thanks Squire Dude

Re: Feed manager? What does it do for me?

Thanks Joe,

I read the article you pointed to and it does make things a lot clearer.

I must be still missing some detail as I have tried to change the font-size & color to no avail.

NOTE: Each time I changed the stylefeedmanager.css file I also added or deleted a blank line from the web.config to make sure it is re-read. I also changed the color so it would be easier to see the change take effect.

Maybe I am completely off the mark as to the tag. I just realized that the title of each item in the feed manager is a hyperlink, so it would not be an h3 but something else!!!

Am I correct in this assumption?

Methods tried

.rsstitle { margin: 5px 0px 0px 0px; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; } h3 { font-size: 10px; color: black; }

also

.rsstitle { margin: 5px 0px 0px 0px; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; }.h3 { font-size: 10px; color: black; }

also

.rsstitle h3 { font-size: 10px; color: black; }

also

.rsstitle.h3 { font-size: 10px; color: black; }

None of which seem to work!

Phill

1/23/2011 4:24:38 PM

Phill

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Thanks Squire Dude

Re: Feed manager? What does it do for me?

Hi Joe,

Dahhhh now I feel really stupid!!! daahhhh which brain am I using Brian? (Sorry Month Python add lib there.... got carried away )

Anyway, of course the code worked in the CSS file. I was not scrolling down the page to see the changes. I dug deeper with the Dev Tool to find that the tag code should have been...

.rsstitle H3 A:link { font-size:12px; }

EXCEPT, for some unknown reason some of the feed items are NOT being effected by the CSS change?

I can either remove the feed altogether nor ask to see if someone else can see what I am missing for the tags on those items that are much bigger than the rest?

Thanks
Phill

(http:/www.AllIslander.com right column, 3rd segment down)