By itrain on

Hello all.

I'm currently working on a very complex Drupal site (which is my first Drupal project, and how I'm learning Drupal).

I'm creating a complex news site which will be pulling in different RSS news feeds from all over, and I need some direction on how to put everything together properly to get what I want.

First, I would think creating Taxonomy vocabularies & terms would be a good start, so I can create something like:

News

  • General News
  • Business News
  • Technology

Jobs

  • General Jobs
  • IT Jobs
  • Media Jobs

And so on and so forth....

Next step would be to create the feeds as nodes with CCK, put in the links and bring in the RSS feeds.

I'm ok up untill here, now I get stuck :/

1. CCK: Currently I have 1 page for each RSS feed, but I want all the feed items of all the feeds coming into 1 place, how do I do that?

2. Once I have all the feeds coming into 1 place, I want to manage them before they get published live in the site. So for example, I want to read the feeds in an admin section, and somehow get to choose which feed items to display on the home page in certain blocks that I create for them. I would also like to catagorize each feed item to my taxonomy terms I create....

So if I want to show the top 10 feeds, how do I manage which feed is no.1, which is no.2 etc...? (I thought about using taxonomy for that, but it seems like I'm defeating the point of my taxonomy terms.)

Any direction would be a really great help.
Thank You

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

InterceptPoint’s picture

InterceptPoint commented

I hope you get some response on this. I'm trying to do something similar and could, like you, use some help.

itrain’s picture

itrain commented

Good to know I'm not the only one battling along, maybe we can help eachother and get somewhere...?

2 weeks later, I'm still confused as to how I can content manage each feed node properly, but I have learned a few things on tutorials which I found, maybe they'll help you.

First of all, I have done away with FeedApi and now I'm using the new Feeds Module, which has internal mapping.

Some Tutorials:

http://yadadrop.com/drupal-video/feeds-module-tutorial-aggregate-rss-atom
http://drupal.org/node/622698

I think the logic behind this is to create a content type for each feed source coming in.

> The problem here is when creating a content type for each feed, it creates a new page everytime, which I'm trying to avoid as i would like to see all my feed sources on 1 page, and then link to the feed items from there, but I can't get around that yet.

Using the panels module will allow us to have different feeds in different sections of a page, and using views will create a view for each panel... (But you probably know this already)

As I have cerated my Taxonomy Terms, creating a new content type for the feed, gives me the option of selecting the taxonomy term that feed will belong to, when the feeds import they import to that taxonomy term, which is not what I want at all. The whole point is to manage each feed-item.

If you have anything more please let me know.

Thanks,
- Ricky

itrain’s picture

itrain commented

To any readers trying to do the same thing, this is how far I am into figuring this thing out.

Managing Each feed item:

> Create a content type for each feed, and set it to not published.
> Import the feed-items.
> Go to admin/content/ and click on content (which becomes admin/content/node)
> Filter by feed-item or unpublished nodes or taxonomy to see just the feed items and not other content
> Now you can edit and publish each feed item or leave some unpublished.

Next step is to place them in a block of top 10 feeds, if anyone can direct me on how I can select each feed to be in an accordion type block and place the best feed in no.1, then 2, then 3 etc I would really appreciate it!

Thanks.

itrain’s picture

itrain commented

Next Step:

Creating a Taxonomy Term for each feed item:

In the Feed-item content type, create a new field (if there is not one there already), and select a taxonomy field (I have Content Taxonomy Module installed, you probably need it). Once the field is created, go to admin/content/node, click edit to edit a feed item, and the taxonomy terms now appear and are selectable for each feed item.

Romejoe’s picture

Romejoe commented

Maybe I'm wrong because I'm new as well but as far as I know there you need to put your feeds in the feed aggregator. This allows you to place 1 Block for each feed on your site (it creates the block for you).

You can as well then use VIEWS module to show the 10 top rated feeds on one site grouped by terms or similar.
I believe you do not even need CCK. Just the Feed aggregator (core module) and Views.

itrain’s picture

itrain commented

The Feeds module stores the content as nodes, which gives a lot more flexibility with feed items, then by using CCK fields we can map fields to the information that is pulled in and theme it. The feed content is also editable and searchable.

Feed Aggregator is limited and all it does is pull the feeds in really. Feeds module also supports a lot more features and will continuously be developed.

You are right about using views to display the top 10 feeds in a block, but I'm still trying to learn the views module properly and learn how/where/what content is stored in the database, and which arguments/filters/relationships to select etc...

Thanks.

tigron’s picture

tigron commented

I'm just wondering if you ever figured out how to show the RSS feeds in a block using the Feeds module. I seem to be having a heck of a time getting this going. I've only been able to get the Aggregator block to display feeds and I really don't want to use it as it seems to have limited abilities when it comes to the types of feeds it can pull.

Steel sharpens Steel !