[TUT] How to use the Feeder and Feeds function on your XenForo software

[Drew]

The XenForo Feeder application enables you to quickly and easily generate content which is relevant to your site, utilizing RSS feeds from other sites.

Creating a Feed

1. Log in to the Admin Control Panel.
2. Select the Applications tab.
3. Click on the Registered Feeds icon.

Before importing any feeds, ensure you are not breaching copyright by publishing prohibited content.

The various options available when creating a feed allow you to tailor it specifically depending on the content and how it is intended to be used.

• The frequency at which new feed content is fetched can be set to between 10 minutes and 12 hours, giving you the ability to drip-feed new entries or post them all at once.
• Each feed can be independently delivered into a specific forum, or grouped with other feeds for use in a dedicated forum. Each feed can only be posted into a single forum.
• Feed entries can be posted as a guest user with the username taken from the feed. Alternatively, an existing user can be used, although you may want to create one specifically for this purpose.

Templates
If the Title Template field is left blank, the thread title will be generated automatically from the content.

The Title Template and Message Template fields provide a flexible way of formatting the posted message. Each field can be left blank, filled with static text or populated with one or more of the available tokens. The destination forum will also determine which prefixes are available for use in the title.

A basic message template, which would simply output a snippet of the feed and provide a link to the source, might consist of the following tokens:

{content}

{link}
A more advanced template, making use of all available tokens and utilizing BB code to format the output, could take the following form:

{title}, by {author}

{content}

...read more
Clicking the Preview Feed Entry button before saving will give you the opportunity to see how the content fields will appear, allowing you to refine the settings before any content is imported.

Feeds can be manually imported by clicking on Import Now at the main configuration screen.