Configure RSS Feed Display Templates

(Website Administrators only)

A display template for an RSS feed uses the same template languages supported in regular display templates for content types. You can use advanced "t-colon" (t:) templating or standard "span-tag based" template language, as well as HTML and CSS.

An RSS-feed-specific display template must:

  • Conform to the fields of the remote feed(s) for which it is used -- that is, with which it is "merged" in the RSS Feed Display component. You can view the HTML source code of an external feed to find specific fields, and insert those fields into the HTML code of the display template.

  • Conform to one of the three supported RSS formats: RSS2, RSS1, or ATOM.

If your organization regularly uses only a few RSS sources, you may wish to create a unique display template for each source.

If your organization will be using many RSS sources, you can use <if> statements in the HTML code to minimize the number of display templates you need to create and maintain. This allows a given display template to be used with different remote RSS feeds (as long as the feeds have the same format). For example, you can specify that if the external feed has no Description field, that field should not be displayed.

When an RSS Feed Display component is inserted in a Web page, a display template, or a CMS wrapper, the administrator selects an RSS-feed-specific display template to "merge" with the specified external feed.

Like a standard display template for a content type, an RSS feed display template:

  • Controls which fields in the remote feed actually display on a live page. Typically, this information includes a title for each item in the feed; the title also serves as a hyperlink to the item on the originating Web site. RSS feeds can have other fields as well. How the display template is configured determines exactly which information displays: only fields included in the display template will show on the published page.

  • Provides further control of the output presentation, in combination with the selected style sheet.