README.rssfeeds

How to use RSS feeds in PHPlist

If you are puzzled what RSS is, check out http://backend.userland.com/rss or 
http://www.syndic8.com/

Quick overview, more comprehensive documentation will follow

In order to allow PHPlist to send out RSS you need to follow these steps:

- set ENABLE_RSS to 1 in your config file

PHPlist will now have additional functionality that allows you to set up RSS mailings.

The steps to add mailings are:

1. add a RSS source to a list. Currently you can have one source per list.

2. create a subscribe page that has RSS frequency selection set up for the users who subscribe
Current possible values for frequencies are "daily", "weekly" and "monthly"

3. regularly run the page "getrss". You can set this up similarly to "processqueue"
The getrss page (which is linked from the admin homepage at the bottom) will find all 
data from the RSS feeds you have set up on your lists.
This data is cached (by Onyx RSS) and the cache file is written in your "tmpdir" directory
as identified in your config file.

The cache will expire every 3 hours. 

4. Create a message that will be the template for your RSS messages, and identify the 
frequency for the message. You can send the message like a normal PHPlist message, and 
you need to add [RSS] to the content of the message to identify where the list of RSS items 
needs to go.

You can set up one message per frequency. If you have a previous message for the frequency
you create, that one will be marked "sent" instead of "submitted".
If you run a multi admin system the messages are unique for a frequency-admin combinarion

5. Run your "processqueue" page as normal

What will happen:

When PHPlist encounters a message that is a template for RSS feeds, it will find the users
who match the lists it exists for and assemble the RSS items for the user. A message will be 
used only for users who have identified the same RSS-frequency as the message. 

If there is something to send, the message will be send to the user containing the RSS items
in the place where you identified [RSS] in the body.

Notes:

1. PHPlist uses a threshold for sending emails. If there are less than the threshold items 
to be send to the user, the message will not be sent. The threshold is set in your PHPlist
configuration (not the config file)

2. PHPlist uses templates for the items to be sent, one for text items and one for HTML items
You can change these in the PHPlist configuration.
use [title], [link] and [description] as the placeholders.

3. The order of RSS items is by list and you can add separators between sets of items
if you use [listname] as a placeholder in the separator it will be replaced by the listname
for that set of RSS items, and only once per set of items (ie per list)