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Create and preview your Blog/News Headlines Widget

This tool will help you format the display of your Blog/News Headlines widget. All you need to enter is the URL for the RSS/Atom.xml source of your blog/news feed, and select the desired options below. You will then be able to preview your headlines widget and generate the correct code which you can then paste into your blog template or web page.

First, be sure to preview the feed to verify the content and format. Once the content is displayed how you like, just use the generate widget code button to get your code. If you would like to customise the design of your widget, you can then use the style tool to cenerate CSS code which you can add to your blog template/style sheet.

URL

Enter the web address of the RSS Feed (must be in http:// format, not feed://)
Note: Please verify the URL of your feed (make sure it presents raw RSS) and check that it is valid before using this form.

Show channel?

(yes/no/title) Display information about the publisher of the feed (yes=show the title and description; title= display title only, no=do not display anything)

yes title no

Number of items to display.

Enter the number of items to be displayed (enter 0 to show all available)

Show/Hide item descriptions? How much?

(0=no descriptions; 1=show full description text; n>1 = display first n characters of description; n=-1 do not link item title, just display item contents)

Use HTML in item display?

("yes" = use HTML from feed and the full item descriptions will be used, ignoring any character limit set above; "no" = output is text-only formatted by CSS; "preserve paragraphs" = no HTML but convert all RETURN/linefeeds to <br> to preserve paragraph breaks)

 yes no preserve paragraphs only

Show item posting date?

(yes/no) Display the time and date for each item.

 yes no

Time Zone Offset

(+n/-n/'feed') Date and timer are converted to GMT time; to have display in local time, you must enter an offset from your current local time to Tue, 13 May 2008 13:45:19 +0000 (GMT). If your local time is 5 hours before GMT, enter -5. If your local time is 8 hours past GMT, enter +8. Fractional offsets such as +10:30 must be entered as decimal +10.5. If you prefer to just display the date is recorded in the RSS, use a value = feed

Target links in the new window?

(n="no, links open the same page", y="yes, open links in a new window", "xxxx" = open links in a frame named 'xxxx', 'popup' = use a JavaScript function popupfeed() to open in new window)

UTF-8 Character Encoding

Required for many non-western language web pages and also may help if you see strange characters replacing quotes in your output (see help pages for more information).

 use UTF-8 character encoding

Podcast enclosures

For RSS 2.0 feeds with enclosures, display link to media files

 yes no

Custom CSS Class (advanced users)

Use to create different styles for multiple feeds per page. Specify class for content as rss-box-XXXX where XXXX is the value entered below. Style sheets must be created in accordance with these guidelines.

Show n' Tell!






Once you have generated the widget code for your headlines widget, you should highlight all of the code and copy it to your clipboard. You can then paste this cide into your blog template where you would like the headlines widget to appear. For widget enabled blogs (eg: Blogger Layouts/Wordpress), you can paste the code into an HTML/Javascript widget in your sidebar.