Manage RSS feeds for a site or site collection

Overview

A site owner can manage RSS support for the following:

• Site collections

• Top-level sites and subsites

• Web applications

• Lists

RSS support is enabled in Central Administration at the Web application level. When enabled at this level, RSS support is also enabled by default at the site collection level, but an owner of the top-level site can disable RSS support at the site collection level. All new sites that are created in an RSS-enabled site collection are also RSS-enabled.

Whether any of the lists for a subsite that you create are RSS-enabled by default depends on the choices that you make when you enable or disable RSS on a site, subsite, or workspace.

Manage RSS feeds for a site collection

When RSS support is enabled in Central Administration, it is automatically enabled by default at the site collection level. However, a top-level site owner can choose to disable or re-enable RSS support at the site collection level.

Before starting this procedure, make sure you are on the top-level site of the site collection.

1. Click the Site Actions menu and then click Site Settings.

2. On the Site Settings page, under Site Administration, click RSS.

   : The RSS link does not appear on the Site Settings page if RSS support is not enabled in Central Administration.

3. On the RSS page, in the Site Collection RSS section, select or clear the Allow RSS feeds in this site collection check box.

   : The Site Collection RSS section is available only if you are a site collection administrator and you are on the top-level site.

4. In the Enable RSS section, select or clear the Allow RSS feeds in this site check box.

5. In the Copyright box, type the text of the copyright notice that you want to appear in the RSS feed. Depending on the type of RSS reader that you use to view an RSS feed, the copyright may or may not appear at the bottom of the RSS feed.

6. In the Managing Editor box, type the name of the managing editor for the RSS content. The name of the managing editor appears at the bottom of the RSS feed.

7. In the Webmaster box, type the name of the webmaster for the RSS content. The name of the webmaster appears at the bottom of the RSS feed.

8. In the Time To Live (minutes) box, type the number of minutes that users should wait to check for updates to an RSS feed. The number of minutes appears at the bottom of the RSS feed.

9. Click OK.

Manage RSS feeds for a list or library

When RSS support is enabled in Central Administration and at the site collection level, you can manage RSS support for a list or library on your site.

1. In the list or library for which you want to manage the RSS feed, click the List or Library tab on the ribbon.

2. In the Settings group, click the Library Settings button.

3. On the Library Settings page, under Communications, click RSS settings.

   : The RSS settings link is not available if RSS support is not enabled both in Central Administration and at the site collection level.

4. In the List RSS section, select whether you want to enable or disable RSS for the list.

5. In the RSS Channel Information section, select whether you want to truncate multi-line fields to 256 characters. You can type a title, description, and image URL for the channel elements of the RSS feed.

6. In the Columns section, you can show or hide columns in the RSS description by selecting the appropriate check boxes. Next to the column name, enter the number for the order of your column in the view.

   : If only one column is included in the feed, the column value alone will appear in the body of items in the feed. If more than one column is included in the feed, the item body will consist of each column name and its value.

7. In the Item Limit section, you can limit the number of items and days to include in an RSS feed.

8. Click OK.

Configure the RSS feed for a view of a list or library

When RSS support is enabled in Central Administration and at the site collection level, you can manage RSS support for a view of a list or library.

In the Item Limit section, if you select Limit the total number of items returned to the specified amount, an additional property tag <treatAs>list</treatAs> is added to the RSS feed. This tag indicates that RSS readers will treat the feed as a list whose entire contents are present in the feed, rather than as a feed that includes only recently added or changed items. For more information about RSS list extensions, see the XML Developer Center on MSDN.

1. In the list or library to which you want to subscribe, click the Library or List tab on the ribbon.

   : The name of this tab varies, depending on the type of list or library you want to create an alert for. For example, for a calendar list, it’s the Calendar tab.

2. Open the view that you want to subscribe to by selecting the view from the drop down list in the Manage Views group on the ribbon.

   : If your Web browser enables you to subscribe to a view, an RSS toolbar button might become enabled at this point. If so, you might be able to click it to subscribe directly to the view. If this feature is not available, then you can follow the steps in the rest of this procedure.

3. Click Modify View to open the view for editing.

   : If Modify this View does not appear on the View menu, you do not have permission to edit the view and therefore you cannot use this method to subscribe to the RSS feed of the view.

4. In the Name section, click the RSS button to view the RSS feed subscription page for this view.

5. Copy the URL for the RSS feed subscription page for the view. You can then post this URL on your site so that contributors to your site can view and subscribe to the RSS feed.