In your switches, you have an "XML feed submissions" option. Switching this on enables a system where visitors can submit feeds of listings which are automatically processed and updated, instead of submitting the listings individually. In your usergroup permissions you can set who can submit and whether validation is required.

Please note that this article is about submitting a feed such that all items in it will become listings in your links directory. If a feed should be associated with a particular listing, see Associating an RSS Feed With a Listing instead.

The option to submit a feed appears next to that for submitting listings, as long as your usergroup has permission. The simple case is to submit a standard RSS feed, but you can specify any additional custom fields you like in the feed if you desire. Once you've submitted, you can manage your personal feeds in your member home.

When a feed is queried, any links found in it for which the same url hasn't already been added from the same feed will be added to the directory, in the category which the feed was submitted to. For WSN KB, Gallery and Forum, the title is checked instead of url.

The feed cache timeout setting (Admin -> Settings -> Listings) will determine how often these feeds are checked, same as with feeds associated to listings.

Dealing With Images

When submitting a feed of images, presumably from a site like flickr for use in WSN Gallery, the images have to be imported in a delayed fashion (one per page load) to prevent memory errors and script timeouts. Warning: If you use GD, the memory GD uses to load and resize the images counts as part of the script's memory useage and will likely cause you to exceed php.ini's allowable memory limit -- causing the script to die to a blank page. If you can't increase the allowed memory, or would just prefer not to have to, use ImageMagick.

While the images are in the process of being retrieved, generating.png will be shown.

Template Variables

{XMLFEED template variables are available to show information about the feed. These varaibles are available in the scope of any listing that was added from a feed. Test for that scope with {LINKXMLSOURCE} like this:

{XMLFEEDID} - The id number of the feed.
{XMLFEEDTITLE} - The title of the feed.
{XMLFEEDHOMEPAGE} - The URL of the website the feed is from.
{XMLFEEDURL} - The URL of the feed itself.
{XMLFEEDDESCRIPTION} - The description the feed supplies of itself.
{XMLFEEDDATE} - The feed's submission date.
{XMLFEEDLASTFETCHEDDATE} - The date on which WSN last fetched an update of the feed.