Wordpress Plugin : Better Feed « planetOzh

Better Feed is a plugin for Wordpress that allows you to enhance your feeds with several highly customisable features.

Current version : 1.99 for WordPress 2.5+ Incoming version 2.0 with an easier to customize admin panel.

Features

• Add "Read more" links
  On your site, you can split post on two parts, teaser and body, using the tag <!--more-->. Why not have a "Read more" link as well in your feed, for longer posts, or when you want to tease and keep the surprise off the feed ?
  (By the way, while I'm at it : "summary" feeds truncated after 40 words just suck big time. Read more)
• Add "Next page" links
  Similarly, you can split posts in pages, with <!--nextpage-->. By default, feeds only show the first page and give no link for the rest. Why not have the same "Read more" link within your feed ?
• Add the number of comments
  When you find an interesting post via your feed reader, you often have to check the website for new comments, or to subscribe to the comment feed. Why not add, at the end of every RSS item, something like "13 comments", just like in your blog frontpage ?
• Add a copyright notice
  Concerned with content stealers reproducing your posts automatically somewhere without giving you credit ? Why not add something like "© Joe - 2005" and a link to some neat Creative Commons License ?
• Add a list of related posts
  Improve connectivity between your feed and your site : why not add, at the end of each RSS item, a list of related posts your readers may have missed ?
• Add a link for Technorati's Cosmos
  Why not add a handy link to quickly check who's linking to your post ?
• Add a "Add to del.icio.us" link
  Let your readers bookmark your entries right from within their RSS reader
• Add anything
  There's so many stuff you could think of that I just can't list them all :)

Download

You know the story : download, edit the beginning, upload to your server, activate. Next section details everthing that can be edited.

Configure

Edit the beginning of the plugin (the source itself is fairly well documented, most users can just stop reading here now :)

$wp_ozh_betterfeed['split']
Set to 1 (one) if you want your feed to obey the <!--more--> tag and add a "Read more" link.
Set to 0 (zero) otherwise (print whole post, as in Wordpress default behavior)

$wp_ozh_betterfeed['multipage']
Set to 1 (one) if you want your feed to smartly hanlde multiple page posts (with <!--nextpage-->), i.e. provide a "Read More" link as well (Wordpress default behavior does not special in this case, just displays first part and nothing else)

Now edit your custom strings : "read more" link, custom footer, number of comments. In each of these strings, you are allowed to use the following "template tags" :

• %%blogname%% : blog name (My Weblog)
• %%blogurl%% : blog url (http://myblog.com/)
• %%posttitle%% : post title (Hello World)
• %%posturl%% : post url (http://myblog.com/archives/2001/02/03/hello-world/ or http://myblog.com/?p=1337)
• %%id%% : post ID (its number, i.e. 1337 in above example)
• %%date[Y]%% : date / time of post, where pattern within brackets follows PHP date() syntax
• %%categories%% : list of commas separated category names the post is filed in
• %%categorylinks%% : list of commas separated category links the post is filed in
• %%comments%% : number of comments
• %%comments_text%% : text for 0, 1 or xx comments (see below)
• %%readmore%% : "Read more" link text, if applicable (see below)
• %%wordcount%% : total number of words in a post
• %%wordcount_remain%% : number of words in second part after the split
• %%author_first%% : author's firstname
• %%author_last%% : author's lastname
• %%author_nick%% : author's nickname

Use these tokens to create your own strings for the following :

$wp_ozh_betterfeed['readmore']
Defines text for the "Read more" link, if applicable (empty otherwise)
Suggested :

$wp_ozh_betterfeed['footer']
Defines you custom footer that will be added after every RSS items.
Suggested :

$wp_ozh_betterfeed['0comment'] = "No comment";
$wp_ozh_betterfeed['1comment'] = "One comment";
$wp_ozh_betterfeed['Xcomments'] = "% comments";
Define replacement for %%comments_text%% when there is no, one or more than one comment. The '%' sign is replaced by actual number of comments in the last string.

Please note

A few things you might not get on first run that will save me some support:

• If you include the number of comments in each feed item, be warned that some feed readers will display an item as "New" every time someone comments on it. It's normal, and it is how I intented it to behave so following conversation is easier than ever.
• If you're using Feedburner, your feed won't immediately show changes after you've activated the plugin. To do so, go to your Feedburner Dashboard → Troubleshootize → Synchronize.
• You won't notice any change if you're viewing your feed with your regular browser. Use a feed reader.

License

This plugin is released under the terms of the SMYF License. SMYF stands for "Show Me Your Feed", so if you happen to use my plugin, just tell me so I can see what you've done (and maybe subscribe to your feed if it's cool !)

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