Demos for various…
3rd Party RSS Feed WordPress Plugins
Below are the ways we can “easily” display the RSS feed provided into a WordPress site. There are certainly many plugins for WordPress surrounding RSS display. The ones below are some of the best free options and intended to serve as at least a starting point for our discussion about migrating the events to the new site, and how we can reconcile that with the design documents.
WordPress RSS Block
https://wordpress.com/support/wordpress-editor/blocks/rss-block
- Built into WordPress
- No flexibility or additional options.
WP RSS AGGREGATOR
https://www.wprssaggregator.com
- Uses shortcode to generate list.
- Limited flexibility.
- What you see is basically what it can do.
Example:
- Stories In the Park – Central Park
- Stories In the Park – Winona Lake Limitless Park
- WCPL Trustees Meeting
- Teen Chess
- Story Emporium Used Bookstore
- Story Emporium Used Bookstore
- Swamp Stomp
- Story Emporium Used Bookstore
- Fuel & Move: Nutrition and Fitness for a Healthy Life
- Friends of the Library
- Family Card Game Night
- Family Card Game Night
- Art @ the Library
- Story Emporium Used Bookstore
- Diamond Painting
FEEDZY RSS FEEDS
- Uses Block to generate list.
- More flexibility, but mostly locked behind a $100/yr Pro version.
- Similarly, this is about what this can do. At least we get images.
Example:
Warsaw Community Public Library RSS Feed RSS Feed for Calendar
- Family Movie Dayon June 27, 2025 at 12:23 am
06/27/25 @ 10:30am – 06/27/25 @ 5:30pm Meeting Room A/B Warsaw Community Public Library We often take photos at events. Please tell a staff member if you do not want your photo used in WCPL media. Bring your movie theater snacks and enjoy family-friendly movies all day!10:30 AM Pooh’s Grand Adventure12:30 PM High School Musical 23 PM Beauty & the Beast (1991)
- Story Emporium Used Bookstoreon June 27, 2025 at 12:23 am
06/28/25 @ 10:30am – 06/28/25 @ 1:30pm Stafford Book Sale Room Warsaw Community Public Library We often take photos at events. Please tell a staff member if you do not want your photo used in WCPL media. The Friends of the Library operates a bookstore where used books, movies, sound recordings, and video games can be purchased. All proceeds benefit the Warsaw Community Public Library.
- Family Card Game Nighton June 27, 2025 at 12:23 am
06/30/25 @ 5:00pm – 06/30/25 @ 7:00pm Meeting Room C Warsaw Community Public Library We often take photos at events. Please tell a staff member if you do not want your photo used in WCPL media. Do you enjoy playing UNO, Phase 10, or Skip-Bo? Looking to make new card playing friends? Join us in Room C as we enjoy two hours of family friendly card playing. We will have a variety of UNO sets plus games such as Phase 10, War, 5 Alive, and regular playing cards available. Feel free to bring along your own card games also. So whether you enjoy playing UNO, Crazy 8’s, Hearts, or the many other varieties of card games, let’s shuffle those cards and get playing!
- Story Emporium Used Bookstoreon June 27, 2025 at 12:23 am
07/01/25 @ 4:00pm – 07/01/25 @ 7:00pm Stafford Book Sale Room Warsaw Community Public Library The Friends of the Library operates a bookstore where used books, movies, sound recordings, and video games can be purchased. All proceeds benefit the Warsaw Community Public Library.
- Swamp Stompon June 27, 2025 at 12:23 am
07/02/25 @ 10:30am – 07/02/25 @ 11:30am Warsaw Community Public Library We often take photos at events. Please tell a staff member if you do not want your photo used in WCPL media. Registration is required. Registration starts: 06/11/2025 @ 10:00am Registration end: 06/30/2025 @ 12:00pm Join us at the Lilly Center for Lakes & Streams for an interpretive hike to the Beta wetland swamp! Discover wetland plants and animals along the way and learn how wetlands protect our local water resources. We will get our hands dirty sampling wetland soil profiles and create a working wetland model to finish our hour together. Meet at Lilly Center, 806 Connection Circle, Winona Lake at 10:30 am, Wednesday, July 2 for a fun time stomping to the swamp with us!
Notes on the RSS Feed Itself
Here is a single “item” in the RSS feed. I have a few notes on this feed, and can’t help but wonder if we can customize the contents of this feed from the LibraryCalendar.com side?
Firstly, the starting and ending dates for these Event “Items” are non-standard XML.
In a “standard” XML document each metric would have its own field. This makes it more difficult (though not impossible) to create custom solutions that would use the start/end date for any kind of sorting / filtering. (This task is compounded by the US date format)
The date info does seem to be output as the first item after the closing CDATA tag. If we could count on it staying there, and its format staying in MM/DD/YY @ HH:MMam, we could parse that into useable dates, but a custom solution based on that would not stand up well to any changes to the feed from the LibraryCalendar.com side.
Indeed, no 3rd party plugin above is capable of parsing these dates since they are “non-standard” XML. Note all the entries in the Feedzy output show January 1, 2000. That’s because they can’t find the start/end date from the RSS feed.
I can only postulate that other solutions that are better using the dates, and have better UI have either:
1. Written their own custom solution using ACF and an ACF block to customize the exact parsing of the feed on the backend, and the exact display of the resulting UI on the front end.
2. Have customized their RSS feed to a more standardized format, which could then be better consumed by some other 3rd party WordPress plugin and/or simple embeddable web content.
<item>
<title>Story Emporium Used Bookstore</title>
<link>https://warsaw.librarycalendar.com/event/story-emporium-used-bookstore- 16</link>
<category>Book Sale</category>
<category>All Ages</category>
<description>
<![CDATA[ <img src="https://warsaw.librarycalendar.com/sites/default/files/2024-06/Apr%20Bookstore%20%28square%29.jpg" /> ]]>
08/03/24 @ 10:30am - 08/03/24 @ 1:00pm Stafford Book Sale Room Warsaw Community Public Library <p>The Friends of the Library operate the Story Emporium Used Bookstore & all profits benefit the Warsaw Community Public Library. The bookstore is located in the library at 310 E. Main Street, Warsaw, IN 46580. </p>
</description>
<guid>https://warsaw.librarycalendar.com/event/story-emporium-used-bookstore-16</guid>
</item>Notes on FeedWind
I don’t think FeedWind offers any plugins for WordPress. Though its output and functionality looks fairly similar to “Feedzy” from above. Basically, attach it to an RSS feed and then output a Widget.