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:
- Story Emporium Used Bookstore
- Family Activity Stations
- Americans and the Holocaust Exhibition
- Summer Story Time
- Story Emporium Used Bookstore
- Family Activity Stations
- Vital Passage Documentary Talk Back
- Summer Story Time
- Americans and the Holocaust Exhibition
- Story Emporium Used Bookstore
- Holocaust Exhibit Tour
- Family Game Day
- Red Cross Blood Drive
- Vital Passage Documentary
- The Story of Bruno Glade: A German-Jewish Refugee from Hitler’s Germany
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
- Americans and the Holocaust Exhibition
on July 15, 2026 at 5:42 am07/13/26 @ 12:00am – 07/18/26 @ 12:00am Warsaw Community Public Library The Americans and the Holocaust traveling exhibition explores key themes in American history, including Americans’ reactions to refugees, war, and genocide in the 1930s and ‘40s. The exhibition emphasizes the stories of individuals and groups of Americans who took action in response to Nazism.
- Red Cross Blood Drive
on July 15, 2026 at 5:42 am07/15/26 @ 12:00pm – 07/15/26 @ 5:00pm Meeting Room A/B Warsaw Community Public Library This summer, we’re giving donors an opportunity to be a star for patients in need by giving blood, platelets or AB Elite plasma. Those who come to give July 13-31, 2026, will receive a Fandango Movie Ticket by email (up to $15 ticket price and fees). Additional details can be found at RedCrossBlood.org/July. Sign up with the Red Cross before you attend. Here is the direct sign-up link: https://www.redcrossblood.org/give.html/drive-results?zipSponsor=warsawlibrary And a QR code you can copy and paste:
- Holocaust Exhibit Tour
on July 15, 2026 at 5:42 am07/16/26 @ 10:30am – 07/16/26 @ 12:30pm 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. If you are interested in a deeper look into the Americans and the Holocaust exhibit, there will be formal tours offered at 10:30 and 11:30. Please be at the entrance of the exhibit at one of those times to join the tour. If you have a group of 10 people, or more, please arrange a tour at this email: dmcafee@warsawlibrary.org
- Summer Story Time
on July 15, 2026 at 5:42 am07/16/26 @ 11:00am – 07/16/26 @ 11:30am 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. It’s like a Preschool Story Time, but in Summer!We’ll be sharing books, songs, and laughter with fun themes.
- Family Activity Stations
on July 15, 2026 at 5:42 am07/16/26 @ 12:00pm – 07/16/26 @ 5:00pm 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. Join us for fun and educational activity stations!Each area will have hands-on activities that will help with fine motor, color recognition, alphabet & numbers, scissor skills, and a lot more. Spend time at the water table or play with educational toys on the floor. There will be coloring pages for all ages and books to read together as a family. Spend a few minutes or hours, it’s up to you!Adult supervision is required.
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.