How to Create a Custom RSS Feed in WordPress in 12 Lines of Code

I think so

I’ll take a look at those plugins.

But really what we are doing is pulling 4 or so RSS feeds into one WP page – not into one feed – like 4 feed blocks. I found a plugin to do that but I thought if I used custom fields for the feed urls it might make it easier to use. A lot of this is still in the working it out in my head phase.

Thanks!

Hello Zack
I followed most of your instructions and have created the new ‘your-custom-feed.php’ in my theme’s directory and cut and pasted all the php code from the ‘wp-includes/feed-rss2.php’ into it. That parts all good.

However, I don’t know or understand which wordpress .php file to place your ’12 lines of code’ functions into, to get this custom rss feed to work.

Could you please describe which wordpress .php files to place your new code functions into thanks. And if relevant, the exact position amongst existing wordpress source code.

Nice post thanks

OK, duh I got it, Thanks – Now I have been looking over the CellPhoneFiesta.com xml file and I see tags like (am very interested in the image tag) etc. I take it theses are your new custom tags?

If so, then sorry to ask such a knob question. But if you don’t mind, how have you defined those new tags in “your-custom-feed.php” code? If you could point me in the right direction on how to build my own custom xml tags in php, or even one or two small examples that would be great.

Cheers

Hey Zack,

This is exactly what I’ve been looking for! I’ve also got a little confused with the ‘do_feed_customfeed’. Is this exactly how it should be written in our code?

Also do you know how a custom feed will affect integration with Feedburner? If not, no worries.

Thanks

You rock!

hey zack! thanks for the explanation! i have a question here and i hope you could help me.

previously i bought a domain for my Blogspot blog and when people link me up or follow my blog, the default Blogger feed link was kenwooi.com/feeds/posts/default..

however, recently i have migrated to a a self-hosted wordpress. therefore i had to unpark my domain from Blogspot and redirect it to the new webhost.. and wordpress has default feed links such as kenwooi.com/feed and kenwooi.com/feed/rss..

since i unparked my domain from Blogspot, the default feed link for it has changed back to kenwooi.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.. and since many of them “followed” my blog when i had the domain in Blogspot, they wont receive updates anymore..

so is it possible to create a custom feed link for my wordpress? i would like to create a feed link that ends with /feeds/posts/default so that it can update the people..

is it possible by following this methods you’ve mention? sorry if im asking silly questions coz im not very familiar with this matter.. thank you in advance! =)

Hi Zack,
I implemented everything you said almost perfectly (I’m using it as a feed on my website through simplepie). Only thing that is not working is the rewrite.

It works as ?feed=customfeed, but not as /feed/customfeed or /customfeed.xml

Is there anything I need to rewrite in what you wrote above? Or is my /%category_name%/%post_name%/ maybe interfering with it?

Cheers!

Thanks for the great post Zach.  I think this is a good reference.
I was trying to get it working in WP 2.9 and was having several problems.
The first problem was that when I was working on my feed and customizing it, I was getting an HTTP status 304 returned, which meant my browser just kept loading the same cached page.  I was able to circumvent that with the following:
add_filter('get_lastpostmodified','spoof_lastpostmodified',10,2);

function spoof_lastpostmodified($lastpostmodified, $timezone){
// I added this function in to spoof the lastpostmodified date feeds
// because WP was caching the feed (status 304 - see line 354 in wp-includes/classes.php)
// In my testing, I needed that caching not to happen
global $wp;
if (!empty($wp->query_vars['feed'])){
$lastpostmodified = date("Y-m-d H:i:s");  // Now
}
return $lastpostmodified;
}
The second problem I was having was getting feed/customfeed working (like other posters, /?feed=customfeed was working fine).  To get around that, I added the following:
add_filter('transient_rewrite_rules','custom_feed_rewrite_rule');
add_filter('rewrite_rules_array','custom_feed_rewrite_rule');

function custom_feed_rewrite_rule($rules){
$feed_rules = array(
'feed/customfeed' => 'index.php?feed=customfeed',
'customfeed' => 'index.php?feed=customfeed',
'customfeed.xml' => 'index.php?feed=customfeed'
);
$rules = $feed_rules + $rules;
return $rules;
}
Adding the transient_rewrite_rules filter means that it works even if the rewrite_rules have been cached (i.e. transient), and the rewrite_rules_array filter makes it work when those rules haven’t been cached.
Adding the above code to my theme/functions.php file corrected the URL rewrite issue that many posters have cited as well as the problem of the feed being browser cached (due to the 304 status).
Hope this helps someone else.
 
 

Hm, I can’t get the rewrite rules to work on wp 2.9.2, and I also want to find out how to get feed params to work.
http://nrkp3.no/fpbeta/?feed=filmpolitietfeed&cat=305 is getting automatically sent to http://nrkp3.no/fpbeta/category/toppsak/feed/filmpolitietfeed/ where “toppsak” is the category name of id 305. Returns as 404. http://nrkp3.no/fpbeta/?feed=filmpolitietfeed works
I’ve tried several solutions, but the only thing I’ve figured out thus for is an error on /wp-admin/options-permalink.php if I use
add_filter(‘rewrite_rules_array’,'custom_feed_rewrite_rule’);
saying
Fatal error: Unsupported operand types in /hsphere/local/home/nrkbetasite/nrkp3.no/fpbeta/wp-content/themes/filmpolitiet/functions.php on line 97
Line 97 contains the line
$wp_rewrite->rules = $feed_rules + $wp_rewrite->rules;
 
 

please help me here .. i am using Auto excerpt plugin for only home page displaying posts to show only post excerpt… but this plugin affecting my feed … when i write some new article then in feed it only display excerpt which i don’t want .. how to avoid it .. i want to use this plugin .. or any alternative… please help me 

 interesting topic for read thanks for it.