How to Turn On and Enable vBulletin RSS Feed and XML Syndication Support

vBulletin is the popular Internet forums and community discussion board software. vBulletin has feature that allows registered members to subscribe and follow new replies to the thread, or new threads created in the forum. For some people, it may be easier to get up-to-date and follow new comments, replies, posts, and discussions through RSS feed or XML content syndication system.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary), RDF (Resource Description Framework) and XML (Extensible Markup Language) are several but similar forms of web syndication popularly used by news and blog sites, which provides summary of contents for readers or subscribers. It’s always recommended to provide RSS feed and/or XML syndication support for the forums.

RSS feed syndication and XML syndication is turned off and disabled by default in vBulletin, but the support is built-in, and can be turned on and enabled quickly and easily.

1. Login to vBulletin Admin Control Panel (admincp i.e. http://domainname.tld/forums/admincp/index.php) as Administrator.
2. In the left pane, expand vBulletin Options.
3. Click on vBulletin Options.

   

4. In the list of options available, double click on External Data Provider setting to edit, or select to highlight External Data Provider, and then click on Edit Settings button.



5. To add RSS feed support to vBulletin forums, select Yes radio button for Enable RSS Syndication. RSS feeds will be available for whole entire forums and also individual forum.

   

6. To support podcasting in vBulletin forums, select Yes radio button for Enable Podcasting (RSS Enclosure). This option includes the first attachment of each thread as an enclosure within RSS2 feeds.
7. To add XML Syndication support to vBulletin forums, select Yes radio button for Enable XML Syndication.
8. Click on Save button.
9. vBulletin RSS feed and XML syndication is available at the following location:

   http://domainname.tld/forums/external.php

   RSS2 specific RSS feed is available at the following location:

   http://domainname.tld/forums/external.php?type=RSS2

   For example, My Digital Life Forums RSS2 RSS feed can be accessed and subscribed here: http://forums.mydigitallife.info/external.php?type=RSS2

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   This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 at 1:26 am and is filed under Webmaster Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.