I've been trying to display the output of a RSS feed in a couple of different publishing sites I'm working on without any success, so I'm wondering if such a thing is possible. Even when I create a stock site using the Publishing Site template and the Blue Band master page I run into problems trying to add a web part to the page to display the results of a RSS feed. Here's what I'm seeing:
- By default, the publishing site's web part gallery does not display the standard RSS Viewer web part that I'm used to seeing in other collaboration site templates.
- I've tried adding the XML Web Part, pointing it at the RSS feed and writing my own XLST to format and parse the feed. Two problems here: 1) I don't know XLST at all and am failing miserably at writing what I'd need to parse the output, and 2) I still don't think it's going to work, I'm seeing time out errors when I just point the web part at the feed w/o XSLT applied.
- I've gone into the Web Part gallery and added the RSS Aggregator web part to the publishing site's web part gallery. When I add it to the page and point it at a feed I get an unexpected error. When I check my SharePoint event logs, the entries are similar to when the server needs to point at a proxy server to access the internet. The problem here is that my server does not use a proxy server to connect to the internet.
- I've installed the Smiling Goat Feed Reader web part on the server, and that doesn't work either.
- I've double checked a non-publishing web application on the server (a MySites web app), and RSS feeds are displaying just fine there, so I don't think its a problem with the server.
So is there something in the Publishing site architecture or its associated master pages that prevents RSS feeds from displaying in a site, perhaps something that's affecting the feed's XML or the XLST? I'm seeing this in two different sites, one created with stock BlueBand master page and one created with a custom master page based on Heather Solomon's base master page.
Thank you,
John
