Turn DokuWiki into a Simple RSS Aggregator

Productivity Sauce

One of Dokuwiki's less-known features is the ability to parse and display RSS feeds. Using this feature, you can turn your DokuWiki installation into a no-frills RSS feed aggregator. Adding a RSS feed to a DokuWiki page is as easy as specifying the feed's link using the {{rss}} command. For example, the following code displays the headline from the Productivity Sauce feed:

{{rss>http://www.linux-magazine.com/rss/feed/productivity_sauce}}

The {{rss}} command supports a few parameters which allow you to control the feed's settings. For example, you can decide how many headlines to display by specifying the number you want:

{{rss>http://www.linux-magazine.com/rss/feed/productivity_sauce 11}}

You can also display the author and date of each feed item using the author and date parameters:

{{rss>http://www.linux-magazine.com/rss/feed/productivity_sauce 11 author date}}

Finally, you can specify a refresh period. The default value is 4 hours, but you can go as low as 10 minutes:

{{rss>http://www.linux-magazine.com/rss/feed/productivity_sauce 11 date 10m}}

Of course, embedding your favorite RSS feeds into a DokuWiki page won't replace a dedicated feed reader, but it makes a nice backup solution. For example, I use Netvibes and Google Reader as my primary RSS aggregators. But when I'm on the move or in a hurry, I use my own DokuWiki RSS page to quickly check my favorite feeds. This solution is much faster and works better on my netbook's small screen.