This page last changed on Feb 01, 2005 by vidya.
RSS is a file format used for syndication on the web. When a site publishes new content regularly, the site can represent those changes in an RSS file. RSS isn't designed to be read in a regular web browser, but specialised RSS newsreader programs can check RSS files every so often, and tell you what's new on a site. For a technical description of the RSS format, you can read Mark Pilgrim's "What is RSS?" article on XML.com.
Using RSS with Confluence
There are two ways that Confluence uses RSS. Firstly, it can display RSS feeds from other sites, allowing you to follow the news from those sites inside Confluence. Secondly, Confluence publishes RSS feeds of recently updated content, allowing you to be notified of those changes through your own RSS reader.
Reading RSS From Other Sites
If another site publishes an RSS feed, you can include its contents in a Confluence page by including the RSS Feed Macro in the page, giving it the URL of the feed you want to follow. Confluence will check the feed for updates at most every hour.
Subscribing to Confluence Updates via RSS
Confluence also produces RSS that you can subscribe to (using an RSS Newsreader) in order to receive notifications of new or updated content on the Confleunce site.
Authentication
To have your news aggregator log into Confluence, you can append ?os_username=yourusername&os_password=yourpassword to the URL of the feed you are trying to retrieve. Note, however, that this means someone with access to your aggregator configuration can read your password.
RSS Newsreaders
The following are some popular RSS newsreader programs for various operating systems. You can find a more comprehensive list on Google's open directory
Windows
Mac OS X
Multi-Platform
There's also Bottom Feeder, a cross platform Smalltalk based aggregator: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/BottomFeeder

Posted by talios at Feb 02, 2004 23:00
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I think Confluence could use a built-in aggregator.

Posted by mparaz at Feb 06, 2004 07:49
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There's also ClickTheNews, a very simple and free news aggregator. http://www.clickthenews.com/

Posted by at Mar 23, 2004 10:52
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I'm trying to use this RSS thing for the first time. Just have installed NewsGator and SharpReader, and trying to enter a comment RSS feed for a space. Neither of them recognizes the format.
The following link works:
http://blogs.atlassian.com/rebelutionary/index.rdf
The next does not:
http://confluence.atlassian.com/globalrss.action
Viewing the xml file shows that the format is somewhat different.
Am I doing something wrong?

Posted by at Jun 30, 2004 04:57
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The authentification issue should be mentioned here.

Posted by at Dec 22, 2004 09:01
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I don't fully understand this functionality. Do you need to install RSS Newsreader software onto your Confluence server before the RSS feed macro will work?

Posted by doodoo at Feb 01, 2005 23:01
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Error rendering macro: Could not download: http://blogs.atlassian.com/rebelutionary/index.rdf
I'm gettings this Error rendering macro when I try to use the macro above. Please help!

Posted by xiaogwu at Feb 02, 2005 15:37
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The RSS support is pretty feeble, add author, perhaps set the space to topic, add date and do test it because right now it doesn't quite work as it should - ie an item is not judged as updated if it already exists in the feed. Perhaps because of lack of date or? I have no idea, havent read rss spec but do make it complete.
Right now its just barely working, not properly.
Marcus Widerberg
PS The prefix "page updated/added" seems a bit redundant.

Posted by at Mar 07, 2005 06:59
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I was also wondering how to add 'author' information to the exported RSS feed. Presumably I could edit that in one of the source template files on the filesystem. I'll have a look.

Posted by at Mar 22, 2005 05:01
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We would like to get RSS at the home page of our trial Confluence as .../globalrss.action. But somehow RSS clients can not get the XMl file. Instead it gets HTML file before forward to the XML file through Struts. How do you solve it???

Posted by at Apr 29, 2005 17:49
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I tried adding the RSS feed from our Confluence instance to a desktop RSS aggregator following the directions above and still doesn't work. I added the below to the RSS URL (and yes, I switched out the yourusername and yourpassword with correct entries). Thanks.
&os_username=yourusername&os_password=yourpassword

Posted by at May 06, 2005 15:13
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