One of the best features of SMF is its news feeds. However, many people are unaware of how many options there are, or that this is even available. Below is a list of available options and what they do:

Enable the Feeds

This should be enabled by default, but you can check by going to Admin -> News and Newsletters -> Settings and ensuring that there is a tick in box next to "Enable XML/RSS News". The "Maximum post length" value determines how many characters of a post are output in the feeds. The default value (255) should be sufficient in most cases.

URL options for showing XML content

All of the XML content is accessed via the ".xml" action... Other formats can be achieved by adding one of the following to the URL:

• type=atom - Atom
• type=rdf - RDF
• type=rss - RSS 0.91
• type=rss2 - RSS 2.0

The default feed is the five most recent posts: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?action=.xml

Sub-actions

Add sa=<sub-action> to the URL query string to use these sub-actions.

Recent Posts

Displays the most recent posts that you can see:

• Sub-action: recent
• Default: shows the five most recent posts
• Available options:
  • limit=x - display the "x" most recent posts (if the number is less than five, it will display five. If number is larger than 255, it will display 255).
  • board=y - display only the recent posts from board "y".
  • boards=x,y,z - display only the recent posts from the specified boards.
  • c=x or c=x,y,z - display only the recent posts from boards in the specified category/categories.
• Example: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?action=.xml;sa=recent;board=72;limit=10.

News

Displays the first post from the most recent topics that you can see:

• Sub-action: news
• Available options:
  • limit=x - display only "x" items.
  • board=y - display only news topics from board "y".
  • boards=x,y,z - display only news topics from the specified boards.
  • c=x or c=x,y,z - display only news topics from boards in the specified category/categories.
• Example: http://www.simplemachines.org/index.php?action=.xml;sa=news;board=1;limit=10.

Members

Displays most recent members:

• Sub-action: members
• Available options:
  • limit=x - display only the "x" most recent members.
• Example: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?action=.xml;sa=members;limit=10.

Profile

Displays the "profile summary" data in a nice XML feed for the specified user:

• Sub-action: profile
• Required option:
  • u=x - display the profile info for user whose ID is "x".
• Example: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?action=.xml;sa=profile;u=150.