Install

To use FeedWordPress, you will need:

• an installed and configured copy of WordPress version 2.8.x 2.7.x, 2.6.x, 2.5.x, 2.3.x, 2.2.x, 2.1.x, 2.0.x, or 1.5.x. (FeedWordPress will also work with the equivalent versions of WordPress MU.)

• FTP or SFTP access to your web host

New Installations

1. Download the FeedWordPress installation package and extract the files on your computer.

2. Create a new directory named feedwordpress in the wp-content/plugins directory of your WordPress installation. Use an FTP or SFTP client to upload the contents of your FeedWordPress archive to the new directory that you just created on your web host.

3. Upgrade the copy of MagpieRSS packaged with WordPress by installing the new copies of rss.php and rss-functions.php into the wp-includes directory of your FeedWordPress installation. These files are stored in the MagpieRSS-upgrade directory of your FeedWordPress archive.

   (Strictly speaking, FeedWordPress will run without the upgrade. But if you hope to take advantage of modern feed formats like Atom 1.0, to correctly syndicate post categories or alternative character encodings, or to avoid numerous bugs that have since been fixed, you need to install the upgrade.)

4. Log in to the WordPress Dashboard and activate the FeedWordPress plugin under the Plugins settings page.

5. Once the plugin is activated, you can go to Syndication --> Feeds and set (1) the link category that FeedWordPress will syndicate links from (by default, "Contributors"), and (2) whether FeedWordPress will use cron-less automatic updates based on page loads, a cron job, or only manual updates. (See Scheduling Feed Updates for more details on the options available.)

6. Go to the main Syndication page to begin adding syndication sources that you want FeedWordPress to syndicate onto your blog.

Upgrades

If you are upgrading from a very old version of FeedWordPress (that is, version 0.98 or earlier), see the directions below on upgrading from 0.98 and older versions.

To upgrade an existing installation of FeedWordPress to the latest version:

1. Download the FeedWordPress installation package and extract the files on your computer.

2. Upload the new PHP files to wp-content/plugins/feedwordpress, overwriting any existing FeedWordPress files that are there.

3. Be sure to upgrade the MagpieRSS module by uploading rss.php and rss-functions.php from the MagpieRSS-upgrade directory in your archive to the wp-includes directory of your WordPress installation.

4. Enjoy your new installation of FeedWordPress.

Upgrading from 0.98 and older versions

A few notes for those who are upgrading from very old versions of FeedWordPress, about significant changes that will affect the upgrading process:

1. If you are upgrading to the most recent version of FeedWordPress from version 0.98 or earlier, then you need to create a new directory named feedwordpress in the wp-content/plugin directory of your WordPress installation, and you also need to delete your existing wp-content/update-feeds.php and wp-content/plugins/feedwordpress.php files. The file structure for FeedWordPress has changed and the files from your old version will not be overwritten, which could cause conflicts if you leave them in place.

2. If you are upgrading to the most recent version of FeedWordPress from version 0.98 or earlier, note that the old update-feeds.php has been eliminated in favor of a (hopefully) more humane method for automatic updating. If you used a cron job that triggered update-feeds.php for scheduled updates, it will not work anymore. Instead, you should have your cron job send a regular request to a URL like the following (replacing http://example.com with the actual URL for your WordPress installation):

   http://example.com/?update_feedwordpress=1
   

   For example, if your host has curl available, the following line in your crontab will set up FeedWordPress to check in every 10 minutes to see whether any feeds are ready to be polled for updates.

   */10 * * * * /usr/bin/curl --silent http://example.com/?update_feedwordpress=1
   

   See Scheduling Feed Updates for more details on your options under the new scheduling system.

3. If you are upgrading to the most recent version of FeedWordPress from version 0.96 or earlier, immediately log in to the WordPress Dashboard, and go to the Syndication settings page. Follow the directions to launch the database upgrade procedure. The new versions of FeedWordPress incorporate some long-needed improvements, but old meta-data needs to be updated to prevent duplicate posts and other possible maladies. If you're upgrading an existing installation, updates and FeedWordPress template functions will not work until you've done the upgrade. Then take a coffee break while the upgrade runs. It should, hopefully, finish within a few minutes even on relatively large databases.