Build Up To Something

I want to find a Wordpress plugin that can fetch a number of RSS feeds, mix them together, and output the contents in my Wordpress blog in time order. I have looked at 5 Wordpress plugins for this objective. The following are my initial findings.

RSS-Import (WordPress Plugin) - Import RSS-newsfeeds in your site. I think it is a simple and good plugin. However, it cannot do with multiple RSS feeds at a time. You use it by putting a PHP code like RSSImport(5, “http://www.stevenchoy.com/feed/”, false, false) somewhere in your wordpress template file. If you want to embed a feed content into a page or a post, you need to install another Wordpress plugin such as PHP Exec (need PHP version 4.3.0 or later) that allows running of PHP code in posts or pages.

Lector_RSS (Wordpress plugin) - Insert RSS feeds in the blog. I have installed it and played with it. It can accept multiple RSS feeds by inputting them via the administator’s “manage” menu. However, it cannot mix all the feed content and re-arrange them. It just displays the post titles one feed after another. You can also use it to display all the feeds’ content in a page or post with the PHP Exec Wordpress plugin.

FetchRSS (Wordpress plugin) - Embeds an RSS reader into a page. You can see the plugin in action on Owen Winkler’s Website. I have tried it by inputting 25 blog feeds. It then displays all the posts of these blogs in the past four days. However, it takes quite a long time before I can see the result and, sometimes, it results in some PHP errors. I will try to figure out the problem later.

BDP RSS Aggregator (Wordpress plugin). It can capture multiple RSS feeds and displays them on your blog. This plugin is fully configurable from the Wordpress dashboard. It also needs the PHP Exec Wordpress plugin if you want the feed content displayed in pages or posts. You can see the plugin in action on the author Bryan Palmer’s Website. I think it is the most sophisticated plugin when compared to other four described here. However, when I installed this plugin, I experienced the following PHP error, and I had to manually delete this plugin and drop the MySQL tables created by this plugin.

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: mb_internal_encoding() in /wp-content/plugins/bdprss/bdp-rssfeed.php on line 5

RSS Reader (Wordpress plugin). I did not install and try this plugin. I think it cannot combine multiple RSS feeds into one, which is similar to the case of RSS-Import and Lector_RSS. Merely based on the instructions provided by the authors, I think RSS-Import is easier to use. One difference about this plugin is that it uses the Wordpress’s database to cache the RSS feed content for performance.

So, I still do not find the best solution that I want. Maybe I will use a combination of them, and find other tools or services for re-mixing RSS feeds.