Im trying to set up a customized RSS feed on my new site at http://clown-forum.com/clowning/

I was using a RSS feed from http://newstrove.com/cgi-bin/CustomRSS.pl that worked fine for a couple of days, then just stopped working for no reason. The headline module supposed to show on the right side of the page (just below the event calendar) was either not showing at all or showing with no headlines. The news page was blank, and my whole site slowed down to a crawl.

I deleated the newstrove feed and is now trying to use this RSS feed instead: http://www.voidstar.com/gnews2rss.php?num=25&q=clown+clowning+clowns

However the news page ( http://clown-forum.com/clowning/modules/xoopsheadline/ )is still not showing any headlines and the headline block is not showing up. The site is not slow anymore though. I have checked user group settings, block settings and tried uninstalling/reinstalling the headlines module but nothing is working.

Any suggestions please?

Some headlines are slow to take hold. In most case they show up 24 hours after inclusion into your headlines module. I recommend setting the casce to or updates to hourly untill you get them showing up and then go back to what ever time fram you want.

Also, be care of what headlines you have on your start page, slow loading headline feed will make your site look unreachable untill the feed has loaded, this include feeds in a block on your main page.

I've since limited what I display on my homepage feeds and just keep a bunch in the headlines section of the site to minimise the impact of a troublesome feed.

Also, (yes theres more) if for some reason a feed just goes poof, wait a day or two and it will come back. IT's not your fault, it;s the feed source doing som funkiness that I don't understand

Thanks for you advise. I still cant get the headlines module working though. However, here is how I worked around the problem:

1.) I used the script from http://www.voidstar.com/gnews2rss.php to make a custom RSS feed from Google News (alternative script: http://myrss.com/new.html)

2.) I created a JavaScript to show the RSS feed on a webpage here: http://www.wcc.vccs.edu/services/news/default.asp the i customized the output: http://www.wcc.vccs.edu/services/news/features.asp

3.) Finally I installed the Tiny Content module and just pasted the javascript into it.

The final result can be seen at http://clown-forum.com/clowning/modules/tinycontent/

Hopefully this will help if others have problems using the default headlines module.