Most of us use some kind of blogging software on our websites, these create a lovely RSS feed which users can subscribe too. I have had problems in aggregating  my feeds from my blog onto my homepage or other pages and found that some feeders don’t work on various versions of PHP.

The use of an RSS aggregator will essencially pull your news / blog feed onto your PHP page and display the headings, dates, content, author, what ever you like really. Aggregators also have a very positive effect in terms of SEO. They will show the major search engines that your are adding fresh dynamic content to your site, providing the user with a better and more unique experience. It also means that search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN can index any new content more quickly.

My top 3 PHP RSS aggregators

1.) Simple Pie – www.simplepie.org
“SimplePie is a very fast and easy-to-use class, written in PHP, that puts the ‘simple’ back into ‘really simple syndication’.” – Quote from simplepie.org

Simple pie is an excellent aggregator that includes just a single .inc file, this means it is pretty straight forward. It aggregates all variables within your RSS feed and is relativly easy to manipulate the way it looks on your page. I would say that using the online documentation is a must if you are a novice, as the zipped versions readme file isn’t great.

2.) Magpie RSS – http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/
“MagpieRSS is compatible with RSS 0.9 through RSS 1.0. Also parses RSS 1.0′s modules, RSS 2.0, and Atom. (with a few exceptions)” – Quote from magpierss.sourceforge.net/

This is the first aggregator that i came across after installing the blog, it requires a few more files, i tend to stick them in a folder called ‘rss’ of whatever really. The feed works well, there is a delay with the updating the news, but only by an hour or so. Supports pretty good online.

3.) RSS Aggregator – www.rss-aggregator.com
“RSS-aggregator is a tool, for Webmaster, allowing to display several feeds RSS on a single page.” – Quote from rss-aggregator.com

The RSS aggregator uses magpie software, buy does so in a much more friendly way. If you are having trouble with simplepie or magipie then use RSS aggregator. It also makes aggregating multiple feeds easier.

If you have a blog attached to the back of a website i would recommend to source the feed on the homepage both for your users and search engines.