Feb 07

Including an image with your RSS feed just got a whole lot easier. By using these easy steps you'll be on your way to stepping up your RSS feed.

Things you will need:

The Setup:
Follow the instructions for each module on how to install each one.
The following is how I went about getting images in my blog feed. Some of these settings will differ for you and some of the steps may not apply.

  • Add a new cck imagefield for your content type, mine happens to be the blog content type.
  • Make sure you remember the machine-type name you assigned to the field.
  • Make a new preset in ImageCache to output a reasonably size image for feed readers to handle. Mine happens to be 490px wide because I'm also using it as my blog header image.
  • Attach an image to your new cck imagefield in your content type and save the content.
  • Make a new view for content feed. Call it whatever you want.
  • Once you have set up the inital view, add a feed display type.
  • Select the RSS Feed for the Style.
  • Select the Media RSS for the Row Style.
    • Select the content type you wish to display
    • Select the cck field you want to display
    • In the Teaser/Body section select either Full or Teaser to display, but make sure you pick one of them that includes either a single picture or multiple pictures. All of that depends on your needs. I went with Full text plus pic.
    • Select your ImageCache preset that you set up earlier.
  • Save the view and check out the feed.

The first thing you might notice is that there is a media enclosure attached to the bottom of the feed. Don't worry about that, we are going to clean that up.

First check your feed in a feed reader. You might notice that the images don't appear. We are going to run the feed through Feedburner.

In Feedburner, make sure to go to the optimize tab in the feed settings. Activate the Smartfeed. Check out your feed now. It should include the image and not the media enclouser and when viewed in a feed reader everything should look perfect.

Check out my Blog Feed to see how it should look.

*Note: This is just a way to include images through cck image fields and using image cache. You can always just insert images directly into the body of your content type and they will show up in feeds as long as you have the full url for the image.

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