Harvard Square Library publishes a daily RSS feed called “This Day in Unitarian Universalist History” about a notable person or event in the history of Unitarianism and Universalism. We are happy to make this available to you for free, but if you enjoy this, please make a small donation by clicking here.
You can show the post on your WordPress website with a sidebar widget or a shortcode. See examples on the lower part of this page. The instructions below are for all WordPress-based websites, e.g., sites using UUA WordPress Theme for Congregations. But our feed is standard RSS 2.0 XML format and will work with any feed reader designed to embed rss feeds on a website.
Articles are excerpted from This Day in Unitarian Universalist History by Frank Schulman, reprinted with the permission of Skinner House Books. The book is available at (800) 215-9076 or www.uua.org/bookstore.
Step 1: Install plugin to read RSS feed
We recommend using the WordPress plugin FEEDZY RSS Feeds Lite. Feedzy does the best job displaying our feed of all the available WordPress RSS reader plugins. Feedzy Lite version is free. (plugin page: wordpress.org/plugins/feedzy-rss-feeds/)
- From Dashboard>Plugins page add FEEDZY RSS Feeds Lite and activate.
Step 2: Add a widget or shortcode to your site:
Use a Feedzy widget to publish This Day in UU History in a sidebar, footer or other widget area (as on right sidebar of this page):
- From Dashboard>Appearance>Widgets page, drag a ‘Feedzy RSS Feeds’ widget to the desired sidebar area and enter the settings below:
- Feed Source:
https://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/feed/thisdayuu
- For how long will we cache the feed results: 3 hours (default is 12 hours, but you may want to refresh more often)
- Should we display the date of publication and the author name? No (date is already included in post title)
- Should we display a description (abstract) of the retrieved item? Yes (this displays the actual content of This Day post)
- Crop description (summary) of the element after X characters: 1000 (this is needed to avoid cutting off part of the post)
Use a Feedzy shortcode to publish This Day in UU History in the main content area of a page:
- Copy and paste the shortcode below:
[feedzy-rss feeds="https://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/feed/thisdayuu" max="1" feed_title="no" refresh="1_hours" sort="date_desc" meta="no" summary="yes" summarylength="1000" thumb="yes" size="200"]
Examples of sidebar widget and shortcode, below and on right sidebar of this page:
- This Day in Unitarian Universalist History March 26
1773 – Nathaniel Bowditch was born in Salem, Massachusetts. He was reared poor but became a wealthy merchant, president of a marine insurance company in Salem, and an accomplished mathematician, navigator, ans scholar. He wrote The American Practical Navigator (1802). Read more about Nathaniel Bowditch at: www.HarvardSquareLibrary.org - the digital library of Unitarian Universalism.The post March 26 first appeared on Harvard Square Library.
Step 3: Optional: style the Feedzy RSS feed display with custom CSS
- The default style rules for Feedzy plugin may be perfectly suitable for your site. However, if needed, you can customize by adding rules below (with your specific property:value pairs for these rules) in your theme customizer:
Dashboard>Appearance>Customize>Additional CSS
.feedzy-rss .rss_item { } /* style body of text */
.feedzy-rss .rss_item .rss_image { } /* style the image */
.feedzy-rss .rss_item .title { } /* style the post title */
Example usage: set the feedzy image rule to float:none; to prevent post title breaking awkwardly around the thumbnail, e.g., when using a widget in a narrow sidebar as on this page.
