How to add the Snowcovered.com RSS feeds to your DotNetNuke portal

Snowcovered
By Lee Sykes
December 2005

(and earn a 10% referral bonus!)

Snowcovered.com sell DotNetNuke related products from Module and Skin developers. Snowcovered.com also provide a 10% referral bonus scheme. If one of your website visitors clicks on a link to snowcovered.com and makes a purchase, you receive 10% of the customer sales.

Following a request, Snowcovered.com agreed to create some RSS feeds so that I could easily display their latest products on DNN Creative Magazine and receive a 10% commission on sales.

You can view this RSS feed on the left hand side of the page.

Overview and the advantages of using an RSS feed

Displaying an RSS feed on your website means that as soon as Snowcovered.com performs an update to their website, the updates are automatically added to the RSS feed, meaning that you can display the latest products, or top ten sales without having to do any work.

This tutorial will demonstrate how to add your own referral ID to the RSS feed that Snowcovered.com provide and how to display this feed on your own website.

This tutorial uses the free News Feeds (RSS) core module. You do not need to purchase any modules to set this up.

If you are using the Orizonti Nuke Feeds module, there are also templates at the end of this tutorial especially for Nuke Feeds.

First Step

Throughout this tutorial we will be copying elements of data that we need to keep, so before you begin, open Notepad and save a file called Snowcovered Referral Details.

Obtain your Referral ID

The first step is to obtain your referral ID.

  1. Register with http://www.snowcovered.com
  2. Go to My Account
  3. Select Payment Profile
  4. Select Referral Service
  5. Copy and paste your referral code to Notepad
Referral ID: 3b49c64e05

Note: Get to know your account in Snowcovered.com. You need to setup your profile and how you will receive your payments. It’s also possible to view any referral sales that you have made.

Install the Nuke Feeds (RSS) module

Watch the following free video tutorial, The DotNetNuke® News Feed (RSS) Module

This video tutorial walks you through the setup of the News Feed module.

What is an XSL Transformation file?

In order to display the Snowcovered.com RSS feed in the formatting you require, you need to use a XSL transformation file (named News Feed Style Sheet in the RSS News Feed Module).

XSL transformation files allow you to adjust the display of an RSS feed to suit your needs, for example, to limit the number of items displayed, or to adjust the font etc.

In this case we are going to create an XSL transformation file so that we can add our own referral id into the links that Snowcovered.com provide, as well as to adjust the formatting.

If you do not have any experience of using XSL transformation files, read this tutorial to give you a quick beginners guide:
Setting up the RSS News Feed XSL Stylesheet in DotNetNuke®

Find the RSS feed that you wish to display

Go to http://www.snowcovered.com and on the home page you will find XML icons for the RSS feeds they provide.

select an RSS feed
Top Sellers RSS feed
For this example, we are going to display the Top Module Sellers.

  • Right Click on the XML icon for Top Sellers: DotNetNuke 3  and select Copy Shortcut
  • Paste this link into the Notepad document that you created earlier for your referral ID
Top 10 Modules RSS feed:

http://www.snowcovered.com/snowcovered2/DesktopModules/PortalStore/rss.aspx?feedtype=Popular&categoryid=4

View the RSS Feed

If you open the RSS feed link

You will view the following:

The RSS Feed

The top section contains the main title details for this RSS feed and underneath that the RSS feed contains each item that is listed in the Top Sellers.

On the right hand side, you can view the display of the RSS feed. All we have done here is enable HTML in the XSL transformation file (note: the links do not include our referral ID)

What we are going to do is display a neatly formatted RSS feed, the same as the one on the left hand side, which also contains our referral ID.

What and How are we going to extract the Feed?

To format the feed we will:
  • Display the Main Feed Title and add the Snowcovered logo
  • Display the item Current Rank Number (but not the words 'Current Rank')
  • Display the item Title
  • Turn the title into a link and add to the link our referral ID

Upload the Snowcovered.com logo

Below you can see the various Snowcovered logos:

snowcovered.com Large  snowcovered.com Medium  snowcovered.com small

Right click these logos and select 'Save Picture As' to download them to your computer.

The logo we have used for this example is the medium sized logo:
SnowcoveredLogo-M.gif

Upload the medium sized logo to your DotNetNuke portal, make a note of the URL where you have uploaded the logo:
  • Log in as Admin or Host
  • Go to the Admin Menu / File Manager
  • Create a new folder if required, and click on Upload
  • On the Upload Content Files page, copy the portal URL link
Upload Content
File Manager, Uploading the Snowcovered Image

  • Paste this URL link into your Notepad document
  • Click Browse, select the SnowcoveredLogo-M.gif
  • Click on Add
  • Click on Upload New File

Create the URL for the Snowcovered.com logo

Take the Portal Root URL that you copied to Notepad and re-format it to the following:

(note: these links are example links and do not work)

Portal Link:
C:\webroot1\pro1web\dnncreative\dnncreative.com\www\Portals\0\
Becomes:
http://www.dnncreative.com/Portals/0/
  • If you uploaded the image into a folder, add the folder names to the URL, eg.
http://www.dnncreative.com/Portals/0/affiliates/images/
  • Finally add the name of the image
http://www.dnncreative.com/Portals/0/affiliates/images/SnowcoveredLogo-M.gif
  • With this final URL, paste this into your Notepad document
Snowcovered logo URL:
http://www.dnncreative.com/Portals/0/affiliates/images/SnowcoveredLogo-M.gif
Test:
Paste this URL into your browser, a page should display which contains the Snowcovered.com logo.

If you do not see the logo, check the URL that you have created for any typing errors.

Create an XSL Transformation file

We now have all of the information we need to create an XSL transformation file.

Example 1

Displays the feed title, ie. Top Sellers: DotNetNuke 4 underneath the Snowcovered.com logo

Download example 1 – Snowcovered_RSS_with_Title.XSL
(This is a zip file, you need to extract the XSL file)

From this file we need to make a few edits to add your own details.

13 <xsl:template match="rss/channel">
14 <div align="center">
15 <font style="font-family:Verdana" size="1">
16 <!-- **** Enter the URL for the snowcovered.com logo that you created in the src=" ... " **** -->
17 <img width="122" height="31" src="http://www.yourwebsite.com/Portals/SnowcoveredLogo-M.gif" alt="snowcovered.com"/>
18 <br></br>
19 <!-- Display main feed title -->
20 <xsl:value-of select="title"/>
21 </font>
22 </div>
23 <xsl:apply-templates select="item"/>
24 </xsl:template>
  • Edit line 17 and edit the scr=”http:// …”
  • Add the Snowcovered logo URL that we created earlier
34 <xsl:template match="item">
35 <br></br>
36 <!-- Limit the width of the text and format the font -->
37 <div style="width:132px;">
38 <font style="font-family:Verdana" size="1">
39 <!-- Display formatted description ie: '1. ' -->
40 <xsl:call-template name="getDescription">
41 <xsl:with-param name="getNumber" select="description" />
42 </xsl:call-template>
43 <xsl:text>. </xsl:text>
44 <strong>
45 <!-- make the title a link -->
46 <!-- to open links in a new window, change target="_main" to target="_new" -->
47 <!-- **** replace r=3b49c64e05 with your own affiliate ID **** -->
48 <a href="{link}&amp;r=3b49c64e05" target="_new"><xsl:value-of select="title"/></a>
49 </strong>
50 <br></br>
51 </font>
52 </div>
53
54 </xsl:template>
  • On line 48 edit the href=” … “
  • Delete r=3b49c64e05 and enter your own affiliate ID in here eg.
    <a href="{link}&amp;myreferralid"

Further options

Formatting
On lines 37-38 we apply some formatting to the text, this limits the width of the text and applies a Verdana font.
Font
If your portal skin uses a default font that is suitable, then you can delete the font tags.

line 38
38 <font style="font-family:Verdana" size="1">
line 51
51 </font>
Width
The width value used here is set up for the DNN Creative skin, you may find that you can use a wider width for your skin.

Make sure you save the edited file.

Example 2

Allows you to enter your own text underneath the Snowcovered.com logo.

Download example 2 – Snowcovered_RSS_with_own_Title.XSL

If you use this version, remember to change
  • The Snowcovered logo URL – line 20
  • Your referral ID – line 44
  • To change the text, edit line 24
22 <font style="font-family:Verdana" size="1">
23 <!-- **** Edit your own title text here **** -->
24 <xsl:text>Top 10 Modules</xsl:text>
25 </font>

Make sure you save the edited file.

Add the RSS feed to your DotNetNuke portal

Within the News Feed (RSS) module:
  1. Click Edit NewsFeed
  2. Under News Feed Source, select External URL
  3. Location: Copy and paste the Top Sellers RSS feed
  4. News Feed Style Sheet, select File On Your Site
  5. Upload the XSL transformation file that you have just edited
  6. Click on Update
You should now see the Snowcovered.com RSS feed fully formatted with your referral ID imbedded in the links.

Check that your referral IDs are correctly working by hovering over the links and viewing the link here:

Correctly formatted referral link

A correctly formatted link should display:

http://www.snowcovered.com/snowcovered2/Default.aspx?tabid=166&CatalogItemID=2335&r=3b49c64e05

Check that the end displays: &your_referral_id

Final Thoughts

You may now wish to adjust the container that the Snowcovered.com feed is displayed in. You may even wish to completely remove the container.

Other RSS Readers

Orizonti Nuke Feeds

Orizonti Nuke Feeds has an advantage over the core News Feeds (RSS) module because it can store the Snowcovered.com RSS feed in the DotNetNuke database, therefore speeding up page load times.

If you want to read further information we have created a review of the Orizonti Nuke Feeds module.

You can add a Snowcovered.com RSS feed to Nuke Feeds using the following template:

First Steps:

Add the RSS feed link
  1. Select NukeFeeds Admin
  2. Click Edit Feeds
  3. Click New Feed
  4. Enter the Snowcovered.com Feed URL details
  5. In Frequency enter 60
    (If you want to check for updates more often than every 60 minutes, then change this number)
Remove the sorting
  1. Click on Edit Options
  2. Click on Sort By: Published Date
Add the Template
  1. Click on Edit Template
  2. In Feed Header enter:
<div align="center">    <img width="122" height="31" src="http://www.mywebsite.com/Portals/0/SnowcoveredLogo-M.gif" alt="snowcovered.com"/></br>    <font style="font-family:Verdana" size="1">Top 10 Modules</br></br></font>    </div>

  • Change the <img src=” … “ to the Snowcovered logo URL
  • In Feed Item enter:
<font style="font-family:Verdana" size="1"><strong>[ItemCountStart1]. <a href='[Link]&amp;r=3b49c64e05'>[Title]</a></strong></font>

  • In the <a href=’ … ‘ change r=3b49c64e05 to your referral ID, eg:
    <a href='[Link]&amp;yourrefferalid'>[Title]</a>
  • Click on Save
  • Click on Return to Feeds
AppTheory
RSS Feeds