[MC] News Aggregator 1.1.2

News Aggregator brings the RSS and Atom feeds your community follows onto your forum, as one news feed page, a sidebar widget and an optional headline ticker. Add the sites your members read, give each a colour and a fetch schedule, and new stories arrive on their own. When several sites report the same story, only the first copy is shown, and keyword filters keep deals, sponsored posts and other noise off the page.



Features

News feed

• News feed page with a tab in the navigation, newest stories first, 20 per page by default
• Source pills across the top: pick one to read a single source, or All for everything
• Each story shows its source, title, a short description and when it was published
• Titles open the original article in a new tab, with nofollow
• Choose which parts each story shows (source, description, timestamp) with the Feed item elements style property
• Widget positions above, below and beside the feed for your own widgets
• Members online show as viewing the news feed, or the source they are reading

Ticker and widget

• Headlines ticker at the top of every public page, cycling through the latest stories and pausing while the pointer is over it. Off by default
• Ticker options for how many stories it cycles through (default 10), how long each shows (default 5 seconds) and which sources it uses
• Members can hide the ticker from their preferences
• Latest news widget for any widget position, with the number of stories (default 5), a title length limit, a source filter and an optional View more button

Sources

• Any RSS or Atom feed, each with its own title, colour and fetch schedule from every 10 minutes to every 12 hours
• Allowed categories: import only the stories a feed tags with the categories you list, useful for a site that mixes news with shop posts
• Maximum item age: articles published more than 30 days ago (default) are skipped, so a new source does not flood the feed with its archive
• Feed preview shows a feed's latest articles before you save the source
• Fetch now for one source, or Fetch all now for every enabled source
• Import OPML and Export OPML, so you can bring your feeds from an RSS reader or move them to another forum. Feeds already added are skipped
• Source list with each source's article count, last fetch time and any fetch error, and a toggle to enable or disable it
• A source that fails 5 times in a row is disabled automatically, so a dead feed stops being requested
• Feeds are fetched in parallel, and a feed that has not changed since the last fetch is not downloaded again

Duplicate detection

• Each new story is compared with every story from the last 48 hours, across all sources
• Titles are compared by shared words, word order and overall wording, so "Hollow Meridian delayed to spring 2027" and "Hollow Meridian delayed to spring 2027, Northwake confirms" count as one story
• Duplicate detection threshold sets how similar two titles must be, default 60%. Set it to 0 to turn detection off
• The same article is never imported twice, even when its link carries tracking parameters or a www prefix
• Duplicates are kept off the feed, the widget and the ticker, and stay in the AdminCP list, where Not duplicate puts one back

Keyword filters

• Keep stories off the feed when their title or description contains a keyword
• Match type per keyword: Contains, or Exact word match so "sale" does not catch "wholesale"
• Batch add filters: paste one keyword per line, and keywords you already have are skipped

Moderation

• News items list with every imported article, filtered by source and by status: Visible, Duplicates, Filtered or Hidden
• Hide or unhide any story, mark a duplicate as not a duplicate, or delete it
• Retention period: stories are deleted after 180 days by default
• Retention period for flagged items: hidden, filtered and duplicate stories are deleted after 30 days by default

Permissions and options

• View news feed: a member permission controlling who sees the feed page, the widget and the ticker, given on install to every group that can view your forum
• Items per page, default 20
• Disable sources after X consecutive errors, default 5. Set it to 0 to never disable a source
• Concurrent feed fetches (default 5), Feed fetch timeout (default 15 seconds) and Maximum feed body size (default 5 MB)
• Options are grouped into General and News Ticker tabs

Other features

• Style properties for the feed items, source pills, ticker and its heading, with Use per-source colors and Show source dots switches
• The news feed page is listed in your XML sitemap
• Feed addresses that point at a private or reserved network address are refused
• Responsive on mobile, and works in light and dark styles

FAQ

Does it copy whole articles onto my forum?
No. Each story keeps its title, a short description from the feed and a link. Members read the article on the site that published it.

Does it post news as threads?
No. Stories appear on the news feed page, in the Latest news widget and in the ticker. They are not posts, so they do not count towards anyone's messages.

What does it send to the sites I add?
Only a request for the feed, from your server, on the schedule you set for that source. Nothing about your members is sent, and members' browsers never contact the feed sites until someone opens an article.

What happens on uninstall?
Your sources, imported stories and keyword filters are deleted, along with the members' hide ticker preference.

Is there branding, and can I remove it?
Yes, a small footer credit. Removing it is free: switch it off with the Remove branding option in [MC] Core Library.



Screenshots

News feed




Ticker and widget




Sources




Duplicate detection


Keyword filters



Moderation


Permissions and options