Hi everybody,
First of all, thanks to all MediaWiki developers for such a useful program. I have been
using it for many years and it's really amazing.
I recently developed a MediaWiki extension, that allows to export news in RSS 2.0 and Atom
1.0 format in easy manner. First I developed it for my own site, but I thought it could be
useful for other projects, especially for Wikinews. I talked to Wikinews enthusiasts on
their mailing list, and they agree, that it's a good idea. It's really better than
current system - now they use some external tool, but only headlines are exported without
actual content, Atom format is not supported, and sometimes it stops updating.
My extension is called "News Channel" and is available at
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:News_Channel. Basically, when user or aggregation
program requests a feed, the extension gets specified number of latest articles from some
specified news categories (e.g. [[Category:Published]]), exports it to RSS/Atom feed
format and sends to user. Articles's title will be the headline and article's text
will be the description of news item. It's possible to combine and exclude categories
(e.g. [[Category:Published]] + [[Category:Sports]] - [[Category:Disputed]]) to get
specific news only.
What steps should now be taken to install that extension on Wikinews project?
Thanks in advance,
with best regards,
Iaroslav Vassiliev