WordPress.org

To use FeedWordPress, you will need:

• an installed and configured copy of WordPress version 2.x, or 1.5.x. (FeedWordPress will also work with the equivalent versions of WordPress MU.)

• FTP or SFTP access to your web host

New Installations

1. Download the FeedWordPress archive and extract the files on your computer.

2. Create a new directory named feedwordpress in the wp-content/plugins directory of your WordPress installation. Use an FTP or SFTP client to upload the contents of your FeedWordPress archive to the new directory that you just created on your web host.

3. Upgrade the copy of MagpieRSS packaged with WordPress by installing the new copies of rss.php and rss-functions.php into the wp-includes directory of your FeedWordPress installation. These files are stored in the MagpieRSS-upgrade directory of your FeedWordPress archive. Strictly speaking, upgrading MagpieRSS is optional; FeedWordPress will run correctly without the upgrade. But if you hope to take advantage of numerous bug fixes, or support for Atom 1.0, multiple post categories, RSS enclosures, or multiple character encodings, then you need to install the upgrade.

4. Log in to the WordPress Dashboard and activate the FeedWordPress plugin.

5. Once the plugin is activated, you can go to Syndication --> Options and set (1) the link category that FeedWordPress will syndicate links from (by default, "Contributors"), and (2) whether FeedWordPress will use automatic updates or only manual updates.

6. Go to the main Syndication page to set up the list of sites that you want FeedWordPress to syndicate onto your blog.

Upgrades

To upgrade an existing installation of FeedWordPress to version 2008.1030:

1. Download the FeedWordPress archive in zip or gzipped tar format and extract the files on your computer.

2. If you are upgrading from version 0.98 or earlier, then you need to create a new directory named feedwordpress in the wp-content/plugins directory of your WordPress installation, and you also need to delete your existing wp-content/update-feeds.php and wp-content/plugins/feedwordpress.php files. The file structure for FeedWordPress has changed and the files from your old version will not be overwritten, which could cause conflicts if you leave them in place.

3. Upload the new PHP files to wp-content/plugins/feedwordpress, overwriting any existing FeedWordPress files that are there. Also be sure to upgrade the MagpieRSS module by uploading rss.php and rss-functions.php from the MagpieRSS-upgrade directory in your archive to the wp-includes directory of your WordPress installation.

4. If you are upgrading from version 0.96 or earlier, immediately log in to the WordPress Dashboard, and go to Options --> Syndicated. Follow the directions to launch the database upgrade procedure. The new versions of FeedWordPress incorporate some long-needed improvements, but old meta-data needs to be updated to prevent duplicate posts and other possible maladies. If you're upgrading an existing installation, updates and FeedWordPress template functions will not work until you've done the upgrade. Then take a coffee break while the upgrade runs. It should, hopefully, finish within a few minutes even on relatively large databases.

5. If you are upgrading from version 0.98 or earlier, note that the old update-feeds.php has been eliminated in favor of a (hopefully) more humane method for automatic updating. If you used a cron job for scheduled updates, it will not work anymore, but there is another, simpler method which will. See Setting Up Feed Updates to get scheduled updates back on track.

6. Enjoy your new installation of FeedWordPress.