With the free News widget, you can check your favorite sources of news from your Start.me page. The technique we use here is called RSS (Really Simple Syndication), and yes, it's really simple to use.
Add a News widget
Instructions
Click the Add icon in the top right corner.
Select News feed (RSS).
Browse through our list of feeds or type in the name of the news site you want to add.
Once you've found your feed, select it.
Click Add Feed to add a feed to your Start.me page.
You can add multiple RSS feeds to your News widget, even if they don't appear in our suggestions list. All you do is go to a news source, locate the RSS URL you want to follow and then copy and paste the URL in the entry field.
Expand the RSS widget
When you use your mouse to hover over an RSS widget, an expand icon will appear in the top right corner. Click it, to open the RSS widget in a bigger, more informative reading window. Like this:
Widget menu
Right-click the widget or click the More icon (three dots) to open the Widget menu. This is where you control the appearance and behavior of your News widget.
These are your options
Add Feed. This option opens a sidebar, where you can search in our database for a known news source, or paste a custom URL. If you paste a custom URL, make sure to add the entire URL (including
https://)Edit the widget. Change the title. Add a new RSS source from here. Click Done to stop editing.
Refresh the widget, to make sure the data is current.
Copy the widget to another page. The original widget will remain on the page. You can also create a Live copy.
Move the widget to another page. The original widget will be deleted.
Share the widget. Once you tick this option, you can share the widget with a unique link. In this window you'll also see if you've made a live copy of your widget.
Change Display settings. Here you can decide:
The Number of articles to show (1 - 50)
If you want to Show summaries of the articles, and for how many articles.
If you want to Show images, and the size you want these to have.
If you want to Show feeds in one list or not. This feature is useful when you have more than one news feed.
If you want to Truncate headlines, so the widget is more compact.
If you want to Display timestamps, to see the publication time or date of an article.
If you want to Show pagination buttons, to switch to past articles.
If you want to apply these settings to all other RSS widgets on the page.
Change background color and transparency. If you make the widget 100% transparent, you'll only see its content. You can apply this setting to all other widgets on your page.
Delete widget. You'll get a confirmation pop-up. If your continue, the widget will be deleted. There is no way to undo this.
Troubleshooting
If RSS feeds do not work, this can be caused by several reasons:
The RSS feed may not be valid.
You can check the feed validity here: https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgiIf the feed is valid, but still not updating on your Start.me page, this may be caused by our Start.me bot not being able to access the feed source.
A possible workaround is:
Go to https://rss.app and create a free account.
Add the RSS feed URL (or website address) and create your own custom RSS.app feed.
Add the generated RSS.app feed URL to your RSS widget on Start.me.
This often resolves issues related to feed accessibility or blocking.