[UPDATE: The latest version of this plugin can be found here.]
When MovableType first introduced plugins, Richard Rainwater was one of the first to release a plugin for retrieving RSS feeds and inserting them into MovableType layouts. In recent weeks (months?) Richard's site with the plugin source has been offline and he has been unreachable. Interest in this plugin still persists with occasional requests for it being posted to the Movabletype Plugin Development forum.
I just so happens I downloaded a copy of what I believe was his last public release (RSSFeed v.3) before Richard's site went off line. As I understand the license Richard released it under, I am allowed to "redistribute it freely" under terms that I believe I have adhered to. It is now available here. (If I am mistaken about the license please contact me and I will take it down.)
All is not well though because as Richard indicated in his first post to this thread, the XML::RSS module his plugin uses has "serious problems handling minor problems in RSS files." He had planned to rewrite it with a different parser. To my knowledge that version was never released.
Based on my own experience writing a homegrown RSS feed aggregator with Blagg and examining the XML::RSS feed module, I have a sense of what the problems are. Mark Pilgrim put it most elegantly when he said "You see, most RSS feeds suck." Many RSS feeds break compliance with the sometimes vague RSS specs. Other product (sometimes user) specific tags have been added under the guise of a new specification. Worse many more are not even well-formed XML.
Mark's solution is to use an "ultra liberal parser" to grab information out of RSS files. In order to raise the function and reliability of this plugin, it will need to take a similar route until (if?) feed quality improves. It's something I'm considering doing if there is interest in the MT community.
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