1. Create a copy of the stock PloneRSS portlet by navigating to **$portal_url/portal_skins/PloneRSS/portlet_plone/manage_main** (replacing '$portal_url' with the base URL of your Plone site) and clicking the **Customize** button.

2. Change the news item link by replacing the code '<a href="" tal:attributes="href obj/getURL; title obj/title">' with '<a href="" tal:attributes="href item/remoteUrl; title obj/title">'. The TAL code **obj/getURL** refers to the URL of the RSS news item object itself, whereas **item/remoteUrl** is the link to the story. **item** comes from the TAL definition 'item obj/getObject' a few lines above.

3. *Optional:* Include the RSS news item's lead-in text (stored as the **Description** attribute) in the anchor tag's title (so that when someone mouses over the link, they see the lead-in text instead of "Indexes all content in the site") by changing 'title obj/title' to 'title item/Description', i.e. '<a href="" tal:attributes="href item/remoteUrl; title item/Description">'.

4. Save your changes to the customized version of the portlet by clicking the **Save Changes** button.

If you want these links to open in a new window, you can add the **target** attribute to the anchor tag (limited to the portlet and not valid strict XHTML). "Changing Plone's scanforlinks JavaScript function":http://plone.org/documentation/how-to/open-external-links-in-new-window has no effect on the RSS news item links because, when presented in the portlet, they lie outside of the range checked by scanforlinks.