Tim,

Can you supply the URL for the feed you are using?  Also, which version of DNN? Another question, what are you using to test this xls? 

I don't remember any of the code doing any transformation prior to processing a given xsl, so it's probably something in the feed that is not being handled by your xsl.  Some items to consider when writing custom xsl files:

- any namespace declaration used in the feed must be included in the xsl to be able to transform the tags that are dependent on the namespace.
- if the feed includes HTMl in any of the tags, you need to allow for it by using something like this example for a description element that includes HTML:
 <xsl:value-of select="description" disable-output-escaping="yes"/>
- ensure that you are using the same character encoding as your srouce feed.

Those are some of the issues I've seen when an xsl 'does nothing'.  Remember that any tag that is not understood, in term of namespace declaration will simply be passed over in the parsing.  I suspect, if you inspect your newsfeed source and take careful note of the above cautions that you can get the feed to work with a proper custom xsl.  Many newsfeeds are not exactly conforming to standard RSS specs, and transformations must be customized to use them efficiently in most web apps.  Standalone news readers are more thorough and can code around most types of these oddities, but I've run into some that are just not playing by the specs and if I want to use them, I have no choice but to provide a custom xsl.

There are some issues with your xsl.  The example really doesn't 'do anything' with the items you select from what I see.  So, I'm not sure what you used to test this xsl against the feed.  I use Xselerator from Marrowsoft.

I used the feed with a simple xsl I use for my RSSv2.0 feeds.  I might have to tweak it around a bit to get what I want, but it's a good starting point.  If you are new to xsl and rss, take a look a some other posts on this forum for some tutorial sties that will help with understanding the basics. 

Try this sample xsl with your feed on your site.  It should work, and you can tweak it to get what you feel you need in terms of appearance and such.

Cheers

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>
<!-- RSSv2.0 Simple XSL Example by Phil 'iwonder' Guerra -->
<xsl:template match="/">
 <div>
  <xsl:apply-templates select="rss/channel"/>
  </div>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="rss/channel">
<xsl:variable name="link" select="link"/>
  <xsl:variable name="description" select="description"/>
  <xsl:variable name="image" select="image/url"/>
  <xsl:variable name="idesc" select="image/description"/>
  <xsl:variable name="ilink" select="image/link"/>
  <xsl:variable name="iwide" select="image/width"/>
  <xsl:variable name="ihigh" select="image/height"/>

<div class="head">
 <xsl:if test="$image">
    <a href="{$ilink}" title="{$idesc}"><xsl:value-of select="ilink" /></a>
    <img src="{$image}" height="{$ihigh}" width="{$iwide}" style="float: left; margin: 2px; border: 0px;"/>
 </xsl:if>
 <font size="-2"><xsl:value-of select="description"/><br/>
     <a href="{$link}"><xsl:value-of select="title" /></a><br/>
 <xsl:value-of select="webMaster"/><br/>
 <xsl:value-of select="copyright"/></font>
 <hr/>
</div>

  <xsl:apply-templates select="item"/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="item">
  <xsl:variable name="item_link" select="link"/>
  <xsl:variable name="item_title" select="description"/>
  <div class="subHead">
    <a href="{$item_link}"><xsl:value-of select="title" disable-output-escaping="yes"/></a></div>
 <font size="-2">
 <xsl:value-of select="description" disable-output-escaping="yes"/></font><br/>
 <font size="-3">
 (<xsl:value-of select="pubDate"/>)</font><br/> <hr/>
 </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>