Basic settings

The Basic tab defines when a feed is checked and what kind of post every item becomes. The settings are listed here in the order of the tab.

Preview mode

At the top of the settings page of a new or edited feed, the Preview mode drop-down switches the preview of the first item:

Post content: the content as it comes in the feed (or its excerpt, if the feed has no content).
Full-text article: the complete article scraped from the source page.
Attachment: media attached to the item (enclosures, media:content).
XML structure: the raw XML of the item, with every tag name you can use in placeholders and custom fields.

Only modes with something to show are listed. Scripts and styles are removed from the preview so a broken source cannot break the page.

Feed title

The name of the feed in the Syndicator list. Taken from the feed by default. An empty title is saved as “no name”.

Feed URL

Shown when you edit an existing feed. Change it if the source moved; posts already imported from the old URL are reassigned to the new one, so duplicate checks and “delete posts” keep working.

Check for updates every

How often, in minutes, the feed is checked for new items. Default: 1440 (once a day). The minimum is 2 minutes. 0 disables automatic updates; the feed then runs only when you click Pull selected feeds now!.

The check happens on the next run of the pull mode (pseudo cron or your cron job) after the interval has passed.

Delay

Pause in seconds between processing each post, and between the sections of an article created with [gpt_article]. Default: 0.

Keep it at 0 for ordinary feeds. Increase it only if a service limits how fast you may call it, for example when your AI provider returns “Rate limit reached ... Please try again in 20s”, or when a source such as the Wayback Machine or Amazon blocks your IP for too many requests. The delay adds to the run time, so keep Max execution time in mind.

Maximum number of posts

The maximum number of items imported from the feed per update. Default: 1. Low values keep runs short and give your site a natural publishing rhythm; dumping hundreds of posts at once can look suspicious to search engines.

Check for duplicates by

How RSS Retriever recognizes items it already imported:

Link and title: Skip the item if a post with the same source link or the same title (post slug) exists.
Link only (default): Skip the item if a post with the same source link exists.
Title only: Skip the item if a post with the same title exists. Useful when one story arrives with different links.
Don’t check for duplicate posts: Import every item, even if it was imported before.

Posts in the trash do not count.

Post type

The WordPress post type of imported items: post, page or any registered custom post type, including the WooCommerce product type.

Custom taxonomies

For post types with custom taxonomies, one field per taxonomy appears. Enter terms separated by commas. Placeholders are allowed, so you can map feed data to a taxonomy, for example %post_tags%, %xml_tags[brand]% or %custom_fields[genre]%.

Custom post template

A template file of your theme for the single view of the imported posts, if the theme offers templates for this post type.

Post format

The WordPress post format: default, aside, gallery, link, image, quote, status, video, audio or chat, as supported by your theme.

Post author

The WordPress user set as the author of every imported post. Choose (random author) to pick a random user for each post.

Post lifetime

Number of hours after which imported posts are deleted automatically, together with the media the plugin downloaded for them. 0 (default) keeps posts forever. Expired posts are checked about once an hour.

Useful for offers, events, job listings or products that should disappear when they are no longer current.

Post status

Publish immediately (default).
Hold for review: saved as pending until an editor approves it.
Save as draft: for manual editing before publication.
Save as private: visible only to logged-in users with the right permissions.

Base date

Get date from post (default) keeps the publication date from the feed, if it has one. Use syndication date uses the moment of import.

Post date adjustment range

A range in minutes, from min to max, used to shift the date of every post by a random amount. With 0 .. 60 each post date moves forward by 0 to 60 minutes. Negative values move dates back.

-60 .. 60: spread posts around the original time.
-1440 .. -60: backdate posts by 1 to 24 hours.
60 .. 1440: dates 1 to 24 hours in the future. WordPress schedules such posts and publishes them at that time.

Parse WordPress archives

When the current feed of a WordPress blog contains fewer new items than Maximum number of posts, RSS Retriever continues with the older pages of the blog’s feed archive (?paged=2, 3 and so on) and imports posts that are no longer in the main feed. Use it only with permission of the content owner.

Shuffle feed items

Imports the items in random order instead of the order of the feed.

Undefined categories

What to do with the categories an item brings in its <category> tags:

Use default settings: Apply the rule set in Alter default settings. New feeds start with this value.
Post to default WordPress category: Ignore the feed categories; posts without a selected category go to the default WordPress category.
Create new categories defined in syndicating post: Create the feed categories in WordPress if they do not exist and assign them.
Do not syndicate post that doesn’t match at least one category defined above: Import an item only if one of its feed categories matches a category you ticked. A simple way to import only certain sections of a big feed.

Tags from category names

Adds the names of the feed categories as WordPress tags. Feeds only know categories; this gives your posts tags as well.

Post tags

Tags added to every post, separated by commas. Spintax and placeholders are allowed, for example {tag #1|tag #2|tag #3} or %gpt_keywords% for AI-generated keywords.

Auto tags

Looks for your existing tags in the text and assigns those found. If your site has the tags “sport”, “weather” and “books”, a post that says “The weather today is too wet for outdoor sport” gets “weather” and “sport”.

Tags to WooCommerce

Assigns the tags of the imported item as WooCommerce product tags. Use it with the product post type.

Categories to WooCommerce

Assigns the categories of the imported item as WooCommerce product categories.

Republish existing posts

When an item that was already imported appears again, the old post (with its downloaded media) is deleted and the item is imported again as a new post with the same status. Old content moves back to the top of your site. Use with care: post IDs and comments of the old post are lost.

Comments

Allow comments on syndicated posts (default) or Disallow comments on syndicated posts.

Pings

Accept pings or Don’t accept pings (default): whether the imported posts accept pingbacks and trackbacks from other sites.

Polylang language

Shown when Polylang is active. The language assigned to every post created from this feed. See Multilingual sites.

WPML language

Shown when WPML is active. The WPML language of every post created from this feed. See Multilingual sites.