Quick start: your first feed
This walkthrough adds a news feed, checks what will be imported and publishes the first posts. It takes about five minutes and needs no API keys.
1. Find a feed
Any RSS or Atom URL works, for example https://example.com/feed/. Most WordPress sites have a feed at /feed/. You can also use a YouTube channel page such as https://www.youtube.com/@channel; RSS Retriever finds the channel’s video feed automatically. Thousands of sorted feeds are listed in the free RSS Catalog.
Import only content you are allowed to republish: your own sites, sources with a suitable license, or sources that gave you permission.
2. Add the feed
- Open RSS Retriever in the WordPress menu.
- Paste the URL into the New RSS URL field.
- Click Syndicate ».
RSS Retriever downloads the feed and opens the feed settings page with a preview of the first item. If the feed cannot be read, see The feed does not load.
3. Check the preview
Use the Preview mode drop-down at the top of the page:
- Post content: the item as it comes in the feed.
- Full-text article: the complete article extracted from the source page. If it looks better than the feed content, turn on full-text extraction in step 5.
- Attachment: media attached to the item, such as images or audio.
- XML structure: the raw tags of the item. Useful for XML placeholders and custom fields.
Click to enlarge4. Choose where and how posts are published
On the Basic tab, check these settings first:
| Setting | Default | What to choose |
|---|---|---|
| Feed title | Title of the feed | A name you will recognize in the feed list. |
| Check for updates every | 1440 minutes | How often to look for new items. 60 to 1440 minutes suits most news feeds. |
| Maximum number of posts | 1 | Items imported per update. Keep it low for a natural publishing rhythm. |
| Post status | Publish immediately | Pick Save as draft while you test. |
| Categories | none | The categories every imported post gets. |
All other options are described on the Basic settings page.
5. Optional: make the posts better
- Full articles. On the Advanced tab, set Extract full-text articles. See full-text extraction.
- AI rewriting. Add an API key on the Accounts page, then replace the Post content template on the Post templates tab, for example:
[ai_generate engine="openai-gpt-4o-mini" prompt="Rewrite the following article in your own words. Keep the facts and the HTML structure, return HTML only: %post_content%"] - Images. On the Media enrichment tab, pick an AI image generator or Pixabay. On Media handling, choose how the featured image is created.
- Only relevant items. Add keywords on the Content filtering tab.
6. Save and run
Click Syndicate This Feed at the bottom of the page. The feed appears in the list on the main page and will be checked on its schedule. To import right away, tick the feed and click Pull selected feeds now!; the page shows a report of what was imported.
Open Posts to look at the result. Happy with it? Edit the feed (the edit link next to its title), switch Post status to Publish immediately and click Update Feed Settings.
Click Alter default settings on the main page to define the settings every new feed starts with: your categories, status, templates and API services.
Next steps
- Recipes: complete setups for AI rewriting, translation, product feeds and video sites.
- RSS pull mode: use a real cron job on busy sites.