If you want to import RSS feeds from other sites and insert them into your WordPress sites as blog posts or even other custom post types, I suggest you use the Aggregator plugin together with its Feed to Post feature from the Pro Plan.
What you’ll need
- WP RSS Aggregator – Free from WordPress.org
- WP RSS Aggregator is the most comprehensive and elegant RSS feed solution for WordPress. The original and premier plugin for importing, merging and displaying RSS and Atom feeds on your WordPress site.
- WP RSS Aggregator Pro – $179 for a one-site licence
- Allows you to import feeds and store them as posts or any other custom post type that you have created. Comes with a bunch of customization features, and also includes the ability to import full content from feeds that only give you a short excerpt. The best tool if you want your site to be populated with content from other sites.
How to Import RSS Feeds into Posts
Install the two plugins, activate them and you’re ready to go. Remember to enter the licence key as this is what will allow you to receive automatic updates as well as full support for the premium features.
You can then start adding sources.
From your dashboard, go to RSS Aggregator > Add New. add your feed source name and its URL, and you’ll see an immediate preview of the feed items as you can see in the screenshot below.
Feed to Post is very flexible and at the same time straightforward. All options are neatly arranged into metaboxes and the interface itself blends seamlessly into the WordPress UI. Let’s have a quick look through the options
First up you’ve got the Feed to Post general settings. From here you can set the post type, status, format and date, as well as enable the comments, force the full content, allow any embedded content and even use a canonical link.
Next up you can set the options for importing images, choosing whether to import the images into your Media Library, setting their minimum dimensions and enabling the featured image. You can also choose which image to set as the featured image and if it’s appearing double in your post, there’s a setting to prevent that too.
Finally you have the choice to only import posts that have an image available to be set as the featured image, preventing any image-less posts from being imported.
Besides these settings you have some other great options too. These include the Taxonomies section where you can assign categories or tags to your imported posts and the Authors section where you can set the post author and fallback user.
After these you’ll find the Append/Prepend to Content metaboxes where you have a number of options for content to add to the beginning or end of the imported posts, such as the feed name, feed URL, post publish date, etc.
Then finally you have the Extraction Rules that you can use to remove unwanted material from imported posts’ content and the Custom Field Mapping that gives advanced users more power over what data to bring into their posts, and is most notably useful for users that import into other custom post types, or use themes which display custom data.
Feed to Post is also fully compatible with WPML for ease-of-use on multilingual websites, and can be used on WordPress Multisite and BuddyPress.
Feed to Post is not the only powerful feature available for WP RSS Aggregator. Keyword Filtering lets you filter incoming posts based on keywords/keyphrases and categories. Full Text RSS Feeds on the other hand transforms excerpt-only feeds into full text feeds so you can import all the original content into your website. These and more add-ons help make WP RSS Aggregator the most powerful feed importer for WordPress.
How would you like to use a feed import plugin for WordPress? If you’re in doubt whether your use case is catered for by WP RSS Aggregator, leave a comment and we’ll help guide you.
For more information, check out the WP RSS Aggregator website.
48 Responses
Here’s the situation, i have an old site with old feed, i want to extract everything i can and store it in a temporary site, so it’s like from www.oldsite.com to www.newsite.com, after getting the data, i would like to import it to the improved www.oldsite.com with WordPress installed. so my question is if i purchase this plugin and use it first on www.newsite.com to temporarily hold the data, can i deactivate it and use it on www.oldsite.com as i would like to retain that domain. THanks!
Hey Joma,
Yes, you can do exactly that with WP RSS Aggregator and the Feed to Post add-on.
Hello, do you recommend another free plugin like this one: https://www.wprssaggregator.com/pricing/
Which one is equivalent?
No free alternative comes close to that bundle – I recommend investing in it if you really want a complete solution with a dedicated team behind it.
Thank you Mark, l am thinking of doing so.
Feel free to contact the team on the link below and we’ll help you find what you need…
https://www.wprssaggregator.com/contact/
i like your contribution to wordpress plugin for importing posts via rss. most of these plugins often have restrictions, it is often difficult to add multiple rss feeds after exceeding certain amounts. is there any plugin that can accept multiple feeds
Hey jay, you can use WP RSS Aggregator 🙂
WPeMatico Pro or WP Aggregator w/Advanced Feeds bundle? I have WPeMatico installed currently but have just tried the Demo of Aggregator. Can anyone give some advice or opinion on which is better? Pros and Cons? Thanks so much!
Hi David, Mark from WP RSS Aggregator here. What are you looking to do with our Advanced Feeds Bundle? It’s the most powerful combination of add-ons for our plugin, so it should do the job 🙂
Hello, i feel that i noticed you visited my web site so i came to go back the favor?.I’m
attempting to to find issues to enhance my site!I guess its
ok to use a few of your ideas!!
It says it’s buddypress compatible but I can’t find anything on how that works. Can buddypress members pull their own feeds onto their profiles
It should be possible to do so.
Solid post. Comments were awesome too
Thanks Jason.
how does your plugin tackle duplicate content issue especially is an article from a feed is similar to another already existing in the database?
Hi, we have two methods to prevent duplicate content. Firstly, feed items with the same permalink are never imported twice, so if a post with a particular permalink is already imported it won’t be imported again, no matter what feed source it’s in.
We also have an option to import “Unique titles only”, so if two posts have the exact same title (from the same feed or different ones) the plugin will only import the first one it comes across.
One quick question….will Feed to Post plugin still be able to import the full post if the RSS feed gives only a summary?
HI Michael, if the RSS feed only provides a summary then there’s the Full Text RSS Feeds add-on that works with Feed to Post to bring in the full content anyway. You can try it out on the free demo too; you can find the links below:
https://www.wprssaggregator.com/extension/full-text-rss-feeds/
https://www.wprssaggregator.com/extension/feed-to-post/
Hey Ab, sorry for the wait. If you want feed items that include the word Ibiza only, then you can enter it as a keyword as shown here – https://kb.wprssaggregator.com/category/66-keyword-filtering
It would be helpful if you had some video for there set-up. I installed it and willing to pay for 3 websites, but I can’t get it to work. The feeds are there, but the post stay out. If I have to paste a [wpp rss agregator], it will be on a sport page. I want it to be published like a new post, and a s a draft, so I can check before publishing. RSS Multi importer was easy, but gives now errors, so time to look for a better alternative.
Hi, you can find the overview videos of our core plugin and premium add-ons here. Using the core plugin alone will nor import the feed items as posts, but it will import the feed items and allow you to display them as needed using the shortcode you mentioned.
Using the [Feed to Post](https://www.wprssaggregator.com/extension/feed-to-post/) add-on will allow you to import each feed item as a Draft post, after which you can check it, fix it, etc, and then Publish.
Feel free to contact [Support]https://www.wprssaggregator.com/contact/ for more information.
Hi Mark, Ah! Now I understand the concept; to make it work from feed to post is not in the free version. Ok, that clarifies;-) I’ve activated a demo site now and will test it. Thanks for the answer, cheers, Ab
You’re welcome 😉
Hi Mark, so far it works like a train;-) But how does keyword filtering work, or tag filtering. If I want to have only information about Ibiza from a general Spanish newspaper, where should I place the word Ibiza? Is that a tag or a keyword? Thanks for helping out, Ab
Hi, where is store all fetch rss article.What is the name of mysql table.
Is there a limit to the number of posts I can import at once?
I have a site with over 800 articles. The only way I can import them as posts is from rss feed. Could your plugin do this?
Hi, yes the plugin can do this.
Thanks Jean, and would i need advanced feeds bundle for this?
Yes that’s right.
Does RSS importer post the images from RSS feed into my website as a post?
Yes WP RSS Aggregator with the Feed to Post add-on will do that.
Are there any issues with stealing other people’s work and not crediting them?
WP RSS Aggregator is merely a the tool for importing RSS, it is the users’ responsibility to make sure that they are abiding by the laws of their country.
To be safe, you can contact the websites where you wish to pull data from and ask them if it’s ok for you to do so. In our experience pulling text from big news sites does not present any problem, there are loads of websites doing it and providing a link back means more traffic for the original website.
Again, to be completely safe always ask for permission.
I am using multi importer, but for the life of me i can’t get the feeds into a specific category on my site.
Example: I want feed from CNN Asia to a category on my site called Asia Breaking News. Not being able to do this makes it worthless for me.
I can really use some help.
Cheers
Hi Andy, why don’t you try WP RSS Aggregator instead? Multi Importer is an abandoned project now unfortunately.
Jean, I’ve been trying RSS Post Importer but it has one deal killer, which I’m hoping your WP RSS aggregator will solve. I set my posts to start as drafts, publish the ones I want and delete the rest. (This will be a curated site, not looking for automatic posts.) The problem is that RSS Post Importer re-imports those I have deleted. We need it to start each search from the first item that is new to that feed since the previous (daily) look.
Are we good?
Ken, you can email us on support@wprssaggregator.com to discuss your setup in more detail, we’re always thinking of ways we can accommodate the different use cases people have in a better way. However our Blacklisting feature will definitely be useful in the case you describe.
A so useful tut.
Thanks, you make my day.
Welcome Aurelien.
Hey eddy,
I’d see if having the Open Links Behaviour setting at Lightbox would do it for you.
I hoped your ‘feed to post’ would integrate the articles in de dbase of WordPress, but it didn’t. The feed is nicely placed between the blogs, but you leave the website as soon as you want to read a ‘feed to post’ article.
It does work as you want it to Eddy. If you have any problems hit us up on support@wprssaggregator.com
I’d also take a look at RSS Multi Importer ) which has a few more features and is free (though worthy of a donation to the author)
RSS Multi Importer was forked from an early version of WP RSS Aggregator, however it is not as polished in its UI or code. It is also missing some important features that Feed to Post has, such as the ability to import full content from shortened feeds.
Indeed it is free and the author provides good support, although I would rather recommend that people go for a project that is profitable and in it for the long haul. A recent post from the author of RSS Multi Importer in fact suggests that providing support for so many users of a free plugin is a tad unsustainable:
My biggest showstopper for WP RSS Aggregator was default feed images, which I see you added last month.
Ok, I’ll take another look 🙂
Yes we’ve added that too, in fact we’re all ears when it comes to user suggestions. We’ve also got a specific system for that, which you can use if you would like to see anything else added:
https://www.wprssaggregator.com/feature-requests/
Update: That plugin is now no longer available.