The RSS feed service is a great way to pipe a blog or website into IFTTT and build connections with it. However, not all feeds are created equal, and some work better with IFTTT than others. Here are some common problems people may have.
RSS feed times out
Try opening the feed directly in your browser. If it takes a few seconds to load, there's a chance that it may time out when trying to use it with IFTTT.
Feed not valid
We validate a feed when you create a connection but tools like the W3C Feed Validation Service may help with providing more details about why a feed isn't validating.
The Feed service also has the following requirements for validation:
- A top-level feed title and a unique link
- A GUID and date for each entry
No new published content
The Feed service distinguishes between new content and updated content. Connections are triggered by newly published content, items that are updated may be ignored.
Below is some example content from an RSS feed. It was published on 2018-11-09 and updated a couple weeks later on 2018-11-23. The originator of the feed content may list entries based on when they were updated, but a new connection created with IFTTT after the 9th wouldn't trigger in this case.
<entry>
<id>https://www.example.com/feed/item/100/</id>
<pubDate>2018-11-09T07:47:25Z</pubDate>
<updated>2018-11-23T04:57:42Z</updated>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.example.com/feed/item/100/"/>
<title>Example Feed Content Item 100</title>
<content type="html">
<![CDATA[<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed cursus dui ligula.</p>]]>
</content>
<category term="11" label="Dummy Content"/>
<author>
<name>Example Feed Content</name>
</author>
</entry>
Image content not found
Ensure that the xmlns:content namespace declaration has been included in your RSS feed. For example:
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/">
Now you can add the content:encoded tag to your items. In this tag you must use the img tag with the URL as shown:
<item>... <content:encoded>
<![CDATA[<img src="Image URL goes here" />]]>
</content:encoded>
</item>
More information about this module can be found here.
Where to go for further help
Check out the communities of IFTTT experts on Reddit or Hackster.io to see if your problem with your RSS feed is known or being experienced by other users.