The RSS Feed service is a great way to connect a blog or website to IFTTT for use in your Applets. However, not all feeds are created equal, and some work better with IFTTT than others. Here are some common problems you may run into.
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.
Not a valid feed
We attempt to validate RSS feeds when you create a new RSS Feed Applet. If the URL entered does not point to a valid RSS feed, you'll receive the below error message:
A tool like the W3C Feed Validation Service may provide some insight into why your feed isn't validating.
On top of any issues found by the W3C Feed Validation Service, the RSS 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 RSS Feed service distinguishes between new content and updated content. Applets are triggered by newly published content, while items that have only been updated may be ignored.
Below is an example entry from an RSS feed. It was published on 2021-11-09 and updated a couple of weeks later on 2021-11-23. 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>2021-11-09T07:47:25Z</pubDate>
<updated>2021-11-23T04:57:42Z</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 the problem you are facing with your RSS feed is known or being experienced by other users.