How to enable and use RSS
RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a web feed format designed to simplify sharing frequently updated content, such as newsletters or blog posts, directly on a website.
beehiiv offers two different RSS options:
- RSS Feed: Available on all plans, RSS Feed allows you to feature posts from your beehiiv publication on your brand or company website, so readers can view them directly on your site.
- RSS Ingestion: Users on the Max and Enterprise plans can populate newsletter posts with content from their brand or company website using external RSS feeds, keeping subscribers updated with their preferred content.
RSS is ideal for driving more website traffic, curating a content roundup, or repurposing web content for email distribution. Websites on platforms like WordPress or Webflow can use plugins to display posts or pull in RSS feeds directly.
We’ll cover how to use both RSS options and explain how, once external RSS feeds have been added to your account, you can easily include them in your posts.
Watch and learn: How to insert RSS feed content in your posts
The RSS block settings shown in the video will look different from the current beehiiv experience, as the interface has been updated with additional options. All options are covered in the written steps below.
How to generate an RSS feed for your publication
- From the left panel dashboard, scroll down and click Settings.
- Your publication settings will open. Navigate to the publication for which you want to create an RSS feed and click RSS.
- In the RSS Feed section, click New RSS Feed.
-
A unique RSS Feed URL will be generated for your publication. Copy and use this URL as needed. You can delete and regenerate a new RSS feed at any time, but keep in mind that a new URL will be created each time.
All RSS feed URLs will end with .xml, indicating the RSS format.
How to add an external RSS feed to feature in your posts
paid plans
RSS Ingestion (also known as RSS to Send) lets you display posts from your other websites within your newsletter by adding an external RSS feed to your publication.
- Follow steps 1 and 2 above to access your publication's RSS settings, then go to the RSS Ingestion section and click the New External RSS Feed button.
- Enter the External RSS Feed Details. Provide a name for the RSS feed and add the RSS Feed URL (both required). A summary of your selections and a preview of the content will appear on the right. Click Continue to confirm.
- Next, a list of Feed Defaults will appear for customization. Select the number of articles to show, and then set your default display options for how the feed will look in your post.
Choose the attributes (image, title, publication date, categories, author, description, full article, call-to-action/CTA) that you’ll want included when you use the widget in the post editor. You will also be able to reconfigure these from the widget settings as well.
A preview will display on the right, showing how your selections will appear. When satisfied, click the Create RSS Feed button.
- A success message will confirm the new external RSS feed has been added, and it will appear in your RSS Ingestion list.
- To make changes to an external RSS feed, click the 3-dots icon next to the feed to Edit or Delete it.
How to add an external RSS feed to a post
paid plans
Once you’ve added an external RSS feed to your account, it can easily be included in your posts.
- From the left panel dashboard, click Start writing, or open an existing post you’d like to edit.
- The Post Builder will open on the Compose page. Access the post editor by typing /rss and then select RSS.
- All external RSS feeds in your account will be listed — select one to add it to your post.
- The RSS feed will display in your post according to your default display settings.
Click on the RSS block to access the toolbar above the feed, which contains the following icons:- Refresh (circular arrows icon): Manually refreshes the feed to retrieve the latest articles.
- Select feed (swap arrow icon): Switch to a different RSS feed.
- Delete (trash icon): Removes the RSS block from your post.
-
Settings (sliders icon): Opens a dropdown menu with the following options:
- Articles to show: Set the number of articles to show.
- Starts from: Which article in your feed to start from. This allows you to use the same feed across multiple widgets with different starting points, enabling you to insert different items like ads between feed items.
- Refresh feed on send: Toggle this on to automatically pull the latest posts each time the email is sent.
- Reorganize content: Manually reorder featured content using drag and drop.
- Layout: Choose the layout you want to use:: from column layouts (up to 4 columns), row layouts (image left/text right, text left/image right, or alternating) or headlines (bullet-listed titles). Additionally, based on the layout, you can choose whether a title is above or below the image, the alignment of text, vertical alignment of images/text, the image width, and if you want dividers between each article.
- Attributes: Choose to show or hide the image, title, publication date, categories, author, description, or full article. Additionally, you can fine tune your design by adjusting the title, date/author, and description font sizes and padding of the text area.
- Links: Enable/disable links on images, titles or whether to display a call-to-action (CTA). Additionally, you can add an underline to linked titles or adjust the CTA's type, button or text-based, the CTA copy, and its alignment.
Enterprise users can take RSS Ingestion further by combining it with a recurring email series. To do so, enable Refresh feed on send in the RSS block's settings and beehiiv will automatically pull your latest content at send time, so every edition goes out fresh without any manual updates.
- (Optional) To add a new RSS feed directly from the post editor, click Add RSS Feed. A form will appear on the right where you can enter a name and RSS Feed URL (both required). Click Save to confirm.