RSS Polling

[Discourse]

	Summary	Allows you to automatically import content from RSS/ATOM feeds into your Discourse site as topics
	Install Guide	This plugin is bundled with Discourse core. There is no need to install the plugin separately.

As this is an official plugin maintained by the Discourse team, Support, Contribute > Bug, Contribute > UX, and Contribute > Feature requests can be made in the respective categories here on Meta, and tagged with the appropriate plugin tag. Click on a link below to get one started.

Support Bug UX Feature

This documentation covers how to configure and use the RSS Polling plugin to automatically important content from RSS feeds into your Discourse community as topics.

Note: Discourse RSS Polling is available on the Pro, Business, or Enterprise plans.

Configure RSS feeds

To turn on the plugin, go to Admins → Installed plugins, find the RSS Polling plugin, and switch the toggle on.

Once enabled, click Settings and then the Add feed button to configure your first feed.

You’ll need to add the following information:

• Feed URL: The URL of the RSS or Atom feed to import.
• Category filter (optional): Limits which feed items get imported based on the item’s category metadata. Only items whose feed category matches the value you enter will be imported into Discourse. For example, if a feed includes items tagged with multiple categories, you can enter a specific category term to import only those items.
• Author: An existing Discourse user who will be listed as the author of all topics imported from this feed.
• Category: The Discourse category where imported topics will be published.
• Tags: One or more tags that will be applied to all topics from this feed.

Click Save to add the feed.

🎥 Common example: YouTube Feeds

Import a YouTube playlist

Use YouTube’s RSS feed endpoint for playlists:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=<PLAYLIST-ID>

Where <PLAYLIST-ID> is the token found in the playlist URL. For example, given this playlist URL:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxYzA1B2C3D4E5F6G7H8I9JkLmNoPqR

The correct feed URL is:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=PLxYzA1B2C3D4E5F6G7H8I9JkLmNoPqR

Import a YouTube channel

Use the channel RSS feed format:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<CHANNEL-ID>

You can find the channel_id in YouTube under Advanced settings for the channel.

Using a standard channel URL, username URL, or custom channel URL directly will not work. The RSS Polling plugin requires the explicit channel_id feed URL format.

Test feeds

Before saving a new or edited feed, click Test feed to fetch and analyze the feed without importing anything. You’ll see:

• A summary count of how many items would be imported, are already imported, or would be skipped.
• A line-by-line breakdown of the first items in the feed, each with a plain-language explanation for why it would be imported or skipped.

This is useful for verifying your configuration — especially the category filter — before it affects your community.

Recent polls

On the edit page for any existing feed, the Recent polls area shows the last several poll attempts. Each attempt displays counts of imported, updated, skipped, and failed items. You can expand any attempt to see per-item detail, including links to the topics that were created or updated.

When you click Poll now, results appear in real time without a page refresh.

Settings

The Settings tab links to the relevant site settings for RSS Polling.

Name	Description
rss polling feed request timeout	How long (in seconds) to wait before giving up on a slow feed request. Defaults to 30 seconds.
rss polling verbose logging	Enable detailed per-item logging for each poll attempt. Off by default; useful for troubleshooting.
rss polling use pubdate	Use the original publication date from the feed item as the topic date, rather than the date it was imported.
rss polling update tags	Update topic tags when a topic is updated; when disabled, pulls initial tags only.

Control topic visibility

Prevent topics from being unlisted

By default, embedded topics are unlisted until they receive a reply. To prevent RSS-imported topics from being unlisted:

1. Go to Admin → All site settings.
2. Search for embed unlisted.
3. Disable this setting.

Show full post content

If the embed truncate setting is enabled (the default), feed topics will only display an excerpt. To show full content:

1. Go to Admin → All site settings.
2. Search for embed truncate.
3. Disable this setting.

If full post content still isn’t displaying correctly, configure the embed whitelist selector setting to specify which HTML elements should be imported.

Common issues

Feed not updating

• Confirm the feed URL is valid and publicly accessible.
• Check that rss polling frequency isn’t set too high.
• Verify that there are new items in the feed since the last poll.
• Use the Test feed button to check what the plugin sees in the feed without committing a full poll.
• Enable rss polling verbose logging for more detail on what’s happening during each poll.

Topics created with wrong dates

Enable the rss polling use pubdate setting to use the original publication date from the feed item instead of the import date.

Each feed URL is only imported once

Deleting and re-adding the same feed URL will not re-import previously processed items. Each RSS item is only imported once.

Additional resources

• Configuring allowed embed selectors
• Administrative Bulk Operations
• Embed Discourse comments on another website via Javascript

Last edited by @lindsey 2026-07-22T12:41:40Z

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