How to use Feed to Post feature in Feedzy

📝Note: The Feed to Post feature is available in the free version of Feedzy RSS Feeds, which you can purchase from here. For more details about the plugin, please check the main documentation first.

What can you do with the Feed to Post feature?  You can easily import items from a feed ( or more ) as posts ( or pages ) or your sites using Feed to Post .

The imported posts will be listed on the blog page alongside other posts. The styling of the posts is controlled by the WordPress theme you are using. Below is an example of our latest theme, Neve.

🧰 Managing import jobs

Import tasks can be created in Dashboard > Feedzy > Import Posts.

After clicking on New Import, many options will be available:

For each import job, after running it, you can see the status of the import job in the following format:

Then, you can click on any element to check the data contained.

• Found (an example here ) - items found, available for import.

• Duplicates - the number of duplicated items found.
• Imported - the number of items imported last time.
• Cumulative - the total number of items imported by this job since it's active.
• Status ( example here ) - working | error.

When a new import job is created and run, the items are imported and cached in the database so the same items cannot be imported again to prevent duplicates. Running the job again will not work the second time. For this case, you can use the Purge & Reset button, which, as its name suggests, will clear the cached data of the import job so items can be imported again using the same import job without creating a new one.

📥 Create and edit import jobs

This can be done in Dashboard > Feedzy > Import Posts, then click on New Import. From this place, it is possible to:

• enable/disable each task
• manually run it before the 60 minutes routine passed 
• check how many posts were imported since the process was created

Each  step of the Wizzard can be gradually opened by clicking on the 🔽 icon.

⚙️ Sources configuration

Sources

Here you should add the URL(s) of the feed you want to use as a source by clicking on the ➕ button. You can also test if the source is valid and create / use a Feed Category.

🧹 Filters

Filters

Posts can be filtered by keywords and date. All the fields in the above image are explained below:

• Filter by Keyword(s) - import the posts only if the defined keywords are available in Title, Description, Author, and Full Content.
• Exclude Items - do not import the posts if the defined keywords are available in Title, Description, Author, and Full Content.
• Filter by Time Range - this can be done by importing only the posts published in a certain interval, after a specific date, or before a specific date.

📝 Note: Including or excluding posts based on the keywords, logical operators are also permitted; examples below. Use comma (,) for OR and plus (+) for AND.

• importing only the posts that contain the following keywords: Dark Knight

Dark+Knight

• importing only the posts that contain the following keywords: Dark Knight OR Dragonball

Dragonball, Dark+Knight

🗺 Map content

This wizard step is divided into two panels, General and Advanced options. It is very useful for the magic tags-based customization of the imported posts.

General

Map Content

• Post Type - what type of posts are to be imported. You can only choose one. If you need more, create another import task with the same settings except for this one. 
• Post Taxonomy - like any post in WordPress, the imported ones can be assigned to a certain category ( categories ). Of course, you can change that after the import. 

📝 Note: This field is for automatically assigning a certain category to the posts that will be imported.

• Post Status - the new posts can be automatically published, or you can set them to draft so you can check and manually publish them.
• Post Title - choose which information you want to be assigned as the post title. You can add more than one from the Insert Tag button.
• Post Date - this is the date when the post was imported to your site. Item date is the one when the source article was published on the remote website.
• Content - this is the structure of the post content. This setting will affect how the posts look on the single post layout on your site rather than the blog page.
• Featured image - if you want the featured image to be imported, fill in this field; otherwise, leave it empty. You can also assign the same image for all of them by adding a URL in this field ( In this case, we recommend using the URL of an external image or one from your website Media > Library ).

📝 Note: If you want to import embedded audios to your posts using Feedzy, check this dedicated doc.

Advanced Options

• External Image - by using an external image, the featured image of the imported article won't be saved to the Media Library on your website anymore.

📝Note: A default featured image can be used for the feeds that don't have one. Once you finish configuring the import job, you can set the fallback featured image in Dashboard > Feedzy > Settings, the general tab - click for image.

• Post author - inherit the source author to the imported posts in the front-end ( Archive Pages ) and in the back-end ( in the Dashboard ).
• Post Excerpt - extract certain elements of the content to be displayed on the Archive Page.
• Custom Fields - populating custom fields created with the ACF plugin is possible by using the Custom Fields option available in the import setup of Feedzy. Once the plugin is installed, create new fields as in the following example. After that, the fields created can be used in the import setup. Below is an example of custom fields created with ACF plugin, that appear in the editor of the post:



Watch a video on how to use Custom Fields with ACF.

🔎 General feed settings

• Auto - Delete - imported posts can also be deleted after a period of time, for example, 3 days. You can set the desired number of days. The plugin also has a global option in this regard, which can be used to specify after how many days all the posts imported by Feedzy will be deleted ( Feedzy > Settings ). 

📝 Note: If you don't want them to be removed, set the global option to 0 so the value within the import job will take higher priority, then set that one to 0 as well.

• Remove Duplicates - the option to Remove Duplicates is helpful when multiple sources are added in the same import job and a particular post is available in two different sources. During the import, Feedzy checks such duplicates; with this option enabled, only one post of that kind will be imported.
• Items Count - choose how many posts you want to be imported each time. Feedzy automatically checks the feed and imports only new posts every 60 minutes. So, by choosing 20 posts, you will get a maximum of 20 posts imported every 60 minutes. 

Feed Categories

In this  submenu of the Feedzy RSS Agreggator plugin, you can add categories of the feeds.

1

Navigate to Dashboard > Feedzy > Feed Categories.

2

Click on the Add Category button.

3

Enter a category title.

4

Paste the URLs of the feeds you want to display in this category. You can add multiple sources here comma separated.

5

Click on Publish and check the library to see the changes.

Another interesting fact is that you can check if the feeds are  valid from the Action column. Click on the blue button and see the result.

The advantage of this feature is that you can use a feed category that contains one or more sources in the import wizard.

• example with the post content and link to the original article  - click for image

• example with the full post content - click for image

📝Note: Imported posts can be found in Dashboard > Posts, not in Dashboard > Feedzy > Import Posts (only import settings are here).

📝Note: It is not recommended to run an import task before configuring the desired post structure in the third step of the wizard.

📌 Custom scenarios

Giving credit to the original author

When importing posts on your site, one option is to give credit to the original author. That would be  on the single post page on your site by using the [item_url] tag in the Map content > Advanced Options section while editing the import job.

💡Result - this will link to the original post on the source website.

Adding such a link when listing posts on the Blog Page

• Link imported posts title to the source post

Download the zip file on this page and install it as a new plugin.

📝 Note: Check out this video that explains how to link the feed title to the original article.

• Link the read more button to the source post

Download the zip file on this page and install it as a new plugin.

📝 Note: The above code will not display the button if the theme hides it. It just changes the Read More link.

• Change the author of the imported posts

By default, the author of the imported posts is the WordPress user configuring the import wizard. The post's original author with a link to the source website can be listed using the following option available in the Map content > Advanced Options section while editing the import job.

💡 Result - the author of the post has been changed with the author of the original post 

🌐 Canonical URL

Similar pages will be available on at least two websites, the source and yours ( others might also import the same posts ), when importing the feeds as posts. To ensure the  traffic of the source website is not affected by the search engines leading to your page instead of the original one, the canonical URL options can be enabled in Feedzy's Settings.

This way, the search engines "will know" that the imported posts from the feed are a copy of that content and not the original one.

💳 Built-in services

Feedzy RSS Feeds brings in some important built-in services, and except for the Spintax support, they are available starting with the Agency plan, which you can get from here:

• Spintax support service - ensure your posts' originality by creating randomized content that displays different information every time someone opens an article, using the spintax service with Feedzy shortcode.
  • To use this feature, navigate to the map content area during the import configuration and insert the strings you need in the Feedzy text field ( Post Title, Content, and any Custom Field ).
  • 📝Note: Check this dedicated article to learn more about how the spintax service is used.
• rephrasing / paraphrasing service - this ensures higher clarity of the post's content or title. 
  • To use this feature, navigate to the map content area during the import configuration and insert the corresponding tags ( Post Title - [#title_feedzy_rewrite] and Content - [#content_feedzy_rewrite] or [#full_content_feedzy_rewrite] ).
  • 📝Note: Check this dedicated article to learn more about how the rephrasing service works.
• automatically translating service - boost the accessibility of your website by enabling an automatic translation of the imported posts. 
  • To use this feature, navigate to the map content area during the import configuration and insert the corresponding tags ( Post Title - [#translated_title] and Content - [#translated_content] or [#translated_full_content] and, more than that, [#translated_description]).
  • 📝Note: Check this dedicated documentation to learn more about how the translation service works.

🗂 Useful Resources

Allow specific HTML tags unstripped

Some feeds might have HTML tags in their content, and Feedzy doesn't import them by default. Below is a list of tags that are stripped by the plugin.

'base', 'blink', 'body', 'doctype', 'embed', 'font', 'form', 'frame', 'frameset', 'html', 'iframe', 'input', 'marquee', 'meta', 'noscript', 'object', 'param', 'script', 'style'

It is possible to allow HTML tags to be unstripped by adding the following line to the wp-config.php file of your WordPress instance.

define( 'FEEDZY_ALLOW_UNSAFE_HTML', true );

Troubleshooting

If something doesn't work as expected, it might be worth checking the Feedzy Troubleshooting guide. It covers the first checks that we perform in such cases.

Import embedded audio to your posts

Importing this type of file is possible. Here is a dedicated doc about how to do this.

🎥Video - Link the Feed Title to the Original Article