Set custom RSS feed refresh time

  • Nitin Jain

    (@glamsham)


    4 years ago

    Hello,

    It seems the RSS feeds created in wordpress has a default time of 12 hours. I am a publisher and a content provider too, I just realized that the publications that I syndicate my feeds MIGHT be getting ‘older’ feeds.

    I looked around the web and found code snippets to lower or customize the time to refresh RSS feed but not all are same, and obviously not the latest ones, which means it is confusing for non-coders like me to decide on the most accurate one.

    So, my request if someone can share the exact code and the file where it needs to be added (wp-config / functions.php) and any precautions needed.

    Also, I need to know if setting up refresh rate of 1 or 2 hour would impact the overall performance.

    Thank You

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
  • JNashHawkins

    (@jnashhawkins)

    That process is resource-intensive enough that you really should leave it set to 12 hours. Especially if you have a high number of feed items set for output. I’ve seen those numbers set to over a hundred posts or articles.

    I doubt there is much benefit to faster updates unless you are syndicating via RSS. I’ve not checked but it seems to me that the post and edit operations may trigger a run of the RSS feed regeneration shortly after the post.

    Your audience, who is consuming your posts via RSS, are normally using that to preview content for reading on your blog unless you are purposely sending the full article instead of the excerpt.

    You really want your readers to visit your actual site normally if you carry advertising. Consider the RSS as a ‘teaser’ to attract the visitor even though the visitor will see it as a nice feature to help them pick and choose the when and why to visit.

    I’ve been told adding one to the number of posts counts for the syndicated feed and saving that setting will schedule a new RSS generation at the next cron if you need to force the regen one time. You can leave the setting as is and set it back if you ever need to manually speed that up as the change triggers the cron task to be scheduled.

    That’s Dashboard –> Settings –> Reading and look for the setting ‘Syndication feeds show the most recent’ for that setting for the number of posts.

    —
    If your site doesn’t seem to pick up the next run when you think it should have run, you might want to visit your own site as a visitor would which should trigger a pseudo-cron run.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
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