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RSS feed integration

RSS feeds are a straightforward way to bring content into HeyNews. Subscribe to any public feed and HeyNews will pull in new articles automatically.

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Written by Cagri Sarigoz

RSS feeds are a straightforward way to bring content into HeyNews. Subscribe to any public feed and HeyNews will pull in new articles automatically.

Adding an RSS feed

From Content Desk

  1. Go to Content Desk in the sidebar

  2. Click Add

  3. Choose Add a source

  4. Paste the feed URL, for example https://example.com/feed.xml

  5. Add an optional name or tags

  6. Click Add Source

HeyNews detects direct RSS, Atom, and JSON Feed URLs automatically. You can also paste a regular website URL and HeyNews will try to discover its feed. If a publisher blocks the direct check, HeyNews checks another way before adding the feed. If it still cannot read any articles, check the URL and try again later.

What HeyNews does with RSS feeds

Once you subscribe to a feed, HeyNews will:

  1. Check the feed automatically

  2. Pull articles from the feed

  3. Create stories with the title, summary, URL, and publish date

  4. Make those stories available in Compose

Articles from the same RSS feed stay grouped under that feed in Content Desk, so you can review new stories without sorting through duplicate source rows.

If the feed is valid but has no articles yet, HeyNews still adds it. You will see No stories yet in Sources, and HeyNews will keep checking the feed.

Feed health

HeyNews tracks the health of each RSS feed:

  • Active: the feed is responding normally

  • Failing: the feed returned errors on recent checks

If a feed keeps failing, HeyNews checks it less often for a while and retries later. You'll see the feed's status in Content Desk > Sources.

A temporary problem with one feed does not stop HeyNews from checking your other feeds.

Removing a feed

From Content Desk > Sources, find the feed and remove it. HeyNews stops checking that feed for this newsletter and removes the feed's current stories from this newsletter's story list.

Removing a feed does not delete sent issues or affect another newsletter that still uses the same feed.

Auto-discovery

When you add a blog or website URL instead of a direct feed URL, HeyNews tries to find the site's feed automatically. If it finds one, it subscribes to that feed. If the site does not advertise a feed, paste its blog, news, archive, tag, topic, or category page. HeyNews can follow article links from those recurring listing pages.

Troubleshooting

Feed not returning new articles? Check that the feed URL is still valid by opening it directly in your browser. Some feeds require authentication or have been moved.

Feed opens fine, but Sources says "We're checking this"? HeyNews saves each article by its web address. If a feed lists articles without one, HeyNews can't turn them into stories, so it marks the source We're checking this instead of showing it as working. Most feeds that leave out a separate article link still carry the address elsewhere, and HeyNews reads it from there.

Too many stories from one feed? Consider pausing or removing the feed if it's producing more noise than signal.

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