Dynamic Post -- How the RSS Integration Works (Step-by-Step)

How the RSS Integration Works (Step-by-Step)

1. Trigger
   • Manual: Click “Refresh Counts & RSS Now” button in Status Dashboard.
   • Automatic: Runs inside the monthly auto-pull (2nd of the month at 2 AM) and also when “Post Articles” or “Post From Start Date” is used.
2. Safety Lock
   • A 5-minute transient lock (dp_rss_processing_lock) prevents overlapping runs.
3. Processing Each Feed
   • Only enabled feeds are processed.
   • Uses wp_remote_get() with 15-second timeout.
   • Parses the RSS with simplexml_load_string().
   • Filters to current month only (compares pubDate to today’s month/year).
   • Weekly feeds additionally skip articles older than 7 days.
   • Respects the per-feed article limit (stops after X items).
   • Checks for duplicate posts by title + date (updates existing post if found).
4. Category Mapping
   • If “Auto”: creates or uses a category from the domain name.
   • If a category is selected: uses that exact WordPress category (slug).
   • Dynamic Post categories are excluded from the dropdown to prevent accidental mapping.
5. Image Handling
   • Extracts the first image from the RSS item description.
   • If toggle is OFF (default): hot-links the original image URL (_thumbnail_ext_url meta).
   • If toggle is ON: saves the image to the WordPress Media Library using the existing generate_featured_image_by_url() function and sets _thumbnail_id.
6. Post Creation
   • Uses the selected Post Status.
   • Author is set to the Service2Client user.
   • Date is taken from the RSS pubDate.
   • Stores the original RSS link and other metadata.
7. Last Import Timestamp
   • Each feed shows “Last imported: Apr 11, 2026 12:33 AM (3 new posts)” in the settings panel.

3. Key Safety & Performance Features

• Circuit breaker protects against repeated failures (same as the main API).
• Transient lock prevents multiple simultaneous RSS runs.
• Only current-month articles are pulled (no old archive spam).
• Graceful handling of blocked hot-links or empty feeds.
• No impact on main Dynamic Post API logic (Free/Full behavior unchanged).

4. How RSS Posts Appear on Your Site

• RSS posts are normal WordPress posts (category-mapped as chosen).
• They respect your theme, shortcodes, and all existing display rules.
• The disclaimer is not added to RSS posts (only to Dynamicontent.net API articles).
• Shortcodes like [dynamic-post] and [dynamic-posts] work with RSS-mapped categories.

5. Quick Summary of What Changed in v7.5

• Added the 4 new per-feed controls (enable/disable, post status, save-to-media toggle, last-import display).
• Made the toggle a clean On/Off slider.
• Ensured “Reads Now” and “Reads All” work correctly with RSS posts.
• All previous features (historical posting, version checking, API/Blog counts, etc.) remain untouched.