Revamped RSS Feed Imports

Source: Dev.to

Overview

You can now add multiple RSS feed imports, monitor their status, and assign each one to different default authors or organizations. RSS feed imports have long been the primary way to automatically syndicate posts from an external blog into the DEV community, preserving SEO ranking through proper canonical URL referencing.

Adding a New RSS Feed

1. Navigate to the RSS Import Feeds page under your Dashboard.
2. Click Add Feed and enter the URL of your (or your team’s) external blog.

Organization & Author Settings

• Organization: Choose which organization on DEV the imported articles will belong to.
• Default Author: Select a default author. If the original author doesn’t have a DEV account, the article will be listed under this default author.

Import Options

• Mark as canonical URL (recommended) – Keeps the original URL as the canonical link for SEO purposes, unless you are fully moving your blog to DEV and shutting down the old version.
• Replace self‑referential links – Updates URLs inline to point to the imported version on DEV instead of the original source. Useful when migrating an entire blog onto DEV.

Import Process & Status

• After adding a feed source, a background job is queued to import your posts.
• Refresh the page after a few minutes to view the import status.
• Successful imports appear under Import History as drafts.
• Skipped or errored articles are also listed, and a “no new articles” message appears in the routine checks dropdown at the bottom of the page.

Editing & Publishing Imported Drafts

1. Open each imported draft from the Import History.
2. Make any necessary edits.
3. Publish the post.
   • In some cases, you may need to set the published tag in the markdown to true (instead of false) before saving to publish.

Canonical Links on Published Posts

Published posts that use canonical links will display a linkback on the author line, pointing to the original source.

Conclusion

We look forward to seeing you syndicate your blogs into the DEV community. Feel free to share any feature feedback!