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RSS Feeds

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Jerad Berhow edited this page Oct 10, 2026 · 2 revisions

RSS Feeds

Follow RSS or Atom feeds and have each new item posted to a channel. Useful for news sites, blogs, game patch notes, GitHub releases, subreddits and podcasts. Each feed posts to its own channel, so different feeds can go to different places.

There's nothing to set up on the host: it works as soon as the bot is running.

Follow a feed

/rss add url:https://example.com/feed channel:#news
Option Effect
url The feed's address
channel Where its new items post
ping_role A role to ping with each item (optional)
message Your own text for each post (optional). See below
  • The bot fetches the feed straight away. A wrong address, or a web page that isn't a feed, fails immediately with an explanation.
  • Items already in the feed aren't posted. Only items that appear from now on are.
  • Check how a post looks: /rss test feed:<pick> posts the newest item now.

Finding a feed's address

Most sites have one, even if it's not obvious:

Site Feed address
A blog or news site Look for an RSS or Feed link, or try adding /feed, /rss or /rss.xml to its address
A subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/<name>/.rss
GitHub releases https://github.com/<owner>/<repo>/releases.atom
A YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<UC…>, though Streamer-Alerts does this better
Hacker News https://hnrss.org/frontpage

Custom message

/rss add url:… channel:#news ping_role:@News message:{role} New on {feed}: {title}
Placeholder Becomes
{feed} The feed's name
{title} The item's title
{url} The item's link
{role} The ping role's mention. Without it, the ping goes at the start

Only the ping role ever notifies anyone. @everyone or other mentions, in your message or in a feed's titles, show as text but don't ping.

What a post looks like

Each new item posts an embed with:

  • the feed's name
  • the item's title, as a link
  • a short summary (up to 300 characters, formatting removed)
  • its image, if the feed includes one
  • its date
  • a Read more button

Flood guard: if a feed suddenly lists lots of new items (a site moving to a new system can do this), at most 5 are posted per check, oldest first. The last post says how many were skipped.

Managing feeds

Command Effect
/rss list Every feed, with its channel, ping role, when it was last checked, and any error
/rss test feed:<pick> Post the newest item now
/rss remove feed:<pick> Stop following a feed

All /rss commands are for staff (mods and admins).

  • Up to 25 feeds per server.
  • To change a feed's channel, role or message, remove it and add it again. It won't repost old items.

How it works

  • Checked every 10 minutes. A new item can take that long to appear. Each address is fetched once per check, however many servers follow it.
  • Each item is posted once, tracked by its ID in the feed. Items are remembered for 30 days after they leave the feed.
  • RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0 and Atom are all read.

What the bot won't fetch

PariahBot runs on its owner's own computer or server, often on a home network. So /rss refuses addresses on private or local networks, such as localhost, 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x, even when they're reached through a redirect or a domain name. Otherwise any server admin could make the bot read pages from its owner's network and post them.

Only http and https addresses are fetched. A feed has 15 seconds and 2 MB to respond.

Troubleshooting

What happens Fix
"that address isn't an RSS or Atom feed" It's a web page, not its feed. Find the feed link (see the table above)
"…is on a private or local network" Expected: the bot never fetches from its own network
"the site answered with HTTP 403" (or 404) The site blocks bots, or the address moved. Check it in a browser
/rss list shows Couldn't read the feed The site was down or changed. The bot keeps trying every 10 minutes, and the error clears when it works again
/rss list shows Couldn't post The channel was deleted, or the bot lost access to it. Remove the feed and add it again with a working channel
Nothing has posted yet Only items published after adding are posted. Use /rss test to check the channel

Permissions needed: View Channel, Send Messages and Embed Links in each feed's channel, checked when you add it. See Permissions.

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