Automatically post new RSS items to a Discord channel

RSS feeds may not be as popular as they were during their blogosphere heyday, but they still do an important job—aggregating new content. When you combine them with an automation tool like Zapier, you can share the latest updates to your communication channel of choice.

And when that channel is Discord, you get to broadcast new blog posts, podcast episodes, videos, job postings, and anything else you can format into RSS for your community or coworkers. Whether you want to inform, educate, or entertain, you can build the update channel you envision.

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to create a Zap—Zapier's automated workflows—that automatically posts new RSS feed items to the Discord channel of your choice.

Automatically post new RSS items to a Discord channel

Zapier lets you create automated workflows called Zaps, which send information from one app to another. You can create your own Zap from scratch without any coding knowledge, but we also offer quick templates to get you started.

If you'd like to start with a template, click on the Zap template below to go to the Zap editor. You'll need to create a Zapier account if you don't already have one. Then just follow the directions below to set up your Zap.

Set up your RSS feed trigger

Every Zap starts with a trigger, which is the event that kickstarts your workflow. In this Zap, the trigger is a new item appearing on the RSS feed of your choice.

Your Zap will already have this trigger if you use the template, but if you're starting fresh, select RSS for your app and New Item in Feed for your trigger event, then click Continue.

Next, enter the URL of the RSS feed in the Feed URL field. If the feed requires a username and password, put those credentials into their respective fields, too. If you know your way around RSS feeds, you can choose what triggers a new feed item, but if you don't, you can leave that option alone.

Finally, click Continue.

Next, you'll test your trigger step—this will pull in data from your trigger app that will be used to set up the rest of your Zap. Click Test trigger, and you should see some sample records from your RSS feed:

Select the record you'd like to use, then click Continue with selected record.

Set up your Discord action

Now we're ready for the action, which is what your Zap does after it's triggered. Since we want to post a new Discord message, we'll choose Discord as the action app and Send Channel Message as the action event.

Next, connect your Discord account. Make sure to give Zapier permission to send messages and manage webhooks as you connect your account and server.

Click Continue once you've connected an account.

Now, customize which Discord channel to post your RSS updates and what you want your update messages to look like.

To add information from your RSS feed to the message—like the title or links to your posts—click the + sign in the Message Text field or type /.

You'll see dynamic fields you can enter into your message that change according to the relevant RSS feed item.

Here's what our message looks like:

Besides your channel and message text, you can also specify if:

• The message pings certain roles

• The message posts as a text-to-speech message

• Zapier has a bot name or icon when it posts through this Zap

• The message has a file attachment

Click Continue once you're done customizing your action step.

Now, test your Zap to send a message to your Discord channel based on how you set up your action step. Note that this will send an actual message to Discord.

Click Test step to run the test. If all goes well, you'll see a test message like this in your Discord server:

If your message doesn't quite look how you want it to, you can click Configure to go back to your configuration step, then click Retest step to send another test message. When everything looks good, click Publish, and your new Zap is ready to use!

More ways to send automatic updates to your Discord server

If there are other types of content you want to add to your communal Discord feed, Zapier also lets you connect YouTube to Discord without the need for an RSS feed.

And if you use Discord to share your organization's work, you can post your new social media content on Discord using Zaps like these:

There are also tons of ways to automate routine updates to your Discord server.

You could start each day with a weather forecast for your area—helpful for hybrid and local teams collaborating on Discord.

Or, you can send a weekly reminder related to your server rules, regular events, or whatever else you think is important.

Your imagination is the limit! How will you automate your Discord server?