Can WordPress Read Its Own RSS Feed?

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I am using a static front page for my blog to which I have added a widgetized sidebar area to hold an RSS feed widget. I want to show summaries of the latest two or three blog posts on the front page, but I am having problems with the RSS widget not updating.

For example, within the RSS widget set-up field, the RSS field is similar to “http://exampleblog.com/feed/”. The RSS feed will publish on the first refresh after activating the widget, but will not publish with subsequent newer posts. It doesn’t update with new posts.

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One of the questions of this site attributed a similar problem to caching, and I am using WP Cache on the web server. De-activating WP Cache does not help.

I feel like I am missing some simple procedure, but find no mention in the Codex or this site.

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2 comments

  1. Better to use a query loop to show posts, which is a modifed version of the main WP loop. This query loop won’t interfere with the main WP loop and can be used mutiple times in a sidebar or post/page with php execution enabled. Use a php widget in your sidebar: WordPress › PHP Code Widget « WordPress Plugins

    Change mycategory to the name of a category, or remove to show all. And change showposts to the number of posts you want, or -1 to show all. You will have to CSS style the output.

    <?php $my_query = new WP_Query('category_name=mycategory&showposts=1'); ?>

<?php while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); ?>

<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>">

<?php the_title(); ?></a>

<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

<?php endwhile; ?>

    Also see The Loop « WordPress Codex and Function Reference/WP Query « WordPress Codex

  2. The reason it doesn’t update is that fetch_feed() function has its own transient-based caching that defaults to 12 hours.

    You can filter cache lifetime value (globally or for specific feed URL) at wp_feed_cache_transient_lifetime filter, but for own content it’s indeed better to access data directly than go through RSS.

    If you don’t want to code this yourself – try Query Posts plugin.