Getting started

Your first import

From a freshly activated plugin to real posts in your WordPress install. Allow about ten minutes. Nothing here needs a licence key, a purchase code, or any paid service.

If you have not installed the plugin yet, do Installation first.

Step 1 — Confirm the master switch is on

Go to Echo RSS Feed Post Generator → Main Settings. At the top is a toggle labelled Echo RSS Feed Post Generator Plugin – Main Switch. It must be on. A first-time activation turns it on for you.

If it is off, turn it on and click Save Settings. The RSS to Post Rules, Post to RSS Rules, Crawling Helper and Activity & Logging menu entries only exist while this switch is on — if you cannot see them, this is why.

Step 2 — Choose your schedule unit

Directly under the master switch is Rule Schedule Unit, with two options:

Hours (default) — a rule's schedule value of 24 means once a day.
Minutes — a rule's schedule value of 24 means every 24 minutes.

This setting is global

It changes how every rule's schedule number is interpreted. Leave it on Hours for your first import. If you change it later, re-check every existing rule's schedule value — the numbers are not converted.

Step 3 — Pick a feed URL

Any valid RSS or Atom feed will do. If you do not have one in mind, use a feed you know is stable and public:

https://wordpress.org/news/feed/

You can paste a plain website URL instead and let the plugin attempt feed autodiscovery, but a direct feed URL is more reliable for a first run.

Step 4 — Create the rule

Go to Echo RSS Feed Post Generator → RSS to Post Rules. The table lists your rules; the last row, with a - in the ID column, is the blank row for a new rule. Fill it in:

Column	What to enter for a first run
RSS Feed URL	Your feed URL from step 3
Schedule (hours)	`24` — how often this rule may run
Max # Posts	`3` — keep the first run small. `0` means unlimited
Post Status	Draft → Moderate — so you can inspect results before anything goes live
Item Type	`post`
Post Author	Your admin user, or Random user / Import feed author
Active	Tick this box. An unticked rule is never run by the scheduler

Leave More Options → Settings alone for now; the defaults import the feed item's title, description and image. That modal is where full-content extraction, categories, tags, templates, filtering and translation live — see the configuration reference.

Last page only

New rules can only be added on the last page of the rules table. If you have more rules than fit on one page, click Last Page before filling in the blank row.

Now click Save Settings at the bottom of the page. The page reloads and your rule appears with an ID number.

Step 5 — Run it immediately

Do not wait for the scheduler. On your rule's row, open the Actions dropdown at the far right and choose Run This Rule Now. Confirm the prompt.

A spinner appears in the Info column while the rule runs, then settles into one of four icons:

Icon	Meaning	What to do
Green tick	Success — new posts were created	Go to step 6
No change	The rule ran, but created nothing new	Every item in the feed has already been imported, or a filter rejected all of them. See Troubleshooting
Red X	The rule failed	Open Activity & Logging and read the log
Endless spinner	The run is still going, or PHP timed out	Reload the page; check the log

A large feed with full-content extraction turned on can take a minute or more. Do not click Run twice while a run is in progress — the plugin holds a per-rule lock, and a second concurrent run aborts with “Only one instance of this rule is allowed” in the log.

Running again imports the next batch, not the same one

Already-imported items are skipped by source URL, but the rule keeps reading further down the feed until it hits its Max # Posts allowance. With Max # Posts = 3, a second run gives you articles 4–6, a third gives 7–9, and so on until the feed is exhausted — only then do you get the “no change” icon.

This is by design. Just be aware that repeatedly clicking Run This Rule Now on a large feed will keep pulling content in.

Step 6 — Check the results

Go to Posts → All Posts and filter by Drafts. Your imported items are there, authored by whoever you selected. Open one and confirm:

The title matches the feed item.
The body has the content you expected.
A featured image was set, if the source had one.

Happy with it? Go back to RSS to Post Rules, change the rule's Post Status to Published, and click Save Settings. Future runs will publish directly.

Not happy? Adjust the rule's advanced Settings and run it again. To clear the test posts first, use Actions → Move All Posts To Trash on that rule.

Step 7 — Let it run on its own

From here the plugin is automatic. Two things gate each import:

WordPress cron. While the master switch is on, the plugin schedules an echoaction event — hourly when the schedule unit is Hours, once a minute when it is Minutes.
Each rule's own schedule. When echoaction fires, a rule runs only if its schedule interval has elapsed since its last run.

So a rule set to 24 hours will import roughly once a day, checked hourly.

WP-Cron only fires when someone visits your site. On a quiet site imports will lag. Two fixes:

Option A — a real server cron (recommended)

In Main Settings → Plugin Options, set Secret Word Used For Manual/Cron Running to something private, and save.

The page then shows your trigger URL:

https://your-site.example/?run_echo=YOUR_SECRET_WORD

Add a server cron job hitting that URL. The screen shows a ready-made example:

15,45 * * * * wget -q -O /dev/null https://your-site.example/?run_echo=YOUR_SECRET_WORD

Treat the secret word like a password

Anyone who knows it can trigger your imports on demand.

Option B — leave WP-Cron alone

Fine for a site with steady traffic. Nothing else to configure.

Quick reference

I want to…	Where
Add another feed	RSS to Post Rules → blank row on the last page → Save Settings
Pause a rule without losing it	Untick Active, then Save Settings
See why a run produced nothing	Activity & Logging (enable logging in Main Settings first)
Find a source page's content selector	Crawling Helper
Back up all rules before experimenting	Activity & Logging → download the rules backup file
Publish my own posts as a feed	Post to RSS