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Twitterfeed basics: Getting started

What is Twitterfeed?
How does Twitterfeed work?
What is an RSS feed?
What platforms does Twitterfeed support?
How do I use bitly with Twitterfeed?
What other URL shorteners can I use?
How do I use a custom URL shortener?
What is ‘keyword filtering’, and how does it work?
Can I post to more than one Twitter account or social platform?

Twitterfeed basics: Logging into Twitterfeed

I have forgotten my password.
What if the person that setup the account no longer works with us?
I have forgotten my Twitterfeed login credentials. How do I gain access?

Basics & troubleshooting: The Feed

How do I find my feed URL?
I want more frequent updates- how do I set that up?
How long does it take to start posting when I set up a new feed?
Twitterfeed isn’t updating- why?
I deleted my feed, but it keeps posting anyway- what should I do?
Feed isn’t posting even though there are new items in the feed- how do I fix this?
When I login, I can’t see any of my feeds- how do I fix this?
Why can’t Twitterfeed parse my feed?
Twitterfeed says "We couldn't find valid date/time stamps or GUIDs on items"
Feed status says, “Feed checked OK but stopped processing due to update frequency.” What does this mean?
Can I force Twitterfeed to check my feed?
Google Alerts feed is valid, but won’t parse. How do I change this?
Can I get Twitterfeed to post old items, not only new items?
Why are links being shortened more than once for Twitter and Facebook?

Twitterfeed and Twitter

Why do I receive 'error 400 from twitter timeline feeds'?

Twitterfeed and Facebook

How do I find the feed URL for my facebook account/wall/page?
Why aren’t thumbnails and images posting to Facebook?
Why is the wrong thumbnail being posted to Facebook?
How do I post to my Facebook page, and not to my personal account?
My feed stopped posting to Facebook. What do I do to fix this?
How do I reconnect a Facebook account?
What is error 431: 'feed action request limit reached'?
Can links in tabs open in a new tab/window?
Why isn’t there a share link on Facebook anymore?
How can I make sure my Twitterfeed Facebook posts are visible to everyone?

Adding and disconnecting to your Twitterfeed account

New service isn’t being saved, dashboard keeps saying ‘connect a service.’
How do I disable shortened links?
The UTM tags are breaking my links, how do I remove them?

twitterfeed basics: Getting started

What is twitterfeed?

twitterfeed is a utility that allows you to feed your content (for example, blog posts or any other content that supports RSS feeds) to twitter, Facebook, and other social platforms. It enables publishers to bring content to a wider audience and track the performance through real-time stats.

How does twitterfeed work?

Twitterfeed takes your RSS feeds and sends new items to the social platforms of your choosing (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.). You can customize the format of the posts in the ‘Advanced Settings’ of your feeds.

What is an RSS feed?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS feeds make it possible for content publishers to syndicate that material across the web (from one to many). twitterfeed uses a blog’s RSS feed to share the content.

What platforms does twitterfeed support?

We support Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

How do I use bitly with twitterfeed?

To use your own bitly account in twitterfeed, edit an existing feed or create a new one. Next, click on the ‘Advanced Settings’ and click on 'bitly settings'. In the fields provided, enter your bitly account login and API key (from your bitly account settings). You can click on ‘verify bitly account’ to check that the bitly API information is correct.

What other URL shorteners can I use?

We support a number of URL shorteners that you can view under the ‘Advanced Settings’ in twitterfeed. In addition to the shorteners listed, we have added the custom shortener functionality in order for 3rd parties to implement and integrate their own shorteners. Read more about it in this blog post).

How do I use a custom URL shortener?

Go to ‘Edit your feed’ and in ‘Advanced Settings’ chose custom from the ‘Shorten Link through’ dropdown box, add the URL shortening endpoint as http://example.com/?shorten=%@ where %@ will be replaced by the URL to shorten. The shortener should only respond with a plain text response containing the shortened URL. In order to use a new shortener, say su.pr, all you need to do is put the following link in your custom endpoint field:

http://su.pr/api/simpleshorten?url=%@

The %@ will be replaced with the URL to be shortened. Similarly, for j.mp put the following in your custom endpoint field:

http://api.j.mp/v3/shorten?login=[YOUR_LOGIN_HERE]&apiKey=[YOUR_API_KEY_HERE]&longUrl=%@&format=txt

Make sure to replace [YOUR_LOGIN_HERE] and [YOUR_API_KEY_HERE] with your j.mp login and API key.

What is ‘keyword filtering’, and how does it work?

‘Keyword filtering’ (optionally) filters a feed using a keyword(s), so only posts that contain the keyword(s) will be sent to Twitter, Facebook and/or your other connected social platforms. Currently, the keyword filter looks at the ‘title’ and ‘description’ elements only, so it doesn't filter on categories, links, or any other element of a feed item. If you require more advanced filtering, you can explore a service like Yahoo! Pipes, that allows for more advanced editing and filter capabilities. The output of a Yahoo! Pipe is also available as RSS, so you can then use it in twitterfeed.

Can I post to more than one Twitter account or social platform?

Yes, you can post content from one feed to multiple social platforms. Go to ‘Step 2,’ and you can select what accounts you’d like to share to. For example, you can share to multiple twitter accounts or to a Twitter account and a Facebook page.

twitterfeed basics: Logging into Twitterfeed

How do I reset my login credentials?

If you have forgotten the password you're using to login to twitterfeed, you can reset it on this page. We will automatically generate a new random password, and email it to your registered email address. If for some reason you haven't received this email within a few minutes, please check your spam folders in case it got caught there.
Once you have received the email, you can sign in with the new password, and once signed in, change it to something you can remember by clicking on the ‘account’ link in the top menu.
If for some reason the new password email never arrives, please drop us a line, and we'll attend to it manually.

What if the person that setup the account no longer works with us?

If you know the email of the person’s account and have access, you can do a password reset on twitterfeed and change the email address associated with the account. If you don’t, please email us at support@twitterfeed.com, and we will take a closer look.

I have forgotten my twitterfeed login credentials. How do I gain access?

If you remember the email address associated with the account go to ‘forgot your password?’ on the twitterfeed homepage, and try to reset your password. If you don’t know this information, email us at support@twitterfeed.com with as much information as possible (twitter accounts, feed or blog URL, etc.).

Basics & troubleshooting: The Feed

How do I find my feed URL?

You can put in your Blog/Website URL and twitterfeed will automatically extract your RSS feed URL from your blog or website. If that fails, read the below:
The address/URL of your feed will vary, depending on the blogging platform used, but you can usually find it in one of these ways:
• Your website or blog may contain a button with the label ‘RSS’, ‘Atom’, ‘Syndicate’, or similar, or with the above feed icon.
• If you get multiple choices of feeds, select either ‘RSS 2.0’ or ‘Atom format’, as these are the most likely to work with twitterfeed.

If all else fails, you may want to check the documentation of the blogging platform/software you are using - this should tell you how to get your feed URL.

I want more frequent updates- how do I set that up?

We support real-time updates via Pubsubhubbub. If your feed is Pubsubhubbub-enabled, we will automatically subscribe to the hub and start listenting for new post notifications from your feed.

For more info on Pubsubhubbub see https://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com. How you enable your feed to use Pubsubhubbub depends on the platform you're using, but something like this Google search, or similar, should provide some information: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=enable+my+feed+for+pubsubhubbub

How long does it take to start posting when I set up a new feed?

The first post of a newly created feed should be posting within an hour. If the feed doesn’t post within an hour, click on ‘view’ link of the new feed in the dashboard, and see what the status line says at the top. If there is an error, it will be displayed there. If it still says ‘not checked yet’ after a couple of hours then edit the feed to verify that you have checked the ‘active’ checkboxes for the feed and the service you're posting to. Make sure you complete the entire process, up to the final ‘Step 3: Done’ page otherwise your revised information may not save.

twitterfeed isn’t updating- why?

My feed updated once, but only once and never again.
Because posting duplicate or old content is one of the most annoying things twitterfeed can do, we've built in a number of checks to try and never re-post items that have already been posted. If your feed updated once, but then never again, it may be that there are some duplicate values in one or more of the elements we are checking before processing a new post:
• If you have the ‘post link’ option checked (under "advanced settings"), we check the link of each post, and won't post an item again if its link is the same as one we have already posted. Check the links on each of items in the feed, and make sure they are unique. If they are always the same, you would have to untick the ‘post link’ option, but could then add a static link to the end of each tweet by adding it as the ‘poststring’ (again under advanced settings)
• We check the GUIDs for uniqueness. If you view the source of your feed in a web browser, look at the or elements and make sure they are unique (they should be, according to spec, so if they're not, the feed will have to be fixed)
• When using the default ‘Post new items based on ... pubDate’ option, we check the publish dates of the feed items to determine which one(s) are new. This means that an item needs to be at least 1 second newer than a previously posted item in order to be considered new. So if you have many items that share an exactly identical publish date (down to the second), only one of these items will be posted, and the others will not be considered new.

Feed isn’t posting even though there are new items in the feed- how do I fix this?
First, check that there isn't something in the feed that stops us posting items - for details of the elements that we check when deciding whether to post an item or not, see the previous entry "My feed updated once, but only once, and never again". If everything looks ok in this respect, it could be related to a problem with the realtime (pubsubhubbub) hub not sending us notifications, or with the server headers returned by the feed server incorrectly telling us there's nothing new to retrieve.
As a first step, try the "check now!" link for the feed in the dashboard, this should run a fetch of the feed, and update to twitter if it finds anything new. If this doesn't work, or the issue consistently returns after a manual check, please let us know at support@twitterfeed.com with details of the feed URL and your account, and we'll try and dig a bit deeper into the feed.

I deleted my feed, but it keeps posting anyway- what should I do?

We usually see this issue when a feed is set up under more than one account in error and one feed is deleted, but another copy of the feed is still active under another user account. If the account is an OpenID, you should be able to sign in via the "Sign In with OpenID" link on the homepage, and then select the relevant OpenID provider in the popup box. If the account is an email address, and you have forgotten the password, you can reset the password using the ‘Forgot your password?’ link on the homepage (http://twitterfeed.com/passwords/new)

When I login, I can’t see any of my feeds- how do I fix this?

Sometimes this happens when you’re logging in from a different account than the one that the feed was created with. If you remember the email address associated with the account go to ‘forgot your password?’ on the twitterfeed homepage, and try to reset your password. If you don’t know this information, email us at support@twitterfeed.com with as much information as possible (Twitter accounts, feed or blog URL, etc.).

Why can’t twitterfeed parse my feed?

When you set up a new feed we check the format of the feed to make sure we are able to process it correctly. If you’re experiencing an error when testing, try checking your feed URL at feedvalidator.org - this is a useful online tool that can show common problems with feeds.
If everything checks out ok, and twitterfeed still won't parse your feed, please email us at support@twitterfeed.com with the feed URL you are trying to use, and we'll take a closer look at what may be the problem.

Twitterfeed says "We couldn't find valid date/time stamps or GUIDs on items"

There are two methods twitterfeed can use to determine if an item in a feed is new, and should be posted to twitter - by default this is done through the date/time that a blog post has been published, or (if you select the "Post new items based on ... GUID" option in the twitterfeed "advanced settings"), by a unique ID on each blog post. Which one you want to use depends a little on the type of RSS feed you have, but twitterfeed requires at least one of the two to be present in the feed - if neither are present, there is no way to tell if an item in a feed is new, and should be posted. If twitterfeed gives the message saying it can't find valid date/time stamps in your feed, try these steps:

Take a look at your feed - is there a date/time showing on every item in the feed? If not, you may be using an older version of RSS (0.92) which doesn't include publish dates. Your blog will probably provide the same feed in RSS 2.0 or Atom 1.0 format (both of which contain publish dates), so try and find the feed URL for the RSS 2.0 or Atom feed (see "How do I find my feed URL" above if you have difficulty finding the feed URLs)
The dates need to be in a specific, valid format in order to be read correctly. If your feed does contain date/time stamps but you still get the above message, try entering your feed URL at feedvalidator.org - this is a useful online tool which can show common problems with feeds, including invalid date formats.

If you have no pubDate elements in your feed at all, but the feed does have GUIDs (look for or elements in the source of the feed), then you should be able to select the "Post new items based on ... GUID" option in the twitterfeed "advanced settings", and twitterfeed will then use these IDs to determine what is new.

Feed status says, “Feed checked OK but stopped processing due to update frequency.” What does this mean?

This message usually happens with real-time-enabled feeds (via pubsubhubbub) that have the feed frequency set to x updates per hour (or any frequency longer than 30 minutes). In this case, if we receive more new post notifications than your settings allow, we drop some in order to honor the feed settings (so we won't swamp your twitter account with more updates than you want at a given time).
If you're not that worried about more posts, and want to make sure all new updates get posted to twitter, you can change your frequency setting to "30 minutes" (under ‘advanced settings’ of the feed). With this setting, we won't stop any notifications, and all new posts will go through (so in effect "30 minutes" means "ASAP" in the context of real-time feeds).
Note that with real-time feeds, we listen for notifications, and don't actually go out and fetch the feed, so the the above status message won't change immediately after making any changes to your feed settings, and only changes the next time a new post notification is received.

Can I force twitterfeed to check my feed?

Yes, if you click on the ‘check now!’ link in the feed dashboard, Twitterfeed will do an immediate fetch of the feed, and post the new item(s) if it finds any new item(s) in the feed to post.

Google Alerts feed is valid, but won’t parse. How do I change this?

There are a couple of potential reasons for this. We check for certain elements to make sure the feed is valid and useable by twitterfeed, and this check fails if there are no items at all in the feed. (This is actually an issue with any feed, but is more typically found if you set up a new alerts feed, which initially is empty). Google also sometimes throttle access to their feeds, so sometimes they return back a 503 error to twitterfeed rather then the feed. This is usually temporary.

Can I get twitterfeed to post old items, not only new items?

Typically we just post new items, because that's what most people want - posting old items is something we actively try to avoid.

But there is a possible way around it, as long as the items in your feed contain GUIDs (i.e. this won't work if your feed items don't contain GUID elements). Under ‘Advanced Settings’, you can select the ‘post new items based on GUID’ option, and also uncheck the ‘feed is sorted’ checkbox. With these settings, twitterfeed will go through the entire feed and eventually post old items too.

Why are links being shortened more than once for Twitter and Facebook?

By default we use two different sets of UTM tags for services posting to twitter and Facebook (this is so you can tell them apart if you're using Google Analytics), and this means that in effect they are 2 different URLs as far as bitly is concerned, so they do get shortened twice. If you don't want this, and don't use Google Analytics, you can clear all the values in the UTM tags fields, so we won't append any UTM tags to the links, and they should then only be shortened once.

Twitterfeed and Twitter

Why do I receive ‘error 400 from twitter timeline feeds’?

These errors are a result of Twitter rate limits for accessing the use of RSS feeds. These limits (requests against timeline feeds) are what twitter calls "organic, unpublished limits", so they do not share exact numbers. Note that this limit only affects you if you are posting *from* Twitter to elsewhere. We are whitelisted for any other calls, so there are no rate limits with posting *to* twitter other than your own per-account daily limits. It’s not a permanent error, but it might take longer, for your updates to go through.

Twitterfeed and Facebook

How do I find the feed URL for my facebook account/wall/page?

There’s no reliable way to find your feed URL. There's a 3rd party service that we don’t own or control at http://fbrss.com that simplifies getting an RSS feed for your Facebook account.

Why aren’t thumbnails and images posting to Facebook?

We only post a "proper" Wall post with thumbnails etc. when the default ‘post title & description’ advanced setting is used. If this setting is changed to ‘title only’ or ‘description only’, then we post a Facebook Status update rather than a Wall post, and status updates don't contain any thumbnails.

Why is the wrong thumbnail being posted to Facebook?

The thumbnail being used is selected automatically by the Facebook API, we don't specify this ourselves. If Facebook consistently picks a thumbnail you don’t like, you can edit the feed, and under "Advanced Settings" un-check the "Include automatic thumbnails in Facebook wall posts" checkbox. We will then post a Wall post without a thumbnail image.
Also note, that you can help Facebook find the thumbnails etc. they would like to be used via the Open Graph API on their site, documentation is at http://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph

How do I post to my Facebook page, and not to my personal profile page?

You click "Connect with Facebook" using your Facebook user account, but if you are the administrator of one or more pages, then after the Facebook connection screen you will see a dropdown list of pages that you are an administrator of. If you select one of these pages, twitterfeed then posts to that page's Wall and not to your personal Wall.

My feed stopped posting to Facebook. What do I do to fix this?

When you authenticate Facebook with twitterfeed we receive access tokens that grant twitterfeed access to your Facebook profile or page. Under certain circumstances, for example, if you change your Facebook password, we lose access and need the user to re-authenticate their Facebook page/profile on Twitterfeed in ‘Step 2’.

How do I reconnect a Facebook account?

First, click on ‘Edit’ next to the social platform icons in the dashboard. Then click on ‘Step 2’ and click on ‘Facebook’ under active services. Click the "Connect with Facebook" link, and you will be redirected to Facebook. Facebook automatically does this with the currently logged in Facebook account (if not, it will prompt to login), so if you want to connect a different account, you’ll need to log out of Facebook first.

What is error 431: ‘feed action request limit reached’?

Facebook has limits on the number of updates you can post. If you see the above error, it means the Facebook limit has been reached. It's not a permanent error, so the feed will continue to work, and once the limit is reset on Facebook’s end (daily), new posts will be posted again automatically.

Can links in my Facebook posts open in a new tab/window?

Unfortunately, to the best of our knowledge, there is no way to control this via the Facebook API.

Why isn’t there a share link on Facebook anymore?

The Facebook API doesn't provide a "native" way to do this. With the old REST API, we manually added code to the post to add a "Share" link, but since we moved to the newer Graph API, this didn't work anymore. We're still looking into a way to re-enable this, but at the moment posts aren’t able to contain the Share link.

How can I make sure my twitterfeed Facebook posts are visible to everyone?

Within Facebook, click on ‘Account Settings’, then ‘Apps’ in the left-hand menu. Find ‘twitterfeed’ in the list of apps, and click ‘Edit’. Under ‘App activity privacy - Who can see posts and activity from this app’, choose ‘Public’. Everyone will now see Wall posts sent by twitterfeed.

Adding and disconnecting to your Twitterfeed account

New service isn’t being saved, dashboard keeps saying ‘connect a service.’

Make sure you clicked ‘Create service’ (towards the bottom left hand of the twitterfeed page), and then click on ‘All Done!’ on the next screen. After that, you should see a confirmation that lists the service you just set up. Just clicking the "authorize at twitter" doesn't actually save the service at our end, you'll need to go through all these steps.

How do I disable shortened links?

The only way that's currently possible is by using a 3rd party custom shortener. If you select "shorten link through: custom" (under "Advanced Settings"), and enter http://insty.info/noshort.php?url=%@ as the custom shortener, your links shouldn't be shortened. Contact the insty support team if you have specific questions regarding the insty service.

The UTM tags are breaking my links, how do I remove them?

You can edit the feed. Under the service settings (‘Step 2’) clear all the values from the ‘UTM tags’ text fields, and save the settings. If all the fields are blank, we will not append anything to the original links.

We're here to help!

Twitterfeed basics: Getting started

Twitterfeed basics: Logging into Twitterfeed

Basics & troubleshooting: The Feed

Twitterfeed and Twitter

Twitterfeed and Facebook

Adding and disconnecting to your Twitterfeed account

Other Common Questions

twitterfeed basics: Getting started

twitterfeed basics: Logging into Twitterfeed

Basics & troubleshooting: The Feed

Twitterfeed and Twitter

Twitterfeed and Facebook

Adding and disconnecting to your Twitterfeed account

Other Common Questions