Universal News Feed

A configurable, resilient plugin to display a cached news feed from any RSS sources via a shortcode.

Description

Universal News Feed lets you pull in articles from any RSS feed and display them anywhere on your site with a simple shortcode:

[latest-news-feed]

Feeds are fetched on a schedule and cached, so visitors never wait on a slow external RSS source. Images are found automatically from each article, with several fallbacks (feed thumbnails, embedded images, and Open Graph preview images) so real article photos are used wherever possible instead of a placeholder.

You can also filter a specific shortcode instance down to one or more named sources, which makes it possible to build separate sections on the same page — for example, one section fed by one set of sources and another fed by a different set:

[latest-news-feed source="Source Name"] [latest-news-feed source="Source Name, Another Source"]

Features

• Configurable list of RSS feed sources, each with its own display name
• Scheduled background fetching with transient caching (hourly, twice daily, or daily)
• Automatic image discovery with multiple fallbacks, including Open Graph images
• List or grid layout, with customizable colors and custom CSS
• Optional "Load More" pagination
• Upload your own placeholder images for articles with no image available
• Per-source filtering via a shortcode attribute, for multiple independent feed sections on one page
• One-click manual cache refresh from the settings screen

Installation

1. Upload the plugin files to the /wp-content/plugins/universal-news-feed directory, or install the plugin through the WordPress Plugins screen directly.
2. Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' screen in WordPress.
3. Go to Settings > Universal News Feed to add your RSS sources and configure the layout.
4. Place the [latest-news-feed] shortcode on any page or post.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do some articles show a placeholder image instead of the real photo?

The plugin looks for an image in several places: the feed's own thumbnail/enclosure data, any image embedded in the article content, and finally the article page's Open Graph preview image. If none of these are available — often because a publisher blocks automated requests — a placeholder image is used instead.

Can I show different sources in different places on the same page?

Yes. Use the source attribute on the shortcode with the exact Source Name you gave that feed in the settings screen, e.g. [latest-news-feed source="My Source"]. Add multiple shortcode instances with different source values to build separate sections.

How often is the feed updated?

By default, hourly. This can be changed to twice daily or daily under Settings > Universal News Feed > Advanced. You can also trigger an immediate refresh with the "Force Refresh Now" button on the settings screen.

Changelog

2.7

PNGs and static GIFs are now also resized and re-encoded as compressed JPEGs, same as JPGs already were — these lossless formats were frequently 5-10x larger than a JPEG of the same photo needs to be. Animated GIFs are detected automatically and still cached untouched so they keep their animation. Note: this only applies to images cached from now on; use Debug Log > Clear Image Cache to force existing large images to be re-downloaded and reprocessed.

2.6

Two changes: (1) each RSS feed source can now have an optional "Keywords" filter, so a broad feed (e.g. a general "Style" section that mixes fashion with unrelated lifestyle/politics/etc.) can be narrowed down to only the on-topic articles. (2) Cached images are now automatically resized (max 480px) and compressed (quality 82) instead of storing the publisher's original file as-is — publisher photos are often 1200px+ wide even though the plugin only ever displays them at 160-280px, so this meaningfully cuts page weight and load time. Animated GIFs are left untouched so they keep their animation.

2.5

Added an explicit hover/focus color for the "Load More News" button (a darker shade of the same blue) so it no longer falls back to a washed-out default state on hover.

2.4

The item-hiding CSS rule (for "Items Per Page") is now printed as inline CSS directly in the page head, and the "Load More" button's click handler is now a small inline script printed directly next to it in the shortcode output — both immune to any CDN, page cache, or asset-minification setup serving a stale copy of the plugin's external .css/.js files, which was preventing "Items Per Page" and "Load More" from working on some hosts even after those files were updated.

2.3

News items are now rendered as real HTML directly in the page source (server-side), instead of being built by JavaScript from a JSON blob after the page loads — this makes the feed visible to search engines and other crawlers that don't execute JavaScript. Also bumped the enqueued asset version so caches pick up the updated CSS/JS instead of serving stale copies, and the feed heading now appends the filtered source name(s) when the shortcode's source attribute is used, e.g. "Latest News from WWD".

2.2

Version 2.2 expands the debug logging introduced in 2.1 to cover the entire fetch pipeline, not just local image caching: it now logs which feed is being fetched, whether the external service or internal parser was used, how many items each feed returned, every attempt to find an og:image fallback (including the exact HTTP status or error returned), and a clear summary when no image could be found anywhere for an article. This logging traced a real bug: Business of Fashion's feed data stores its image in a different field (enclosure) than most other sources (thumbnail), which meant BOF's images were silently skipping the caching system entirely and hotlinking directly to BOF's CDN — the fix now checks both fields, so BOF images get cached and served locally like everything else. Separately, the Debug Log tab gained a "Clear Image Cache" button, so cached images can be wiped from the WordPress admin directly, without needing server/SSH access.

2.1

Version 2.1 focuses on hardening the plugin for WordPress.org's automated code review standards.

2.0

• Renamed and refactored from the original single-purpose plugin into a generic, source-agnostic news feed plugin.
• Added per-source shortcode filtering, allowing multiple independent feed sections on one page.
• Rebuilt the front-end rendering to support multiple shortcode instances on the same page without ID collisions.
• Added Open Graph image fallback for articles with no image in their RSS feed.
• Improved image discovery to handle lazy-loaded images (data-src, srcset).
• Removed the internal-only fetcher option; the plugin now always attempts the external fetch service first with an automatic fallback to the internal parser.

1.0

• Initial release.