Mastering WordPress: Easy Steps to Delay Posts in Your RSS Feed

Delaying posts in your RSS feed gives you control over when your content is published. When you create a new post in WordPress, it is instantly added to your site’s RSS feed.

While quick sharing has its advantages, you may prefer additional time for last-minute revisions, correcting typos, or ensuring that unfinished drafts do not reach your subscribers. Additionally, content scrapers might take your work before search engines can index it, potentially harming your SEO efforts.

With the appropriate plugin and a few straightforward settings, you can easily modify the timing to ensure your posts are polished and ready before they appear in the feed. Based on our findings, WPCode is among the top plugins for this purpose.

In this guide, we will provide you with easy steps to delay posts from showing up in your RSS feed, enabling you to manage the timing of your content more effectively.

Reasons to Delay Your RSS Feed in WordPress

Occasionally, you might publish a post on your WordPress blog that contains a typo you overlooked. This mistake is then propagated to your RSS feed and all your subscribers. If you have email subscriptions on your WordPress blog, those subscribers will receive it too.

By implementing a delay between your RSS feed and your live site, you create a brief opportunity to identify and correct any errors on a live site.

Content-scraping websites utilize RSS feeds to track your content and replicate your posts as soon as they go live. If your website is new and lacks authority, these scrapers may often outrank you in search results.

Delaying a post in your feed allows search engines to crawl and index your content before it becomes publicly visible.

In this guide, we will walk you through the simple steps to delay posts from showing up in your WordPress site’s RSS feed. Here’s a brief overview of the topics we will cover:

• Steps to Delay Posts in Your WordPress RSS Feed
• Bonus Tip: Explore the WPCode Snippet Library

Let’s get started!

Steps to Delay Posts in Your WordPress RSS Feed

We recommend using WPCode to delay posts from appearing in your site’s feed. WPCode allows you to safely and easily add custom code to WordPress without the risk of breaking your site.

For advanced users, you can alternatively copy and paste the following code into your theme’s functions.php file. Be sure to adjust the code to set your desired time interval.

For more information, check out our article on how to insert code snippets from the internet into WordPress.

function wpb_snippet_publish_later_on_feed( $where ) { global $wpdb; if ( is_feed() ) { // Current timestamp in WordPress format. $now = gmdate( 'Y-m-d H:i:s' ); // Time to wait before publishing $wait = '10'; // integer. // Specify the time unit. $unit = 'MINUTE'; // Options: MINUTE, HOUR, DAY, WEEK, MONTH, YEAR. // Modify the default $where clause to include a delay of 10 minutes. $where .= " AND TIMESTAMPDIFF($unit, $wpdb->posts.post_date_gmt, '$now') > $wait "; } return $where;
}
add_filter( 'posts_where', 'wpb_snippet_publish_later_on_feed' );

Next, we’ll guide you through the simple process of doing this with WPCode.

To get started, install and activate the free WPCode plugin. You can refer to our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin for assistance.

After activation, head to Code Snippets »Add SnippetNext, look for ‘RSS’ or scroll down to the ‘RSS Feeds’ section.

Hover over ‘Delay Posts in RSS Feeds’ in the search results and click on ‘Use snippet.’

You will then be directed to the ‘Edit Snippet’ screen, where WPCode has already set up the snippet settings for you.

By default, your posts will be delayed by 10 minutes in your RSS feed after they are published.

If this delay works for you, simply toggle the switch to ‘Active’ and click the ‘Update’ button.

To change the delay duration, modify the number on line 10 and the time unit on line 13.

For instance, to delay the post by one hour, replace $wait = '10'; and $unit = 'MINUTE' with $wait = '1' and $unit = 'HOUR'.

If you need to adjust the delay again, repeat these steps. To have the posts appear in the feed immediately, switch it back to ‘Inactive’ and click ‘Update.’

Pro Tip: Explore the WPCode Snippet Library

WPCode includes a vast array of additional code snippets. You can explore the collection by going to Code Snippets Libraryfrom your admin dashboard.

You can replace some single-use plugins on your site by simply activating snippets available in the library.

For instance, you can find snippets that enable you to:

• Disable automatic updates
• Allow SVG file uploads
• Set a minimum word count for your posts, and much more.

We hope this article has helped you learn how to easily delay posts from showing up in the WordPress RSS feed. Next, you may want to explore our guides on adding RSS subscriptions for tags and custom taxonomy archives, as well as creating an RSS sitemap in WordPress.

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