How to Prepare Your RSS Feed for Flipboard

A good RSS feed for Flipboard carries real article URLs, publication dates, bylines and an image for each story. Start with the feed generated by your publishing system, then inspect a few entries before submitting it. My recommendation is to fix the feed at the source so every future article arrives with the same fields.

RSS feed for Flipboard: an old date can hide a new entry

Flipboard's RSS guidelines say content more than 90 days old generally won't display. Adding an old article to a fresh feed doesn't make its original publication date new. That is the first thing I'd inspect when a feed accepts recent stories but seems to ignore an archive.

The Flipboard listing covers the service. This guide is for preparing a publisher-owned feed. Following another publication for reading is a different action from submitting your own original content to a magazine.

1. Inspect the feed your site actually publishes

Open the feed URL in a browser and confirm that it returns feed content without a password prompt. Use the feed address from your own publishing system, not a copied homepage address that happens to look similar.

Read several entries, including the newest one. Look for the article title, link, date and description. One valid-looking entry doesn't prove that every post template generates the same fields. An image post and a text post may expose different details if the publishing setup treats them differently.

Don't replace the feed with a temporary feed-generation service merely to make a submission. Flipboard's guidance specifically warns against rss.app feeds because they eventually expire on its platform. A stable feed controlled by the publisher gives you a clearer place to repair future issues.

2. Give the channel a recognizable identity

At the feed level, Flipboard asks for title, link, description and language. The title identifies the publication. The description should explain the actual subject, with enough detail that a reader can tell it apart from another general news source.

Use the correct language code for the writing. A feed's language label describes its articles; it shouldn't be chosen to make a publication look larger or more international. If your site publishes separate language editions, keep their identity clear in the feeds you provide.

A short description such as a publication covering regional cycling routes tells the reader more than “the best news and updates.” This is copy you can write precisely because you already know what the publication covers. There is no need to invent readership or expertise claims.

3. Keep each article's identity stable

Each item needs a title, article URL and unique guid. Flipboard says the article URL can serve as that identifier. Use the address readers actually reach when they open the story, with the same identity used in your other distribution channels.

Stable identifiers help a publishing pipeline recognize the same item across refreshes. A title can change during editing, while the story should remain recognizable as the same article. Avoid rebuilding every identifier merely because a headline was corrected.

Titles containing special characters must be encoded correctly in the feed. A bare ampersand can be a feed-format issue even when the webpage displays perfectly. Fix it in the publishing output rather than asking an editor to remove normal punctuation from every headline.

4. Preserve the real publication date and author

Flipboard asks for pubDate and dc:creator. The date needs a time zone. The byline should name the person responsible for the story, as it does on the article page.

Keep the original date when updating an existing article. An update can have its own visible date on your site without turning an old publication into a newly reported event. The feed should describe the article honestly instead of using a changed timestamp to force it into a recent-content window.

If a story doesn't appear where you expect, inspect the date before changing the feed URL. A magazine fed by RSS uses chronological order, so a backdated item can sit below newer entries even when processing has worked.

5. Supply a separate image for the story

The guidelines ask for an enclosure media element and recommend an image whose smallest dimension is at least 500 pixels. Pick a featured image that belongs to the article, with a URL that loads successfully outside your signed-in publishing session.

Flipboard also warns that reusing the same image for every article can leave later stories without an image. This is a reason to make featured imagery part of the editorial workflow. A publication logo can identify the channel, while the story's image should explain or show the story.

An image attached inside the page doesn't necessarily appear as an enclosure in the feed. Inspect the generated item after setting the featured image. If the publishing system doesn't output it, the repair belongs in that feed template or plugin configuration.

6. Write an excerpt that makes sense alone

Flipboard's guidance generally asks for 300 or more characters of description. An excerpt should give the article's subject and why it matters without copying a navigation label or a generic website slogan.

Write the summary after the article is complete. That makes it easier to describe the actual result: a guide explains a named task, a comparison makes a named choice, and a report covers a specific event. Avoid promising a result the page doesn't deliver simply because the short summary needs a hook.

The app can show different amounts of excerpt text depending on layout. Put the article's concrete subject near the start so it survives a shorter presentation. Don't begin with several lines of scene-setting that delay the point.

Fix the publishing problem you can see

Flipboard names Flipboard and FlipboardProxy as crawler user agents in its troubleshooting guidance. If your own site blocks them, change the specific publisher access rule with your site administrator. A reader app's ability to load the feed from your laptop doesn't prove that Flipboard's crawler can reach it.

What public creator discussions reveal

In a June 2025 RSS discussion, a reader remembers adding a custom feed to a Flipboard collection and asks whether that still works. Another asks whether a publisher could insert recommended or sponsored entries into an RSS feed. Both questions point back to the content the publisher actually emits.

A feed isn't automatically cleaner than a webpage. If the publishing system mixes editorial articles and sponsored entries, that mixture travels with it. Keep labels attached to the specific item so a reader doesn't lose the distinction when the content appears elsewhere.

The original Flipboard publisher announcement explains the feed-review model. Acceptance isn't a traffic promise. A creator still needs articles that people want to open and collections that explain why those stories belong together.

After the feed is ready

Keep a copy of the feed URL and a short checklist for each published story: date, title, byline, destination and featured image. A reliable template should supply those fields automatically, leaving an editor to review the actual content.

For a reading workflow outside Flipboard, NetNewsWire, Capy Reader and KrISS feed are other directory choices. AllSides addresses news perspectives, while the news search category covers the wider set.

Once your project has a public page that clearly explains what it does, you can also submit it to ShoutMyPost. Give the description the same attention as a feed excerpt: name the job, the intended reader and a concrete reason to open the project.