How to merge multiple RSS feeds into one

This article is intended to guide you through how to combine several different RSS feeds into one RSS feed. For example, you may need to combine multiple RSS feeds into one in the following situations:

• When you want to subscribe to the updates of several kinds of RSS feeds from an RSS subscriber to one address.
• When you connect your blog’s RSS feed to an email client such as Mailchimp to run a newsletter
• When you want to exclude articles in a specific category from the RSS feed you want to share with your readers.

Today’s article will help you to easily merge multiple RSS feeds into one without any difficult programming knowledge.

Background for writing this article

This blog links the RSS feed with Mailchimp to send out newsletters when new articles are updated. However, as blog posts piled up and topics covered increased, it became necessary to exclude some topics from the newsletter.

WordPress, the platform on which this blog operates, gives each category a separate RSS address. Therefore, if you can collect only the RSS feeds of the desired category and combine them into one new RSS feed, you can easily run an email newsletter with only the content of the desired category.

However, many of the information published on the Internet regarding how to merge multiple RSS feeds into one is currently not valid. For example, rssmix.com, which appears the most when you search for RSS feed merge or mix, is currently not operating normally. So, after a lot of trial and error myself, I figured out a good way to merge RSS feeds, and I’ve put them together below.

Things you need

• 2 or more RSS addresses you want to merge into one. (Below is an example.)
  • https://example.com/123/feed/
  • https://example.com/456/feed/
  • https://example.com/789/feed/
• RSS Mixer
  • Free account signup required.
  • You can combine 3 RSS feeds into 1 RSS feed with a free account.
  • Depending on the format of multiple RSS feed addresses that need to be combined, RSS Mixer may not recognize them. In this case, use Feedburner, which is introduced below, to convert the RSS feed. If you convert in advance using Feedburner, you can make it recognized by RSS Mixer without trial and error.
• Feedburner
  • Feedburner is a service provided by Google and can be used with a Google account.
  • Feedburner creates new RSS feeds by processing the addresses of existing RSS feeds provided in various formats depending on blog platforms, etc. New RSS feed addresses generated by Feedburner in this way are more versatile than before.

How to merge RSS feeds

• Convert RSS Feed Addresses with Feedburner
  1. In FeedBurner, at the bottom of the My Feeds page, enter the RSS feed addresses to be integrated one by one in the blanks under the phrase ‘Burn a feed right this instant’.
     1. For example, enter https://example.com/123/feed/ in the blank.
  2. Click the Next>> button located to the right of the blank.
  3. In Feed Title, enter a title for the feed.
  4. In Feed Address, put the sub-address of the newly created feed. This will be the new RSS feed address with ‘http://feeds.feedburner.com/’ prepended.
     • For example, if you put ‘abc/’ as a sub-address in Feed Address, the new RSS feed address will be http://feeds.feedburner.com/abc/.
  5. Repeat steps 1-4 for all RSS feed addresses you want to merge. (Below is an example.)
     • https://example.com/123/feed/ is converted to http://feeds.feedburner.com/abc/.
     • https://example.com/456/feed/ is converted to http://feeds.feedburner.com/def/.
     • https://example.com/789/feed/ is converted to http://feeds.feedburner.com/ghi/.
• Merge with RSS Mixer
  1. Create a free RSS Mixer account.
  2. Feedburner based RSS address generated above (eg http://feeds.feedburner.com/abc/, http://feeds.feedburner.com/def/, http://feeds.feedburner.com/ghi/ ) by entering them one by one. See video.
  3. Check the merged feeds with RSS Mixer.
     • This is an address in a format similar to http://rssmixer.com/feed/-1234.xml . This address is a combination of the three individual RSS feeds I sampled earlier.
     • For example, when any one of the three feeds (i.e. https://example.com/123/feed/, https://example.com/456/feed/, https://example.com/789/feed/) is updated, it will also be updated at http://rssmixer.com/feed/-1234.xml.
• Convert RSS feed addresses with Feedburner (optional)
  1. Convert the address of http://rssmixer.com/feed/-1234.xml format created above using Feedburner once again. This process increases the versatility of the newly merged RSS feed.
     • For example, http://rssmixer.com/feed/-1572.xml has been converted by Feedburner to a new RSS feed address of http://feeds.feedburner.com/final/.

Results

When a new post is updated in one of the three feeds (i.e. https://example.com/123/feed/, https://example.com/456/feed/, https://example.com/789/feed/), it is also updated in the newly created http://feeds.feedburner.com/final/.

Limitations and Notes

• RSS Mixer free account only allows you to merge 3 RSS feeds into one. If you want to combine a larger number of RSS feeds, you will need to use a paid service.