Check when an Open RSS feed will have new content

If you're well acquainted with Open RSS feeds, you may have noticed that, when a website publishes new content, there could be a delay before the feed shows the new content. Now, you can see when this delay starts and expires, so you'll know exactly how long it'll take for new content to appear in any feed.

Each Open RSS feed has a website that it gets its content from. And for each feed to stay updated, it needs to repeatedly check the website for new content. But this process doesn't happen every second of the day because that could overwhelm the website with too many requests. Instead, the feed will show a stored version of the content. Only after a reasonable amount of time has passed will new content from the website be checked again and added to the feed.

Just visit any Open RSS feed in your web browser, and it will display both the last time new content was requested, and how long it'll be before it happens again.

The left-hand side shows the last time the feed's website was checked for new content. On the right, you'll find a timer that counts down to the second of when new content from the feed's website will be checked again and added to the feed. When the timer ends, you're given an option to refresh the page, to show any new feed content available.

To use the feature, you must have a donation subscription of $10 or more every month. Then follow these steps:

1. Login to your account using the donation information we provided you when you signed up.
2. Navigate to the preview page of any Open RSS feed in a web browser.
3. You'll then see the feature at the top of the RSS feed preview.

This feature is a part of a larger effort by the organization to provide more transparency to our supporters and give more insight into the behavior of Open RSS feeds. You can read more about how Open RSS feeds work here.