If dlvr.it has not posted new items from your RSS feed, or has stopped posting them, this article walks through the most common causes: feed caching, missing GUIDs, duplicate GUIDs, and posting rate limits.
Start with Feed Medic
The fastest way to find out why a feed isn’t posting is to run Feed Medic. It checks the feed the way the social platforms do — reading the feed, posting to your accounts, and your feed settings — and reports exactly what it found. It only reads; it never publishes or changes settings. Fix the topmost issue it reports, then re-run.
Feed caching is delaying updates
If dlvr.it isn’t seeing new items as quickly as expected, your RSS feed may be cached on your server. Caching reduces server load, but it can also mean feed updates aren’t served to dlvr.it right away — sometimes causing delays of several hours or more.
What to do: Check your cache plugin settings and look for an option to either exclude RSS feeds from caching or reduce the cache expiry time for feeds. If you’re not sure how, your system administrator or hosting provider can help.
If dlvr.it can’t read the feed at all — not just slowly — see My RSS feed works in a browser but times out in dlvr.it. If your site is behind Cloudflare or otherwise restricts bots, see Cloudflare: Allow dlvr.it to access your RSS feeds and How dlvr.it identifies itself and how to control feed access.
Your feed is missing GUIDs
This is one of the most common causes. dlvr.it uses an item’s GUID (Globally Unique Identifier) to decide whether it has seen that item before. If your feed doesn’t include GUIDs, dlvr.it falls back to the item’s URL.
If all your items share the same URL — for example, if your feed always links to your homepage rather than individual posts — dlvr.it sees each new item as one it already posted, and won’t publish anything new.
What is a GUID? A GUID is a unique string assigned to each item in a feed. Readers like dlvr.it use it to identify which items are new. A GUID can be a URL, but only if that URL is unique to each item; if new content is regularly published at the same URL, a non-URL string is better. Once assigned, a GUID should never change for that item.
There are three ways to resolve this:
Add GUID fields to your feed with a unique value for each item. This is the cleanest fix if you control how your feed is generated.
Link to individual posts rather than your homepage or a shared URL, so each item has a unique URL dlvr.it can use as an identifier.
Enable “Republish items with updated timestamps” in dlvr.it: in Automate, expand the automation, click Settings, open the Advanced tab, and turn it on. dlvr.it will then use each item’s timestamp as a signal for new content.
Use timestamps as a workaround, not a fix
The “Republish items with updated timestamps” setting can cause duplicate posts if your feed timestamps change without the content actually changing. Prefer proper GUIDs; use timestamps only as a stopgap.
Your feed contains duplicate GUIDs
The reverse problem can also happen: if your feed publishes a new item but assigns it a GUID dlvr.it has already seen, dlvr.it treats it as an old item and skips it.
What to do: Enable “Republish items with updated timestamps” in your feed’s Settings → Advanced tab. With it on, dlvr.it republishes any item whose timestamp has changed, even when the GUID looks familiar.
Same caution applies
If your timestamps change independently of your content, this setting can produce duplicate posts. Turn it on only if you understand how your feed sets timestamps.
You’ve hit a posting rate limit
If your feed is working correctly but posts still aren’t going out, you may have reached the posting rate limit for one of your connected social accounts. Each platform sets its own limit on how many posts can publish within a given time window.
Check your feed’s log for rate-limit messages: in Automate, expand the automation and click History. For platform-specific limits, see Supported channels in dlvr.it.
Still not seeing new items post?
Run Feed Medic and fix the topmost issue it reports. If Medic says everything passed, open the automation’s History and confirm it’s set to Active.
If it all looks right and posts still aren’t going out, contact us at [email protected] — include your feed URL, or a Feed Medic Copy Share Link so we can see exactly what it found.