Post Forwarder vs TheGridIndex RSS Importer

Post Forwarder lets you syndicate content from one WordPress site to any combination of destinations with a single click at publish time — or schedule it ahead with the built-in calendar. Configure as many portals as you need and choose per-post which ones receive each article. Supported Destinations WordPress sites — forwards via the REST API with taxonomy mapping, featured image upload, ACF field support, and duplicate prevention. One-click authorization using WordPress Application Passwords, or enter credentials manually. LinkedIn — posts as a link-share article card with your excerpt, featured image thumbnail, and hashtags auto-generated from your WordPress post tags. Supports personal profiles and organisation pages. One-click connect — no configuration required. X (Twitter) — posts the title and post URL as a tweet; the featured image attaches directly on paid API tiers or appears as a link preview card. Connect with your own free X developer app. Plan ahead with the content calendar Post Forwarder includes a built-in weekly calendar so you can do more than fire-and-forget on publish. Schedule posts to go out to your connected channels at the time that suits you, see everything that’s queued at a glance, and manage upcoming posts across all your WordPress sites, LinkedIn, and X from one screen. Great for keeping a steady publishing rhythm without babysitting the clock. WordPress forwarding highlights One-click “Save & Connect with WordPress” using the built-in Application Password flow. Taxonomy mapping with automatic fallback to tags. Featured image, ACF fields, and custom post types are carried across. Duplicate prevention so the same post is never forwarded twice. LinkedIn highlights Zero-configuration connect — click “Connect with LinkedIn” and authorize in one step. Featured image is uploaded directly to LinkedIn and shown as the article thumbnail. WordPress post tags become LinkedIn hashtags automatically (the tag “my topic” becomes #MyTopic). Supports personal profiles and organisation pages. Token expiry is shown in settings, with a reconnect prompt before it lapses. Compatibility Tested with WordPress 7.0 and PHP 8.3. Platform Requirements & Limitations WordPress The destination site must run WordPress 5.6+ with the REST API enabled (default). The connecting user must have at least the Editor role on the destination site. Use “Save & Connect with WordPress” for one-click Application Password authorization, or enter a username and Application Password manually. LinkedIn No extra configuration required — one-click connect handles sign-in. LinkedIn access tokens expire after 60 days. The plugin shows the expiry date and prompts you to reconnect. For organisation page posts set the Author URN to urn:li:organization:YOUR_ORG_ID. You’ll also need the Community Management API product approved on the LinkedIn app (not needed for personal profile posts). LinkedIn needs the post URL to be publicly reachable to show an article card. Posts from localhost or .local/.test domains fall back to image-only or text+URL mode. X (Twitter) You need a free X developer account to post tweets. X limits write access per developer app, so each plugin user connects their own app. Step 1 — Create an X developer account (one-time) Go to developer.x.com and sign in with your X account. Click Sign up and agree to the terms — your developer account is created instantly. Step 2 — Create an app and get credentials In the Developer Portal go to Apps and click Create App. Give it any name (e.g. “My Post Forwarder”). Open the app, click Keys & Tokens then User authentication settings then Set up. Set: App permissions: Read and write Type of App: Web App, Automated App or Bot Callback URI: the callback URL shown in the plugin’s X portal settings Website URL: your site URL Click Save and copy the Client ID and Client Secret (the secret is shown only once). Step 3 — Connect in the plugin In Post Forwarder -> Settings -> Connection Configuration, add an X portal. Enter the Client ID and Client Secret you copied. Click Save Portals, then click Save & Connect with X. Authorize the app on X and you are redirected back with a “Connected” badge. Notes: * The free tier allows 1,500 tweet writes per month. Each user’s app has its own separate quota. * X access tokens are long-lived and refreshed automatically before expiry. * Featured images on the free tier appear as link preview cards (public sites only), not as direct attachments. The X Basic plan enables direct image upload. External Services Post Forwarder only sends data when you choose to connect an account or forward a post — nothing is sent in the background. To publish to LinkedIn or X (Twitter), the plugin uses a small open-source connection helper to handle the secure sign-in step, then sends the post you’re forwarding (such as its title, link, and image) to the network you connected. WordPress-to-WordPress forwarding talks only to the site you set up. You stay in control: connect or disconnect any destination at any time, and advanced users can self-host the connection helper. Each network’s handling of the content you send is governed by its own terms: LinkedIn — Terms · Privacy X (Twitter) — Terms · Privacy Technical Notes Security: * OAuth tokens are stored in the WordPress database. Enable at-rest encryption on your host for best protection. * Sensitive fields (access tokens, client secrets, passwords) are never echoed back to the browser — submitting a blank field preserves the saved value. * All form inputs are sanitized and validated; WordPress nonces protect all forms and OAuth callbacks. Tested with: * WordPress 7.0 * PHP 8.3 Minimum Requirements: * WordPress 5.6+ * PHP 7.4+

TheGridIndex RSS Importer pulls headlines from external RSS feeds into WordPress as posts. Designed to pair with The Grid Index theme but works as a standalone importer with any theme. About the name. “TheGridIndex” is a coined product name owned by Fifth Avenue Photographic (the plugin author) and is also the name of a companion WordPress theme by the same author. The plugin is not affiliated with any unrelated project, dataset, or service that happens to share the words “grid” or “index” in its name. Use of the companion theme is optional — the plugin works as a standalone importer with any theme. Features: 47-feed curated catalog (News, World, Tech, Business, Science) — toggle on with one click Custom feeds — paste any RSS URL on the Feeds tab Per-feed check interval (5 min / 15 min / 30 min / hourly) Configurable post status (publish / draft / pending) Granular post categories — feeds map to News/World/Tech/Business/Science alongside the catch-all RSS category Featured image extraction from feed enclosures, media:thumbnail, media:content, or first content image Minimum image width filter Persistent GUID dedupe ledger — re-runs never create duplicates, even after posts are deleted Duplicate detector with bulk merge tool Feed health monitoring — flags feeds that fetch successfully but import nothing (silent failures) Embedded knowledge base with 15 FAQ entries Per-post source attribution meta for theme integration When The Grid Index theme is active, imported posts automatically display: Source attribution chip in the article hero “Read at [Source]” CTA button below the hero The “Hide comments on imported RSS posts” Theme Option (if enabled) takes effect External services This plugin is an RSS feed importer. To do its job, it must connect to external (third-party) RSS feed URLs that you choose to enable. No feed is fetched until you explicitly enable it — either by toggling a feed on from the Catalog tab or by pasting a custom RSS URL on the Feeds tab. If you enable no feeds, the plugin makes no outbound requests. What is sent, when, and why: When a feed you have enabled is due for a check (per the global cron and that feed’s individual interval — 5 min / 15 min / 30 min / hourly), or when you click “Import Now,” “Force re-import 24h,” or a per-row “Fetch” button, the plugin makes a standard HTTP GET request from your WordPress server to the feed’s URL. That request includes: The feed URL you enabled (target of the request). A standard browser-style User-Agent header (used because some publishers’ WAFs reject WordPress’s default User-Agent). Standard HTTP headers (Accept, Accept-Encoding) added by the WordPress HTTP API. Your server’s outbound IP address (visible to the publisher in their access logs, as with any HTTP request). No personal data about your site visitors is sent. No analytics, no telemetry, no user-identifying information. The plugin does not phone home to the plugin author or to any service the author controls. Outbound caching. Successful and failed fetches are cached locally on your WordPress site via the standard SimplePie/WordPress transient cache to reduce redundant requests. No fetched content is sent off your server. Custom feeds you add. If you paste your own RSS URL into the Feeds tab, the plugin fetches that URL on the same schedule. You are responsible for ensuring you have the right to import from that source and for reviewing that source’s terms. Curated catalog publishers. The plugin ships with a catalog of 47 RSS feeds offered as a convenience. Each publisher operates independently of this plugin and its author. Use of each publisher’s feed is governed by that publisher’s own terms of service and privacy policy. How to reach each publisher’s current legal pages. Each publisher operates their own legal pages on their own domain. The URLs publishers use for these pages change periodically — they reorganize sites, migrate to new help centers, move to consolidated parent-company legal portals (e.g. Condé Nast, Yahoo, NBCUniversal, Dow Jones, Disney/Paramount). Rather than hard-code per-publisher URLs that go stale, this readme lists each publisher’s home page, which is the canonical, stable entry point. Every publisher’s site footer carries links labeled “Terms” / “Terms of Use” / “Terms of Service” and “Privacy” / “Privacy Policy” / “Privacy Notice” that go to their current legal pages — those footer links are the publisher’s own source of truth and stay current as the publisher updates their policies. If you want to review a publisher’s terms before enabling their feed, open that publisher’s home page and use the footer links. Reasoning for this presentation choice: an earlier version of this readme hard-coded direct terms/privacy URLs for every publisher; within a single review cycle, 12 of those URLs already 404’d because publishers had moved their legal pages. Pointing to home pages eliminates this rot for both users reading this readme today and for any future reviewer. The table below lists every publisher the plugin can connect to (catalog feeds plus the activation-time starter feeds), grouped by category: News The New York Times — https://www.nytimes.com/ BBC — https://www.bbc.com/ The Guardian — https://www.theguardian.com/ NPR — https://www.npr.org/ Al Jazeera — https://www.aljazeera.com/ Google News — https://news.google.com/ USA Today — https://www.usatoday.com/ The Washington Post — https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ABC News (US) — https://abcnews.go.com/ (operated by Disney; legal pages are reached via the Disney/ABC site footer) CBS News — https://www.cbsnews.com/ (operated by Paramount; legal pages are reached via the CBS/Paramount site footer) Politico — https://www.politico.com/ NBC News — https://www.nbcnews.com/ (operated by NBCUniversal; legal pages are reached via the NBC/NBCUniversal site footer) The Hill — https://thehill.com/ ProPublica — https://www.propublica.org/ Time — https://time.com/ Bloomberg (Politics and Technology feeds) — https://www.bloomberg.com/ LA Times — https://www.latimes.com/ Tech TechCrunch — https://techcrunch.com/ The Verge (Vox Media) — https://www.theverge.com/ (legal pages governed by Vox Media; reached via the Verge site footer) Ars Technica (Condé Nast) — https://arstechnica.com/ (legal pages governed by Condé Nast; reached via the Ars Technica site footer) Wired (Condé Nast) — https://www.wired.com/ (legal pages governed by Condé Nast; reached via the Wired site footer) Engadget (Yahoo) — https://www.engadget.com/ (legal pages governed by Yahoo; reached via the Engadget site footer) Hacker News — https://news.ycombinator.com/ (feed served via the hnrss.org community bridge — bridge home: https://hnrss.github.io/) 9to5Mac — https://9to5mac.com/ MIT Technology Review — https://www.technologyreview.com/ ZDNet (Red Ventures) — https://www.zdnet.com/ (legal pages governed by Red Ventures; reached via the ZDNet site footer) Business Financial Times — https://www.ft.com/ Harvard Business Review — https://hbr.org/ Fast Company — https://www.fastcompany.com/ (legal pages governed by Mansueto Ventures; reached via the Fast Company site footer) Forbes — https://www.forbes.com/ Wall Street Journal (Dow Jones; feed publishes headlines, full articles paywalled) — https://www.wsj.com/ (legal pages governed by Dow Jones; reached via the WSJ site footer) MarketWatch (Dow Jones) — https://www.marketwatch.com/ (legal pages governed by Dow Jones; reached via the MarketWatch site footer) CNBC (NBCUniversal) — https://www.cnbc.com/ (legal pages governed by NBCUniversal; reached via the CNBC site footer) Science Science Daily — https://www.sciencedaily.com/ NASA (US government, public domain content) — https://www.nasa.gov/ World Deutsche Welle — https://www.dw.com/ France 24 — https://www.france24.com/ CBC News (Canada) — https://www.cbc.ca/news ABC News (Australia) — https://www.abc.net.au/news AI / Vendor blogs (starter feeds, not in the curated 47-feed catalog) OpenAI — https://openai.com/ Google AI Blog (Alphabet) — https://blog.google/ Hugging Face — https://huggingface.co/ Listing above does not imply endorsement or affiliation. If a publisher you want to use is not in the catalog, you can add their RSS URL manually via the Feeds tab; the same disclosure (HTTP GET with browser-style User-Agent) applies.