Bridgetown RSS Feed: Set Up the Ruby Plugin and Auto-Post

Short answer: Bridgetown, the Ruby static site generator, gets an RSS and Atom feed from the bridgetown-feed plugin. Add the gem to your project, set the public address of the site in the configuration, choose how many posts the feed holds and whether it carries excerpts or full content, add the feed link to your layout, build and test the generated file. When the address returns valid XML with stable links and dates, connect it to an auto-poster so that every new post is shared on your social networks.

Bridgetown is a modern successor to the older Ruby generators. It builds pages from templates, collections and data files, and it offers a plugin system that keeps the core small. A feed is one of those plugins, and it follows the same idea as the well-known feed plugin for Jekyll. That is good news if you have used one before, but there are details that belong to Bridgetown, and a wrong site address or an over-short post limit can silently ruin the output. This guide walks through the set-up, the options that matter, how to keep dates and links stable and how to check the deployed result before an auto-poster depends on it.

Add the feed plugin

Bridgetown does not create a feed on its own. You add the plugin to the project, and Bridgetown loads it the next time it builds. The easiest way is to use the bundler from the project folder.

bundle add bridgetown-feed -g bridgetown_plugins
bin/bridgetown start

Gems in the plugin group are loaded automatically, so no extra require line is needed in a standard project. After the first build, look in the output folder for the feed file. By default the plugin writes an Atom file called feed.xml at the root of the site, so a site served from the domain root exposes it at /feed.xml. Check the README of the plugin version that you installed if your output differs, because file names and options can change between releases.

If you are comparing generators, the same questions are answered for Zola, Pelican ve Hugo, Jekyll and Eleventy.

Set the site address first

Almost every broken feed starts with the address. The plugin builds absolute links from the site address in the configuration file, and a missing or local address produces links that no outside reader can open.

# bridgetown.config.yml
url: "https://example.com"
timezone: "Europe/London"

feed:
  path: feed.xml
  posts_limit: 20
  excerpt_only: true

Use the real public address with https and no path. The time zone setting decides how dates are interpreted, so set it explicitly and the same post will not move by hours when the build runs on a server in another region. The feed section is optional and controls the file name, the number of posts and whether each item carries an excerpt or the full content. Option names can differ between versions, so compare them with the documentation of the version you use.

Choose the number of posts

The post limit decides how many of the newest posts the feed contains. A small limit keeps the file light, but it also creates a risk. If you publish several posts at once, or if the reader or auto-poster is offline for a while, an item can scroll out of the feed before anyone has seen it. Pick a number that comfortably covers a few days of your normal output. The reasoning is explained in how many items should be in your RSS feed.

Excerpts or full content

With the excerpt option on, each item carries a short summary instead of the whole post. For auto-posting this is usually the better choice, because the post on a social network needs a title, a short description, an image and a link. Full content makes a large file and is useful mainly for people who read in a feed reader; the trade-offs are discussed in full text or excerpt in an RSS feed.

Excerpts are taken from the start of the post unless you write one yourself. A hand-written description in the front matter is almost always better than an automatic cut, because a cut can end in the middle of a sentence and an auto-poster will copy exactly that into a social post.

---
title: Winter Opening Hours
description: Our new opening hours start on Monday.
date: 2026-10-29 08:00:00 +0000
category: news
---

Where each field comes from

Treat the table as a checklist. When a field looks wrong in the feed, fix it at its source, because the plugin only repeats what the post and the configuration say.

Keep permalinks and identifiers stable

The permalink of a post is also its identifier in the feed. If you rename a file, change the slug, move a post to another category with a different path or alter the permalink pattern, the address changes and an auto-poster that stores identifiers will treat the old and the new address as two posts. The result is a duplicate share. Decide on a permalink pattern at the start and never edit it afterwards; if a change cannot be avoided, add a redirect from the old path at your host. The mechanism is explained in why a feed auto-posts the same article twice.

Drafts, future dates and builds

Bridgetown skips drafts and posts dated in the future in a normal production build. Keep those defaults. Options that include them are meant for local previews, and if one of them reaches a production build an auto-poster will share an article that is not yet on your website. Remember too that a static site changes only when it is rebuilt and deployed. A post dated for the afternoon appears only after the first build that runs after that time, so schedule a rebuild, for example every hour, if you depend on dated posts.

Make the feed discoverable

Add the feed link to the head of your main layout so that browsers, readers and tools can find the feed from any page. The plugin provides a template tag for this purpose, and you can also write the link element by hand.

<!-- src/_layouts/default.liquid -->
{% feed_meta %}

If the tag is not available in your version, write a link element with the relation set to alternate, the type set to the Atom or RSS media type and the address of the feed. With that in place a person or a tool that only knows your home page can find the feed by itself. The full explanation is in the guide to feed autodiscovery.

Feeds for collections and categories

The plugin can build feeds for specific categories, tags or collections in addition to the main one, using options in the feed section. This is a convenient way to send different topics to different channels: news to the company page, guides to a professional network, events to a messenger channel. Decide which feeds you need, link to them from the places where people look, and leave the rest alone. A wider plan for routing is described in category filtering for auto-posting.

Build and test the deployed feed

Build the site the way your pipeline does and read the output before you publish anything. Then request the deployed address from outside, because a local file proves nothing about the server.

BRIDGETOWN_ENV=production bin/bridgetown deploy
head -c 1200 output/feed.xml
curl -i https://example.com/feed.xml

• The status is 200 and the file starts with an XML declaration followed by a feed or rss element.
• Every link is absolute, uses https and points to your domain, not to localhost.
• The newest post comes first, and every date is in the past and correctly formatted.
• Paste the address into the W3C Feed Validation Service and fix every error.
• Build again without changing anything and confirm that no address or date has moved.

If the file opens as plain text or downloads in the browser, read the content type header guide. For a short routine with curl see debugging a feed with curl.

Images and social previews

A post on a social network looks best when it carries a good picture. Add an image path to the front matter of each post and make sure the file is large enough to be a strong preview; a picture at least 1200 pixels across works on most networks. Use an absolute address or make sure your layout turns it into one, because a relative path inside a feed is broken for everyone who reads it away from your site. The same care applies to the page itself: the social card that a network builds from the linked page uses the title, description and image tags in the head, so a feed item and a page that disagree will confuse readers. See why relative URLs break feed links for the details.

Common mistakes to avoid

• A missing or local site address. Links in the feed point to the wrong place.
• A post limit that is too small. A short outage makes a reader or an auto-poster miss posts.
• Automatic excerpts. They can end mid-sentence; write a description for each post.
• No time zone. A post moves to another day when the build runs elsewhere.
• Changing the permalink pattern. Every old post may look new and be shared again.
• Preview options in production. Drafts or future posts reach the feed.

How PostRSS works with a Bridgetown feed

PostRSS has been publishing RSS and Atom feeds to social networks since 2014. It reads both formats, so the Atom file from the plugin works without conversion. Paste the address of your feed, connect your accounts and choose how each post is built from the title, the summary or the page title. PostRSS checks the feed as often as every minute and shares each new entry, with its image and link, to the channels you choose among 66 supported networks, messengers, team chats and blogs, including LinkedIn, X, Bluesky, Mastodon and Telegram. Keyword filters, UTM parameters and posting windows let you tune each channel. See the PostRSS features page and the plan limits on the pricing page. More developer guides are under the Technical Guide tag.

İlgili Okumalar

• Zola RSS and Atom feed
• Atom feed or RSS feed: does it matter for auto-posting
• RSS feed validation before auto-posting

The bottom line

Bridgetown needs one plugin to publish a feed, and a few decisions make it dependable: the real site address, a time zone, a post limit that fits your rhythm, hand-written descriptions, a permalink pattern that never changes and a production build that excludes drafts and future posts. Add the feed link to your layout, test the deployed file with curl and a validator, and connect the address to an auto-poster. After that, every post you publish reaches your readers and your social channels without extra work.

FAQ

Does Bridgetown create an RSS feed by default?

No. You add the bridgetown-feed plugin to the project, and it writes a feed file during the build. Without the plugin there is no feed.

Is the Bridgetown feed RSS or Atom?

The plugin writes an Atom file by default, in the same way as the Jekyll feed plugin. Most auto-posters, including PostRSS, read both formats, so you do not need to convert it.

How do I change the number of posts in the feed?

Set the post limit in the feed section of the configuration file and rebuild. Choose a number that covers several days of your normal output.

Why do the links in my feed point to the wrong address?

The url setting in the configuration is missing or wrong, or you built with a development address. Set it to the real public address and build for production.

Can PostRSS read a Bridgetown feed?

Yes. PostRSS reads any valid RSS or Atom address that is reachable without a login. Paste the address, connect your channels and new posts are shared as soon as they appear.