WordPress "What's New" Feed Integration

How to embed the latest product release notes from the Docusaurus documentation site into a WordPress website using the existing RSS feeds.

How it works

Docusaurus generates a per-product RSS feed for every blog (release notes) plugin instance. No changes to the docs site are needed — the feeds are already available at:

Product	RSS feed URL
contentACCESS	/release/contentaccess/rss.xml
officeGATE	/release/officegate/rss.xml
Storage Optimizer	/release/storageoptimizer/rss.xml
contentACCESS Mobile	/release/camobile/rss.xml
mailApp	/release/mailapp/rss.xml

On the WordPress side, a small plugin fetches these feeds using the built-in fetch_feed() function (SimplePie with automatic 12-hour caching) and exposes a [whats_new] shortcode that can be placed anywhere — pages, widgets, or Gutenberg shortcode blocks.

WordPress plugin

Create the file wp-content/plugins/techarrow-whats-new/techarrow-whats-new.php:

<?php
/**
 * Plugin Name: TECH-ARROW What's New Feed
 * Description: Displays latest product releases from the documentation site.
 * Version: 1.0.0
 */

if ( ! defined( 'ABSPATH' ) ) exit;

define( 'WHATS_NEW_BASE_URL', 'https://YOUR-DOCS-SITE.com' );

const WHATS_NEW_FEEDS = [
    'contentaccess'    => WHATS_NEW_BASE_URL . '/release/contentaccess/rss.xml',
    'officegate'       => WHATS_NEW_BASE_URL . '/release/officegate/rss.xml',
    'storageoptimizer' => WHATS_NEW_BASE_URL . '/release/storageoptimizer/rss.xml',
    'camobile'         => WHATS_NEW_BASE_URL . '/release/camobile/rss.xml',
    'mailapp'          => WHATS_NEW_BASE_URL . '/release/mailapp/rss.xml',
];

const WHATS_NEW_LABELS = [
    'contentaccess'    => 'contentACCESS',
    'officegate'       => 'officeGATE',
    'storageoptimizer' => 'Storage Optimizer',
    'camobile'         => 'contentACCESS Mobile',
    'mailapp'          => 'mailApp',
];

/**
 * [whats_new] shortcode
 *
 * Attributes:
 *   product  – comma-separated product IDs, or "all" (default)
 *   days     – only posts from the last N days (default: 60)
 *   limit    – max items to show (default: 10)
 *
 * Examples:
 *   [whats_new]
 *   [whats_new product="contentaccess" limit="5"]
 *   [whats_new product="contentaccess,officegate" days="90"]
 */
function whats_new_shortcode( $atts ) {
    $atts = shortcode_atts( [
        'product' => 'all',
        'days'    => 60,
        'limit'   => 10,
    ], $atts, 'whats_new' );

    $days   = max( 1, intval( $atts['days'] ) );
    $limit  = max( 1, intval( $atts['limit'] ) );
    $cutoff = time() - $days * DAY_IN_SECONDS;

    // Resolve product list
    $feed_ids = ( $atts['product'] === 'all' )
        ? array_keys( WHATS_NEW_FEEDS )
        : array_filter(
            array_map( 'trim', explode( ',', $atts['product'] ) ),
            fn( $id ) => isset( WHATS_NEW_FEEDS[ $id ] )
          );

    // Fetch and collect items from each feed
    $items = [];
    foreach ( $feed_ids as $product_id ) {
        $feed = fetch_feed( WHATS_NEW_FEEDS[ $product_id ] );
        if ( is_wp_error( $feed ) ) continue;

        foreach ( $feed->get_items() as $item ) {
            if ( $item->get_date( 'U' ) < $cutoff ) continue;
            $items[] = [
                'title'    => $item->get_title(),
                'link'     => esc_url( $item->get_permalink() ),
                'date'     => $item->get_date( 'U' ),
                'date_str' => $item->get_date( 'M j, Y' ),
                'product'  => $product_id,
                'label'    => WHATS_NEW_LABELS[ $product_id ] ?? $product_id,
            ];
        }
    }

    if ( empty( $items ) ) {
        return '<p class="whats-new-empty">No recent releases found.</p>';
    }

    // Sort newest first, apply limit
    usort( $items, fn( $a, $b ) => $b['date'] - $a['date'] );
    $items = array_slice( $items, 0, $limit );

    ob_start(); ?>
    <ul class="whats-new-list">
    <?php foreach ( $items as $item ) : ?>
        <li class="whats-new-item whats-new-product-<?php echo esc_attr( $item['product'] ); ?>">
            <span class="whats-new-badge"><?php echo esc_html( $item['label'] ); ?></span>
            <a class="whats-new-title"
               href="<?php echo $item['link']; ?>"
               target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">
                <?php echo esc_html( $item['title'] ); ?>
            </a>
            <time class="whats-new-date"><?php echo esc_html( $item['date_str'] ); ?></time>
        </li>
    <?php endforeach; ?>
    </ul>
    <?php
    return ob_get_clean();
}
add_shortcode( 'whats_new', 'whats_new_shortcode' );

CSS

Add to Appearance → Customize → Additional CSS in WordPress, or to the active theme's stylesheet:

.whats-new-list  { list-style: none; padding: 0; margin: 0; }
.whats-new-item  { display: flex; align-items: baseline; gap: 10px;
                   padding: 8px 0; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; }
.whats-new-badge { background: #1a4692; color: #fff; font-size: 11px;
                   font-weight: 600; padding: 2px 10px; border-radius: 999px;
                   white-space: nowrap; }
.whats-new-title { flex: 1; font-weight: 500; }
.whats-new-date  { font-size: 12px; color: #888; white-space: nowrap; }

/* Per-product badge colours */
.whats-new-product-officegate       .whats-new-badge { background: #e67e22; }
.whats-new-product-storageoptimizer .whats-new-badge { background: #27ae60; }
.whats-new-product-camobile         .whats-new-badge { background: #8e44ad; }
.whats-new-product-mailapp          .whats-new-badge { background: #c0392b; }

Shortcode usage

Shortcode	Result
[whats_new]	All products, last 60 days, up to 10 items
[whats_new product="contentaccess"]	contentACCESS only
[whats_new product="contentaccess,officegate"]	Two products combined
[whats_new product="all" days="90" limit="5"]	All products, last 90 days, max 5 items

Notes

• Caching: WordPress caches each RSS feed for 12 hours automatically via transients — no extra configuration needed.
• Date filtering: The days filter is applied after the feed is fetched (RSS does not support date-range queries). This is fine given the low volume of release posts.
• CORS: Fetching is done server-side in PHP, so there are no cross-origin restrictions even if the docs site is on a different domain.
• Adding a new product: Add the new product's feed URL to WHATS_NEW_FEEDS and its display label to WHATS_NEW_LABELS.