← Help & guides · Forms, magnets & automation

My blog is on SiteGround and the feed won’t connect

If your blog is hosted on SiteGround and connecting its feed fails with a message about a security check, here's what's happening: SiteGround's automated bot protection shows our feed reader a challenge page instead of your feed. Your blog and your feed are perfectly fine—you can see the feed in your own browser—but SiteGround's edge security doesn't yet recognize our reader as friendly.

There is no setting for this in your SiteGround dashboard or WordPress plugins—the protection runs on SiteGround's network, in front of your site. The fix is one message to SiteGround support, and they handle requests like this routinely (it's the same accommodation every feed reader needed).

What to send SiteGround

Open SiteGround's support chat (the ? in the top corner of Site Tools) and send:

My website uses an email newsletter service that reads my blog's RSS feed automatically. Your bot protection is serving its requests a security challenge (sgcaptcha) instead of the feed. Please whitelist the user-agent "NewsletterScriv-RSS" for my site, or otherwise exempt my feed URL from bot challenges, so automated RSS readers can reach it.

Once they confirm, come back and connect your feed again—it typically works immediately.

Not on SiteGround?

Other hosts with aggressive bot protection can behave the same way. The same message works—swap "SiteGround" for your host's name. And if your host asks which addresses to allow, contact us at support@newsletterscriv.com and we'll provide current details.

Didn’t answer it? Email support@newsletterscriv.com. Already have an account? Open the help center in your dashboard.

NewsletterScriv—email for authors