No matter what your business provides or what industry you are in, providing high-value information on your site or blog is essential. For example, if you provide health-related services, you may want to include information from the health department, such as news or updates on medical research, health and fitness advice, etc.

The problem with providing this kind of information, however, is that it is really time-consuming. You have to filter through, research, and organize a lot of information, check your sources for accuracy, write and edit content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then make sure that this information is continually up-to-date. As you can imagine, this is not only a lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is well beyond your control.

Fortunately, there is a much simpler way to continually provide your site readers with expert, up-to-date information.

It’s called RSS …

(RSS - One of the easiest ways to provide your site visitors with up-to-date information)

The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS

What Does RSS Stand For?

• RSS, which, according to some experts is short for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly known now as Really Simple Syndication. It it is also referred to as a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
• After users subscribe to a website’s feed, they no longer have to manually visit and check the source website for content updates. Instead, their web browser constantly monitors the site and keeps feed subscribers automatically updated.
• RSS feeds are often used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as blog posts, news headlines, music playlists, etc., to which other users can then subscribe.
• Essentially, an RSS feed is a structured XML (Extensible Markup Language) document that includes full or summarized text along with other metadata like date of publishing, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then browse any updates posted on these sites through an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate information automatically.
• There are different feed formats and these can be read by different feed readers. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom (also called AtomPub or APP feeds and RDF (RDF = Resource Description Framework) feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure compatibility with different devices, readers, and programs.
• Many sites and software tools also let you combine many RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates sourced from many sites.

In this in-depth article, we will explain how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to display someone else’s content on your site via their RSS feed.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds

Content syndication is a powerful (and legitimate) method used to share content online. Feeds provide online users with a simple way to receive the latest information posted on different websites and blogs.

First, let’s take a look at the uses of syndication.

Online newspapers use syndication to publish stories from news sources all around the world.

Syndication allows leading digital agencies to deliver readers stories and headlines from all over the globe without having to employ more news reporting and content writing departments all around the world …

(Media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish newsworthy items from news sources all around the planet.)

Syndication is used to share information legitimately with other sites. Online newspapers syndicate their stories using news feeds …

(Digital publishing agencies syndicate stories using news feeds)

Most sites actually want you to syndicate their information. Syndicating content not only allows great information to be shared, but it also drives visitors back to the original site responsible for publishing the content being syndicated. This creates links that can drive traffic back to their site.

Major sites include an RSS feed section (look for menu links that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “belfast telegraph rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …

(Most digital publishing agencies have an RSS feed section. Image Source: SMH RSS )

Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link brings up a list of different RSS feed sections of the site …

(RSS feeds directory. Source: nytimes.com)

These RSS feed items allow you to source different areas of the website (e.g. business news, sports news, jobs, etc.)

An RSS directory can also contain subcategories …

(RSS Feed section. Image: LA Times RSS)

Note: An RSS feed is just a URL. All you need to do to use feeds is to copy the URLs and paste these into an application that can process the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.

The Benefits Of Content Syndication

Adding someone else’s content to your site has some obvious benefits. It gives additional exposure online to someone else’s content and adds value to your site without you having to create this content …

(Content Syndication Benefits Someone Else’s Website And Yours!)

While adding an RSS feed from another site is a great way to add content to your site that you don’t have to create, it’s a great idea to try and get other websites to use your content.

When other sites syndicate content using your feed, you have the opportunity to gain more exposure online and drive more visitors …

(Consider trying to get visitors to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help to increase your exposure online!)

WordPress Feed – Overview

By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their websites.

Depending on the theme you have installed, there are a few ways to get your RSS feed:

1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget in your navigation menu …

(The feed page will display as many recent items you have specified in your Reading Settings section)

Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed

The other setting in your WP Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display your posts as full text, or just as a summary …

(WP Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)

Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …

(Post excerpts can affect how feeds appear)

If you need help WordPress Post excerpts, go here:

• A WordPress Beginner’s Guide To Using Post Excerpts

View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds

As mentioned earlier, all that’s required to view the content of an RSS feed is to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that can translate feeds into readable content for humans.

Let’s take a look at how this works.

First, go to a website whose content you want to subscribe to and search for an RSS feed button …

(Search for a ’subscribe to feed’ icon. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)

Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …

(Copy the URL of your feed)

If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of your feed into an online feedreader …

(Paste the feed URL into a feedreader to view the feed content. Source: Feedreader.com)

Like feed readers, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds.

How To Add An RSS Feed To WordPress

In the example below, we are going to add content sourced from another website or blog to yours.

How To Add RSS Feeds To Your Sidebar

As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you operate in, you can display on your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply adding their feed. You can use feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, Facebook comments, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.

Let’s add content from an RSS feed to your sidebar …

(Let’s add content from an RSS feed to your sidebar)

First, Go to a website that publishes content that you want to display on your site and copy the feed URL …

(Copy the URL of your feed)

Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into a new RSS widget …

(RSS Widget)

To learn more about using widgets, go here:

• Adding Widgets To Your Sidebar Navigation Area

Refresh your browser. The content can now be seen on your sidebar (or wherever the RSS widget has been inserted) …

(RSS Widget)

Add Your WordPress RSS Feed To Search Consoles

You can add your WordPress RSS feed to Google and Bing’s search consoles. This will help them index your content faster.

(WordPress RSS feed added to Google Search Console)

Adding your site’s RSS feed to search consoles is simple, fast, easy, and requires no technical skills. For a step-by-step tutorial, go here:

• How To Set Up Webmaster Accounts

How To Add Feeds To Your WordPress Posts

Can content from RSS feeds be added to posts? It sure can!

You can easily do this using plugins. Just search inside your Plugins admin screen (Plugins > Add New) for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.

(’Add Plugins’ section)

Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us if you need help with plugin configuration.

Here are some autoblogging tools that let you automatically create posts using RSS feeds:

WPeMatico

(WPeMatico – WordPress Plugin)

WPeMatico is an easy to use auto blogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds that you choose.

You can manage all of your imported feeds and arrange feeds according to categories.

For more details, go here:

• WPeMatico – WordPress Plugin

WP RSS Aggregator

(WP RSS Aggregator WP Plugin)

WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and auto blogging plugin for WordPress with extended functionality with premium extensions (add-ons).

For example, the Feed to Post extension is a feature-filled importer that lets you autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into your posts.

For more details, go here:

• WP RSS Aggregator

RSS Post Importer

(RSS Post Importer WP Plugin)

RSS Post Importer lets you syndicate, curate, import, merge and display full text RSS feeds on your WordPress website or blog.

RSS Post Importer fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full content of each item in the feed as a separate post.

For more details, go here:

• RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress

Powr RSS Feed

(Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin)

With POWr RSS Feed, you can automatically combine and display content from a number of different RSS feeds.

This plugin also lets you display videos, images, and articles, adjust feed priority, use custom colors, borders, fonts, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in any language.

The premium version of this plugin contains a number of additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, accept or reject posts, and more.

For more details, go here:

• Powr RSS Feed WordPress Plugin

WP Pipes

(WP Pipes Plugin)

The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.

This plugin provides features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, export WordPress posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to a new level.

For more details, go here:

• WP Pipes WP Plugin

FeedWordPress

(FeedWordPress Plugin For WordPress)

FeedWordPress provides simple and flexible Atom/RSS syndication for WordPress-generated content.

As stated in the FeedWordPress site …

FeedWordPress is an open-source Atom/RSS aggregator for the WordPress blog publishing platform. You set up feeds that you choose, and FeedWordPress syndicates posts from those sources into your WordPress posts table, where they can be displayed by your WordPress templates like any other post — but with additional meta-data, so that your templates can properly attribute the post to the source it came from.

You can use this FeedWordPress to create aggregator sites, or bring together all your online activity into a Lifestream.

For more details, go here:

• FeedWordPress

Autoblog by WPMUDev

(Autoblog – WordPress Plugin)

Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in the URL of your feed, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select a blog that you want it to post to.

For more details, go here:

• Autoblog by WPMUDev – WordPress Plugin

RSS Includes Pages

(RSS Includes Pages Plugin For WordPress)

RSS Includes Pages modifies RSS feeds to include pages and not just posts.

For more details, go here:

• RSS Includes Pages WordPress Plugin

Using WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips

Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds

In addition to giving online users access to feeds of your latest posts, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of your post comments.

To access this feed, go to the ‘Meta’ widget on your sidebar (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) and click on Comments RSS …

(Comments RSS)

Comments posted on your site by visitors and users will appear in your Comments RSS page …

(Comments feed entries as seen on a Firefox browser)

Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on the browser you are using …

(Comments feed entries seen using a Google Chrome web browser)

Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feedreader …

(Paste your comments feed URL into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image: Feedreader.com)

Note: If the Meta section is not displaying on your theme, you can view the Comments RSS section of your site by opening up a browser and typing in the following URL:

• http://www.yourdomain.com/comments/feed
• http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/comments/feed (if your WordPress installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)

Tip #2 – Creating Specific Item RSS Feeds

Being able to create an RSS feed for an individual post can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific items to RSS aggregator sites, or you may have created a valuable resource that other online users will want to syndicate.

The formula for creating an RSS feed for an individual post item is shown below:

(RSS Feed For Single Post Item)

To create the above feed, copy the post address, and add “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.

(Single Post RSS Feed)

Note: By default, if you only add “/feed” to the end of the post, WordPress will return the comments for your post, not the content of the post itself.

Tip #3 – Category Feeds

Some your site users may only be interested in syndicating content about specific topics. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.

With WordPress, you can easily create category feeds.

All you have to do is use the format below:

(Use this format for WordPress category RSS feed)

Select and copy the category URL …

(Copy your category link address …)

And add “feed” to the end of it …

(Format for WordPress category RSS feed)

The RSS feed now only includes content posted for this particular category …

(Category-specific RSS feed page)

The WordPress Codex also provides different ways to create feeds not just for post categories, but also feeds for tags, authors, search, etc.

For this example, let’s create a feed for a specific post category using the format shown below:

(Post Category feed format. Source: WordPress Codex)

Here is the feed format WordPress recommends using. In this example, the post category ID is ’42’. We’ll need to replace the post category ID and the domain name …

(WordPress post category feed format)

To find the post category ID, go to Posts > Categories …

(Posts > Categories menu)

Locate the post category you want and hover your mouse over the title to reveal its unique ID …

(Post Category ID)

In our example, the post category ID is ’29’ and the post category feed format we need to use for this specific category with our domain name looks like this …

(Post category feed format with domain name and ID)

Copy and paste the feed into your browser and hit enter …

(Paste the feed into your browser)

This will display the feed for that specific category …

(RSS feed of a specific post category)

Note that in this example, WordPress automatically converted the feed format we pasted into the browser into the category feed we had used in the previous section of this tutorial …

(Post category feed format)

Here is the feed format again …

(Post category feed)

In this case, the simplest way to create additional feeds for specific categories is to simply change the post category slug …

(Change the post category slug to create a new category specific feed)

Paste the edited feed into your web browser and hit enter to display the content for that specific category’s feed …

(Post category feed content)

Now that you have a method for creating feeds for specific post categories (or tags, authors, etc.), you can even create a directory or list of individual feeds for visitors.

Tip #4 – Provide An RSS Feeds Directory

You can set up a list of feeds on your site that allows your readers to subscribe only to specific content, just like large authoritative sites …

(Create An RSS Feeds Directory)

All you need to do is link a button to a category feed URL and then create a table or a list of your feeds on a separate page …

(RSS icon. Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)

We have created a detailed tutorial on adding tables to WordPress posts here:

• How To Add Tables In WordPress

WordPress RSS – Additional Notes

You can customize your RSS in a number of ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require editing code.

WordPress allows you to configure various feed types without code editing skills. Below are examples of some of the kinds of custom feed formats you can use …

(Different Feed Formats You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)

For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed above:

• Feed Type: All Posts
• Description: Content feed – Feed that contains your latest post entries
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/

• Feed Type: All Comments
• Description: Comments feed – Feed that contains the latest comments left on your site
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/

• Feed Type: Individual Posts
• Description: Feed containing single items
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/

• Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
• Description: Includes the latest comments made on single posts
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Day – Displays the latest post entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/05/16/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Month – Includes latest entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/06/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Year – Displays the latest items in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/feed/

• Feed Type: Search Results
• Description: Feed containing latest post entries for a search query
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/

• Feed Type: Custom Post Type
• Description: Includes the latest post entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book

One last thing …

Remember to promote your feed. Make sure you place a subscribe button image somewhere visible …

(Remember to promote your feeds!)

Finally, keep in mind that other website owners will only syndicate your content if your information is useful, informative, or highly entertaining. In other words, focus on providing your visitors with high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their users.

(Add great content to your site and get other sites to subscribe to your content with RSS!)

If you need help coming up with content ideas subscribe to our FREE content creation course using the form below:

Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our feed 🙂

RSS Resources:

• Download RSS Buttons – Visit sites like Feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS logo download”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS graphic elements.
• RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization responsible for publishing the RSS specification, guiding developers who create RSS applications and furthering the understanding of RSS.
• Wikipedia/RSS – General information about using RSS.
• WordPress.org/Feeds – WordPress software documentation. Go here to learn more about WordPress RSS feeds.

Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to display someone else’s content on your site via RSS feeds.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To learn more about using the WP content management software please see other great articles and tutorials on this site.

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