No matter what service or product you provide or what industry your business is a part of, providing high-quality information on your site or blog is important. For example, if you provide health-related services, you may want to publish useful information from the health department, such as news or updates on medical research, health and fitness advice, etc.
The problem with creating this type of information, however, is that it takes an enormous amount of work and resources. You have to sift through, gather, and organize a ton of data, check your sources for accuracy, write and edit content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then ensure that this information is continually kept up-to-date. As you can imagine, this not only involves a huge amount of work but most of the information you are dealing with is well beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a simpler way to continually provide your site readers with up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is 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 stands for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred to, Really Simple Syndication. It is also often called a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
- When a user subscribes to an RSS feed, they no longer have to physically check the source website for content updates. Instead, their web browser constantly monitors the content and keeps feed subscribers up-to-date.
- RSS feeds are also used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as blog posts, news headlines, videos, etc., to which users can then subscribe.
- RSS feeds can be read with programs called feedreaders, or aggregators. Aggregators can be used to find new content published on websites and syndicate this content (and any updates made to the content) online.
- Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different feed readers. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom Publishing Protocol) feeds and RDF (Resource Description Framework) feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure that feeds are compatible with different devices and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also allow you to combine multiple RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from many other sites.
This in-depth article explains how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to display content from other sites on your site using RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful and legitimate way of sharing web content. Feeds provide a way for online users to receive the latest information published on sites they are interested in.
First, let’s look at syndication.
Online media publications rely on content syndication to publish news from other news agencies all around the world.
Syndication allows news reporting agencies and leading online publications to deliver readers stories on all kinds of topics from around the planet without actually having to employ additional writers all around the world …
(Many news reporting agencies and many leading media publications rely on syndication to publish content from other news agencies around the world.)
Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing content with other sites. online media publications syndicate content using feeds …
(News reporting agencies syndicate their information using feeds)
Most websites actually want you to syndicate their content. Content syndication not only allows information to be shared, but it also sends visitors back to the original site that published the content being syndicated. This provides websites with additional opportunities to generate new web traffic.
Major sites include an RSS feed section (look for menu links that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “la times rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Major sites contain a feed section. Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link will bring up a directory of different RSS feeds of the site …
(RSS Feeds. Source: New York Times)
These RSS feed items allow readers to source content from different sections of the site (e.g. technology news, travel news, jobs, etc.)
An RSS directory can also contain further feed subdirectories …
(Feed sections can also include feed subcategories. Image Source: LA Times RSS)
Note: A feed is simply a URL. All you need to do to use RSS feeds is to copy the URLs and paste these into software that can process the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Syndicating Content
Syndicating someone else’s content on your website has some obvious benefits. It gives additional exposure online to someone else’s business and helps you by freeing you up from having to create this content …
(Content Syndication Has Many Benefits!)
While adding RSS feeds from another site is a great way to add content to your site that you don’t have to create, it’s worth keeping in mind that there are benefits in getting other sites to syndicate YOUR content.
When other websites syndicate content using your RSS feed, this gives you the opportunity to get increased exposure online and drive new web traffic …
(Get visitors to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress RSS Feed – About
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing other online users to easily syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on your WordPress theme, there are a number of ways to get your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme displays the Meta widget as part of your navigation menu …
(The feed will display as many recent posts as you have specified in the Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
The other setting in the WP Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display posts in the feed as full text, or just a summary …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings – Display ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for articles in your RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts affect how your feed content will appear)
We have created a detailed tutorial about WordPress Post excerpts here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, all that’s required to view a feed’s content is to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into an application that can translate feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, find a website whose content you want to syndicate and search for a ’subscribe to feed’ link …
(Search for a ‘subscribe’ link or button. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL to the clipboard)
If you want, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image: Feedreader)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds.
How To Add RSS Feeds To WordPress Sites
In the example below, we are going to add content from other sites to your WordPress site.
How To Add An RSS Feed To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is in, you can easily display on your site the latest news and updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing content from their RSS feed. You can use feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, Facebook updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to your sidebar …
(Let’s add an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation area)
First, Find a website or blog containing content that you want to display on your sidebar and copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(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 …
(Widgets Panel – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:
Refresh your web browser. The content can now be seen on the sidebar (or wherever you have added the RSS widget) …
(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:
Adding Feed Content To Posts
What if you want to add content from an RSS feed to posts instead of your sidebar?
You can easily do this using plugins. Just search on the WordPress plugin repository for RSS Post, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ search results)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for complete instructions, or contact us if you need assistance with plugin configuration.
Here are a number of auto blogging plugins for WordPress that allow you to automatically create posts with RSS feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin For WordPress)
WPeMatico is an easy to use plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from specific RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and arrange them according to categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator – WordPress Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and autoblogging WordPress plugin that offers premium add-ons for additional functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin allows you to import RSS feeds directly into your posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
The RSS Post Importer plugin lets you import, curate, syndicate, merge and display full text RSS feeds on your WordPress site.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full article content of each item in your feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed WordPress Plugin)
With the POWr RSS Feed plugin, you can automatically combine and display content from a number of different RSS feeds.
This plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust feed spacing and size, use custom borders, colors, fonts, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in every language.
The premium version of this plugin contains a number of additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, manually accept or reject posts in your feed, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin For WordPress)
WP Pipes is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.
This plugin provides loads of functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn, export your posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress – WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides flexible syndication options for WordPress-generated content.
As stated in the FeedWordPress website …
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 plugin to create aggregator sites, or display all of your online activity into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog by WPMUDev WordPress Plugin)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in the URL of your feed, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select the blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types Plugin)
By default, WordPress only posts posts in your RSS feed. Use RSS Includes Pages if you would like to include pages in your RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WordPress Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to displaying RSS feeds of your posts, WordPress also displays RSS feeds of your latest post comments.
You can view this feed by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ widget area (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) …
(Comments Feed)
Comments posted on your site by visitors display in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed entries displayed using Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on which web browser you are using …
(Comments feed items displayed on Google Chrome web browser)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste the comments feed URL into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image: http://feedreader.com/online)
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 site has been installed in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Using RSS Feeds For Individual Posts
Being able to select an RSS feed for individual posts can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific items to RSS directories, or you may have created a valuable resource that other online users will want to syndicate.
The formula for displaying an RSS feed for individual posts is shown below:
(Specific Post Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the post address, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of your post, WordPress will return the comments associated with that post, not actual content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Using Category Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in syndicating content from a specific category. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
WordPress allows you to create category feeds.
All you need to do is use the format below:
(WP RSS feed format for post categories)
Select and copy the category URL …
(Select and copy your category link address …)
Add the word “feed” to the end of it …
(WP RSS feed format for post categories)
The RSS feed will now only contain content published in that category …
(Category RSS feed)
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 – Publish A Feeds List
You can set up your own RSS feeds page that allows your readers to subscribe to specific content, just like the larger online publishers do …
(Set Up A Feeds Page)
All you need to do is link an icon to the URL of your feed and then create a table or a list of all your feeds on a new page …
(RSS icon. Image Source: public-domain-photos.com)
To learn more about creating tables in WordPress content, see this tutorial:
RSS – Additional Notes
You can customize feeds in several ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows you to configure a number of different feed formats that do not require code editing skills. Below are examples of some of the kinds of feeds you can create …
(Different Feed Formats You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
For your convenience, here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Includes your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Contains the latest comments published on your website
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed that includes specific posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Includes the latest comments made on specific items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Contains latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/10/02/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/12/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Includes latest posts for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Displays latest entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One more thing …
Remember to let users know that they can subscribe to your feeds. Make sure you place your ’subscribe to RSS’ button or link somewhere visible …
(Remember to make your feeds visible your RSS feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that other website owners will only syndicate your content if you publish great information. In other words, focus on providing your subscribers with high-quality information that can add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Add someone else’s content and get other users to subscribe to your content with WordPress and RSS!)
If you need great content ideas subscribe to our FREE content creation course using the form below:
Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed 🙂
Additional Resources:
- RSS Feed Buttons – Visit online resource sites like Iconspedia.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS logo download”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable Free RSS graphics.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to learn more about RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – General information about RSS.
- WordPress Codex – WordPress documentation site. Go here for additional information about WordPress RSS.
Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to add someone else’s content to your site via their RSS feed.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business web site please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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