No matter what what industry you are in, it’s important to provide high-quality information on your site or blog. For example, if you provide medical services, it’s a good idea to provide users with useful information from the health department, such as news and updates on medical research, health and fitness tips, etc.
The problem with creating this kind of information, however, is that it requires a huge amount of effort and expertise. You have to sift through, research, and organize a lot of information, check your facts, 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 is not only a lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is a much simpler way to provide your readers with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the simplest way to provide your blog subscribers with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
Some Basic Information About RSS
- RSS, which, according to some experts is an acronym for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly referred to as Really Simple Syndication. It can also be called a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
- Once a user subscribes to an RSS feed, they no longer have to manually visit and check the source website for updated content. Instead, their web browser will continually monitor the site and keep feed subscribers up-to-date.
- RSS feeds are typically used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as new blog posts, news headlines, videos, etc., to which other users can choose to 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, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then view updates posted on these websites using a feedreader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate their web content.
- There are different kinds of feeds, read by different feed readers. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom feeds and RDF (Resource Description Framework) feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure compatibility with different devices and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also allow you to combine several RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from a number of sites.
This detailed article shows you where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to add content from other sites to your site using RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful way of sharing web content. Feeds provide a way for online users to receive the latest information published on sites and blogs they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at syndication.
Digital content agencies rely on syndication to publish content from content sources all around the world.
Content syndication allows news reporting agencies to deliver readers interesting stories and the most recent headlines from all around the globe without actually having to set up more staff in every location in the world …
(Many online newspapers rely heavily on syndication to publish newsworthy items from news sources around the world.)
Syndication is used to share content legitimately. Global media publications syndicate information using news feeds …
(Content syndication is used by global media publications to share information with other news publications)
Most websites actually want you to syndicate their content. Content syndication not only allows high-quality information to be shared, but it can also drive visitors back to the original site responsible for creating and publishing the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Many content publishers and major sites will have an RSS feed section (look for links in their navigation section that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “telegraph rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most digital publishing agencies and major sites will contain an RSS feed section. Image Source: Sydney Morning Herald RSS )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link brings up a list of different RSS feed sections of the site …
(RSS directory. Source: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
These feeds allow you to source different areas of the website (e.g. technology news, travel news, jobs, etc.)
An RSS list can also include further feed subcategories …
(A feed list can also contain subcategories. Image: LA Times)
Note: An RSS feed is only a URL. To use a feed, all you need to do is copy the URL and paste it into software that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Syndicating Content
Adding someone else’s content to your website has some obvious benefits. It helps someone else’s website and adds value to your site without you having to create that content …
(Content Syndication Benefits Someone Else’s Business And Yours!)
While adding a feed 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 websites to syndicate your content.
When other sites syndicate your RSS feed, this gives your business the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive new web traffic …
(Get other sites to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help to increase your exposure online!)
About Your WordPress RSS Feed
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 number of ways to get the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget on your sidebar …
(Your feed page will show as many recent items you have specified in the Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
The other setting in the WordPress Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display 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 the content in your feed displays …
(Post excerpts affect how a feed displays)
For a detailed tutorial about WordPress Post excerpts, go here:
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 to your clipboard and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that can read and translate feeds into readable content.
Let’s take a look at how this works.
First, find a website or blog and search for an RSS feed icon …
(Look for an RSS feed button. 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 the feed into a feedreader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feed reader to view the content. Image Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS feeds.
How To Add RSS Feeds To Your WordPress Site
In the example below, we are going to add content from another website’s RSS feeds to your WordPress site.
Adding An RSS Feed To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you could add to your site the latest content from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply importing their RSS feed. You can use RSS feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, social media updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to your sidebar …
(Add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar area)
First, Go to a site that publishes content that you want to add to your site and copy the RSS feed to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
Next, go to your Widgets section and paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Area – RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Refresh your web browser. The content from the RSS feed can now be seen on the sidebar …
(RSS Feed Content Added To WordPress Sidebar Menu)
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 Add Feed Content To Posts
Can you add content from an RSS feed to posts instead of a sidebar? Yes, you can!
You can easily do this using plugins. Just search inside the Plugins admin screen (Plugins > Add New) for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ screen – WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us if you need assistance configuring plugins.
Here are a few auto blogging plugins that allow you to create new with RSS feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico)
WPeMatico is an easy to use autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds that you specify.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and arrange feeds into categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and auto blogging plugin for WordPress that offers premium add-ons for extended functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension lets you add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer)
The RSS Post Importer plugin lets you curate, syndicate, import, merge and display full text feeds on your WordPress website or blog.
The plugin fetches an RSS feed and publishes the entire content of every item in your feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin For WordPress)
With POWr RSS Feed, you can automatically combine and display content from a number of different content using RSS feeds.
This plugin also lets you display videos, images, and articles, adjust the priority of different feeds, use custom fonts, colors, borders, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in any language.
The premium edition of this plugin contains many additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin)
WP Pipes is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.
This plugin provides loads of powerful features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook, export WordPress posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress – WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a simple and flexible Atom/RSS syndication plugin 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.
FeedWordPress can be used to create aggregator sites, or display all of your online activity in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog by WPMUDev 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 your feed URL, give the feed a name (for admin purposes) and select a blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages Plugin)
RSS Includes Pages lets you display pages in your WordPress RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to displaying feeds of your latest posts, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of comments posted on your site.
To see the comments in your feed, go to the ‘Meta’ widget area on your sidebar menu (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) and click on Comments RSS …
(Comments RSS)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors will appear in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items viewed with Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on the browser you use …
(Comments feed entries seen on Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the comments RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your comments feed 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 site installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Creating Specific Item RSS Feeds
Being able to access an RSS feed for single 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 single posts is shown below:
(Single Post Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the web address of your post, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of the post URI, WordPress will return the comments left on that post, not actual content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Using Post Category Feeds
Some your site users may only be interested in syndicating content from a specific post category. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
WordPress allows you to create separate category feeds.
Just use the format below:
(WordPress category RSS feed format)
Select and copy the category URL …
(Copy the selected category URL to your clipboard …)
Append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(Format for WordPress category feed)
Your feed will now only include content posted under that category …
(Category-specific 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 – Create Your Own RSS Feeds Page
You can create a feeds directory that allows readers to subscribe only to content in specific categories …
(Set Up A List Of Feeds)
You can also link a button to category feed URLs and then create a table or a list of your feeds on a separate page …
(RSS graphic. Image Source: public-domain-photos.com)
We have created a detailed tutorial about inserting tables into WordPress posts and pages here:
RSS Feeds – Additional Notes
You can customize your feeds in several different ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows a number of feed configurations without editing code. Here are some examples of custom feed formats you can display …
(WordPress RSS – Feed Types)
Here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed in the image above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Feed that displays your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – RSS feed that contains the latest comments left on your site
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed that contains a specific post
- 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/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – RSS feed displaying the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/01/26/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – RSS feed containing latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/09/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Feed that contains the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Feed containing latest entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Displays the latest entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One more thing …
It’s a good idea to promote your feeds. Make sure you place your ’subscribe to RSS’ links in a visible location …
(Encourage your visitors to subscribe to your feeds!)
Keep in mind that online users will only want to subscribe to your content if your content is useful, educational, or highly entertaining. In other words, focus on providing your subscribers with high-quality information that can add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Easily add content to your site and get others to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds!)
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 RSS feed 🙂
RSS – Additional Resources:
- Feed Images – Visit online resource sites like Feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “RSS images”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS images and icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information about RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about the history and benefits of using RSS.
- WordPress Codex: WordPress Feeds – WordPress documentation and information site. Go here for more information about using WordPress RSS.
Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to display content from other websites on your site using RSS.
Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you expand your business online. To read more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website or blog please see our related posts section.
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