No matter what your business sells or what industry you belong to, you need to provide quality information on your site or blog that better educates, informs, and engages your visitors. For example, if you provide travel-related services, it’s not a bad idea to publish information from government departments and foreign travel offices, such as news and updates on travel warnings, advice from consular offices, etc.
To create and publish this kind of information, however, is very time-consuming. You have to sort through, research, and organize a ton of data, check your facts, write and edit content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually ensure that this information is up-to-date. As you can imagine, this not only involves a lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is completely beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is an easier way to keep your readers up-to-date with the latest information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the easiest way to provide your site readers with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
Basic Information About RSS
- RSS is an acronym for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred to, Really Simple Syndication. It is often called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- After users subscribe to an RSS feed, they no longer have to manually visit and check the website for content updates. Instead, their browser constantly monitors the site and keeps feed subscribers automatically updated.
- RSS feeds are often used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog posts, news, video lists, etc., which other users can then subscribe to.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is a structured XML (XML = Extensible Markup Language) document that includes full or summarized text along with metadata such as date of publishing, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and blogs that publish feeds and then keep up with any updates posted on these sites through an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate their web content.
- Feeds can be made available in different formats and read by different feed aggregators. 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 machines, feedreaders, and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also let you combine several RSS feeds to receive news and updates from many different sources.
This guide shows you where your RSS feed is located, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to add content from other websites and blogs to your site using RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful and legitimate method used to share content online. Feeds provide a simple and easy way for web users to receive the latest information published on different websites.
First, let’s look at the uses of syndication.
Global media and news reporting agencies rely heavily on syndication to publish content from other news agencies all around the world.
Content syndication allows most news reporting agencies to deliver readers stories and news items from around the globe without having to post more reporters to every place around the world …
(Global media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish newsworthy items from other news agencies all around the globe.)
Syndication is used to share newsworthy content legitimately with other sites. online media publications syndicate information using news feeds …
(News reporting agencies syndicate stories using feeds)
Most websites actually want you to syndicate their information. Syndicating content not only allows high-quality information to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the site that originally created theoriginally created and published the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Major sites provide links to a feed section (look for links that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “international herald tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many online newspapers and major content sites contain an RSS feed section. Source: SMH )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section brings up a list of RSS feeds for different content topics on the site …
(RSS directory. Image: NY Times RSS)
gives readers access to different areas of the site (e.g. business news, entertainment news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
Feed sections can also include subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Source: latimes.com feeds)
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 a program that can translate the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Syndicating Content
Syndicating content from someone else’s website or blog on your website has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s site additional exposure online and adds value to your site without you having to create that content …
(Using RSS Feeds - Benefits)
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 worth keeping in mind that there are benefits in getting other sites to use YOUR content.
When other websites syndicate your RSS feed, this gives your business the opportunity to gain more exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Try to get other online users to syndicate your feed … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)
WordPress RSS
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on the theme you have installed, there are a number of ways to access the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme displays the Meta widget on your sidebar …
(The feed page will display as many recent posts as you have specified in your WP Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
The other setting in your Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display articles in your feed as full text, or just a summary …
(WP Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’: ‘Full text’ or ‘Summary’)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed displays …
(Post excerpts affect how a feed will appear)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about WordPress Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, all you have to do to view the content of an RSS feed is to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that can read and 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 look for an RSS feed link using any of the methods described earlier …
(Search for an RSS feed section. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
If you want, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feed reader to view the content. Image Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds and convert these into human-readable content.
How To Add Feeds To Your WP Site
Let’s show you how to add content from other sites to yours.
Adding Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is in, you can add to your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing their 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 …
(Add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar)
First, Go to a website containing content that you would like to display on your sidebar and copy the RSS feed URL …
(Copy the URL of your feed to your clipboard)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(Widgets Section – RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Load your site in your browser. The content from the RSS feed can now be seen on your sidebar (or wherever the RSS widget has been placed) …
(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 Add Content From RSS Feeds To Your Posts
Can content from RSS feeds be added to WordPress posts? Yes, it can!
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Search inside your ’Add Plugins’ section (Plugins > Add New) for RSS Post, RSS feed to post, etc.
(RSS plugins for WordPress)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for instructions, or contact us if you need help configuring plugins.
The plugins listed below can be used to feed content to posts, or “auto blog” (An auto blog is a blog with content that is automatically gathered and compiled from RSS feeds):
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from selected RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange feeds according to categories and campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and autoblogging plugin for WordPress that offers extended functionality with premium add-ons.
For example, the Feed to Post extension for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin lets you autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into WP posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer)
The RSS Post Importer plugin can be used to syndicate, import, curate, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress blog.
The plugin fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full article content of each item in the feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin)
POWr RSS lets you automatically combine and display content from various RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust feed priority, use custom colors, fonts, borders, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on all computers, tablets, and phones and supports text in any language.
The premium plugin edition contains a number of additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, accept or reject posts in your feed, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes WordPress Plugin)
The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.
This plugin provides loads of powerful features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook, export posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to new levels.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a flexible Atom/RSS syndication plugin for WordPress 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 by WPMUDev
(Autoblog by WPMUDev)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in the URL of your feed, give it a name of your choosing (for admin purposes) and select the blog that you want it to post to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages WordPress Plugin)
Install a plugin like RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types if you want to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed and not just posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of comments posted on your site in addition to making RSS feeds of your latest posts available to online users.
You can see 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 the Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items as seen with a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on the browser you use …
(Comments feed entries seen on a Google Chrome web browser)
Again, you can check what the comments feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feed reader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image Source: 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 website is located in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Displaying RSS Feeds For Individual Items
Being able to select an RSS feed for a specific post item 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 specific posts is shown below:
(RSS Feed For Specific Post)
To create the above feed, copy the URI 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 URI of your post, WordPress will return the comments left on your post, not the content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only want to syndicate 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 have to do is use the format below:
(WP post categories feed format)
Copy the category link address …
(Copy the category link address …)
Now, add the word “feed” to the end of it …
(Format for WordPress post categories feed)
Your feed will now only display content assigned to this particular 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 – Publish A Feeds Directory
You can publish a directory of RSS feeds that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in specific categories …
(Set Up Your Own Page Of Feeds)
Link a button image like the one shown below to category (or single post) feed URLs and then create a table or a list of all your category 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 inserting tables into WordPress content here:
RSS Feeds – Additional Notes
You can customize RSS in a number of ways, such as adding images and videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows you to configure several feed formats that do not require messing with code. Here are some examples of feed formats you can create …
(Different Custom Feeds You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
Here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the table 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 displaying the latest comments published on your website
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed that displays single items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Displays the latest comments made on specific post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Displays latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/08/13/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/05/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Displays the latest post entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: RSS feed that displays latest 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 your subscribe links in a visible location …
(Remember to promote your feeds!)
Keep in mind that other website owners will only want to syndicate your content if you publish useful content that educates, engages, and entertains. In other words, provide high-quality information that will add great value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Add content from other sites and get others 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 RSS feed 🙂
RSS – Additional Resources:
- Feed Graphics – Visit sites like Iconspedia.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS buttons”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS images and icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization responsible for publishing the RSS specification, providing guidance to developers who create RSS applications and helping to further the understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex – Official WordPress documentation repository. Go here for more information about using WordPress feeds.
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 using RSS feeds.
Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To read more about using WordPress for a business website or blog please click on links to visit other great content we have published on this site.
***
"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)