No matter what product or service you provide or what industry your business is in, it’s important to provide high-value information on your site or blog that better educates, informs, and engages your readers. For example, if you provide travel-related services, it’s a good idea to include the latest information from government departments and foreign travel offices, such as news or updates on travel warnings, advice from consular offices, etc.
To create and publish this kind of information, however, involves an enormous amount of time and expertise. You have to filter through, research, and organize a lot of data, check your sources for accuracy, write and edit content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually make sure that this information is kept 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 beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is an easier way to keep your site visitors up-to-date with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - The easiest way to provide your site visitors with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – Basic Information
- RSS is short for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred to, Really Simple Syndication. It is also often called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- Once users subscribe to an RSS feed, they no longer have to physically check the website for updated content. Instead, their web browser will constantly monitor the content and automatically keep subscribers updated.
- Feeds are often used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as new blog entries, news headlines, videos, etc., to which users can then subscribe.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML (XML = Extensible Markup Language) document that includes either full or summarized text along with metadata like date of publishing, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then browse updates posted on these websites through a feedreader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate web content.
- There are different feed formats and these can be read by different aggregators. 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 compatibility with different devices, feed readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also let you combine different RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from many sites.
This guide explains how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, 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 method used for sharing content online. RSS Feeds provide online users with a way to stay up-to-date with the latest information posted on sites they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at content syndication.
Many online newspapers use content syndication to publish news from news agencies all around the world.
Content syndication allows leading news reporting agencies to deliver readers stories and headlines from all over the planet without having to employ and send more content writers everywhere in the world …
(Many news publishing agencies rely on syndication to publish stories from other news agencies around the world.)
Syndication is used to share information legitimately with other sites. online media publications syndicate news stories using news feeds …
(Content syndication is used by global media publications to share content with other publications)
Most sites actually would like you to share their content. Content syndication not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it can also drive visitors back to the original site that published the content being syndicated. This creates new ways to drive traffic back to their site.
Most online newspapers will include a feed section (look for navigation 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 leading online media publications provide links to a feed section. Image Source: SMH RSS )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section brings up a directory of different RSS feeds of the site …
(RSS feeds section. Image Source: NY Times RSS)
These feed items let readers source content from different areas of the site (e.g. technology news, travel news, editorials, etc.)
A feed list can also contain further feed subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Image: latimes.com)
Note: A feed is simply a URL. To use RSS feeds, all you need to do 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.
Content Syndication – Benefits
Syndicating someone else’s content on your site has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s business additional exposure online, it also helps you by freeing you up from having to create this content …
(Syndicating Content 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 worth keeping in mind that there are benefits in getting other sites to syndicate YOUR content.
When other sites syndicate your RSS feed, this gives your business the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive new web traffic …
(Consider trying to get users to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
Overview Of The WordPress RSS
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on your WP theme, there are a few ways to access your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to display on the sidebar or footer menu, you can scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(WordPress Meta section – Accessing your RSS feed)
2) You can also find built-in links and/or buttons on certain WordPress themes that let your visitors copy your RSS feed.
For example, in the screenshot below, a visitor can copy the site’s RSS feed URL by clicking on on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy feed URLs to your clipboard from “subscribe” buttons)
3) On many websites and again, depending on the WP theme you have installed, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Link To Us, Share, or Follow toolbar …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Link To Us, Stay In Touch, or Share toolbar)
4) You can also view your feed by simply typing your site’s URL into a browser and adding “/feed” after the URL, e.g.:
- http://www.yourdomain.com/feed
- http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/feed (if your WP site installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up your WordPress RSS page …
(Feed items as seen with Firefox)
Note that your feed content will display differently depending on which web browser you are using …
(Feed entries displayed using Google Chrome)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
Specify how many items you would like displayed in your RSS Feed section in the Reading Settings section. Enter the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(WP Reading Settings – Syndication items)
Your feed section will show the number of items you have specified in your WP Reading Settings section …
(Your feed will display as many recent posts as you have specified in your WordPress Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
The other setting in the Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display posts as full text, or a summary …
(Settings – 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)
If you need help using Post excerpts in WordPress, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, to view a feed’s content, you need to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that reads and translates feeds into readable content.
Let’s see how this works.
First, go to a website whose feed you want to syndicate and look for their RSS feed button …
(Search for an RSS feed link. Image source: http://www.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 feed reader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds.
Adding A Feed To Your Site
Let’s show you how to add content sourced from another site to yours.
How To Add RSS Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is in, you can add to your site the latest updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by adding content from their RSS feed. You can easily 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 an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar area)
First, go to a site containing content that you want to add to your sidebar and copy its RSS feed URL …
(Copy your feed URL to your clipboard)
Next, go to your Widgets screen and paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Area – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Refresh your web browser. The content will now appear in your sidebar (or wherever you have inserted the RSS widget – e.g. footer, custom menu, etc) …
(RSS Feed Content Added To 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 Feeds To Your Posts
What if you want to add content from RSS feeds to WordPress posts instead of your sidebar?
You can do this using WordPress plugins. Search on the WordPress plugin directory for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ screen)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us if you need assistance with plugin configuration.
Here are a number of auto blogging plugins for WordPress that let you create new using RSS feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico – WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an auto blogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from selected RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange them into categories and campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin For WordPress)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging plugin for WordPress that offers a number of premium add-ons for extended functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension allows you to add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
The RSS Post Importer plugin lets you curate, syndicate, import, merge and display full text feeds on your WordPress website or blog.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full content of each item in your feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin)
POWr RSS combines and displays content from various RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust feed spacing and size, use custom colors, borders, fonts, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in every language.
The premium version 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 WP Plugin)
WP Pipes is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.
This plugin provides loads of functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter, export WordPress posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides simple and flexible syndication for WordPress 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 plugin to create aggregator sites, or bring together all of your online activity into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog by WPMUDev Plugin For WordPress)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in your feed URL, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select a blog that you want it to post 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 includes posts in your RSS feed. Install RSS Includes Pages if you want to include pages in your RSS feed and not just posts.
For more details, go here:
Using RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress makes available RSS feeds of the latest comments posted on your site in addition to displaying feeds of your latest posts.
You can view these comments by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ section …
(Comments Feed)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors and users will appear in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items displayed on a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on which browser you use …
(Comments feed entries displayed on a Google Chrome web browser)
Again, you can check what the comments RSS feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into a feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your comments feed into a feed reader to view the feed content. Source: 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 website or blog is located in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Using Feeds For Single Posts
Being able to access an RSS feed for an individual 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 single post items is shown below:
(RSS Feed For Individual Post Item)
To create the above feed, copy the URL 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 associated with that post, not actual post content itself.
Tip #3 – Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in syndicating content from a particular category. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
If your site displays content published under many categories, you can offer visitors a separate feed for each different category.
Just use the format below:
(WordPress category feed format)
Select and copy the category URL …
(Copy your category URL …)
Append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(Feed format for category)
Your feed will now only display content posted in that category …
(Category-specific 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 – Provide Your Own Feeds List
You can set up your own page of feeds for your subscribers that allows your readers to subscribe only to specific content …
(Create A List Of RSS Feeds)
Link an image to each feed URL and then create a table or a list of all your individual feeds on a new page …
(RSS button. Image Source: public-domain-photos.com)
If you need help with adding tables to WordPress pages and posts, go here:
WordPress RSS – Additional Notes
RSS feeds can be customized 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 several feed formats without messing with code. Here are some examples of custom feed formats you can create …
(WordPress RSS – Custom Feeds)
Below are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – contains your latest post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Feed that displays the latest comments posted on your blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed that includes individual items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Displays the latest comments made on a post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/10/10/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/06/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Feed containing latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Displays the latest entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Feed containing the latest posts 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 let your users know that they can subscribe to your feeds. Make sure you place a ’subscribe to RSS’ link or button in a visible location …
(Remember to make your RSS feeds visible your RSS feeds!)
Finally, keep in mind that online users will only subscribe to your content if you provide your visitors with very high-quality content that will add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Add content to your site and get others to syndicate your content online 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 🙂
Additional Resources:
- RSS Buttons – Visit Iconspedia or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “rss logo download”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download Free 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 broadening general public understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – Learn more about RSS feeds.
- WordPress.org/WordPress Feeds – WordPress documentation and information. Go here to learn more about feeds in WordPress.
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 using RSS.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about using the WordPress CMS software please see other posts on this site.
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