No matter what your business provides or what industry you are in, providing high-quality information to your blog visitors is essential. For example, if you provide insurance-related services, you may want to include the latest information from government departments, such as news or updates on statistical research, insurance advice, etc.
The problem with creating this type of information, however, is that it requires a lot of effort and resources. You have to do a ton of data gathering, researching and organizing, fact-checking, writing and editing 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 entirely beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is an easier way to provide your site visitors 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
Basic Information About RSS
- RSS, which, according to some is short for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly known now as Really Simple Syndication. It can also be called a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
- RSS lets content publishers automatically syndicate their content to save users time from having to keep revisiting sites to check for updates.
- Feeds are typically used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog entries, news headlines, audios, etc., which users can choose to subscribe to.
- You can view the content of RSS feeds with programs called feedreaders, or aggregators. Feed readers are used to access content on all different kinds of topics and syndicate this content (and any updates made to this content) to many online properties.
- Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different feed aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom feeds and RDF feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure that feeds are compatible with different machines, feedreaders, and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also let you combine several RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from many websites.
In this comprehensive article, you are going to learn 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 RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful (and legitimate) method used for sharing content online. RSS Feeds provide an easy way for online users to receive the latest information posted on different websites and blogs.
First, let’s take a look at how syndication is used.
Online media publications rely on syndication to publish newsworthy content from content sources all around the world.
Syndication allows online newspapers to deliver readers the most recent news headlines and content of general interest from all over the planet without having to send additional writers everywhere in the world …
(Content agencies rely on content syndication to publish newsworthy stories from other news agencies all around the globe.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing information with other sites. online media publications syndicate newsworthy content using feeds …
(Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing content)
Most websites actually would like you to share their information. Syndicating content not only allows high-quality information to be shared, but it can also send 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 digital news publishers and major sites include an RSS feed section (look for navigation links that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “chicago tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most digital content agencies and major content sites have an RSS feed section. Image Source: SMH )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section will bring up a list of different RSS feed sections of the site …
(RSS directory. Source: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
These RSS feed items give readers access to content about different areas of the website (e.g. business news, arts news, editorials, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain further feed subdirectories …
(A feed directory can also include subcategories. Image Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: An RSS feed is just a URL. To use the feed, all you need to do is copy the URL and paste it into software that can translate the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Using Feeds
Syndicating content from someone else’s website on your site has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s site additional exposure online and helps you by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(Using RSS Feeds)
While adding RSS feeds from another site is a great way to add content to your site without having to create it, 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, you have the opportunity to gain more exposure online and drive more visitors …
(It’s worth trying to get other online users to syndicate your feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
About Your WordPress RSS
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on the theme you have installed, there are a few ways to access your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme displays the Meta widget on your navigation menu …
(The feed will display as many recent items you have specified in your WordPress Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in the WP Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display each article as full text, or just as a summary …
(WP Reading Settings – Display ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for posts in a RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts affect how feeds will display)
To learn more about using 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 to your clipboard and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that can read and translate feeds into readable content.
Let’s see how this works.
First, find a website or blog and look for a ’subscribe to feed’ button …
(Search for an RSS feed link. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL)
If you want, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your feed into a feed reader to view the content. Image Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds and convert these into human-readable content.
How To Add Feeds To WordPress
Let’s show you how to add content sourced from another website or blog to your WordPress site.
How To Add RSS Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is in, you could add to your site the latest news and updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply importing content from their RSS feed. You can use RSS 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 the WordPress sidebar navigation menu …
(Add an RSS feed to your sidebar)
copy the RSS feed from a website containing content that you would like to add to your site to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL to your clipboard)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Section – RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Load your website in your web browser. The content from the RSS feed will now show in your sidebar (or wherever you have placed 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 Content From RSS Feeds To Your WordPress Posts
What if you want to add content from RSS feeds to WordPress posts instead of a sidebar?
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Search on the WordPress plugin directory for RSS Post, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ search results)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for instructions, or contact us if you need help configuring plugins.
Here are a number of WordPress plugins that let you add RSS feeds to your posts:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin For WordPress)
WPeMatico is an auto blogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from selected RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange them according to 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 WordPress plugin with a number of premium add-ons for extended functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on lets you autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into your posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress)
RSS Post Importer lets you curate, import, syndicate, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress blog.
The plugin will fetch an RSS feed and publish 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)
With the POWr RSS Feed plugin, you can combine and display content from multiple RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS Feed plugin also lets you display videos, images, and articles, adjust feed size and spacing, use custom colors, backgrounds, fonts, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in any language.
The premium version 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:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes – WordPress Plugin)
The WP Pipes plugin 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 functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook, export your posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin For WordPress)
FeedWordPress is a flexible syndication plugin for WordPress.
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 display all of your online activity into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog by WPMUDev WP Plugin)
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 a blog that you want it to post to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages WP Plugin)
By default, WordPress only posts posts in your RSS feed. Use the RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types plugin to include pages in your RSS feed and not just posts.
For more details, go here:
Using RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WordPress Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to displaying RSS feeds of your latest posts, WordPress also displays RSS feeds of your post comments.
To see your comments feed, go to the ‘Meta’ widget area on your sidebar menu (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 display in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed entries displayed on Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on the web browser you use …
(RSS comments feed content displayed on a Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feedreader 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 Feeds For Specific Posts
Being able to access an RSS feed for single post items can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific posts to RSS directories, or you may have created a valuable resource that other online users will want to syndicate.
The formula for using an RSS feed for a specific post item is shown below:
(RSS Feed For Specific Post)
To create the above feed, copy the web address of your post, and add “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only add “/feed” to the end of a post address, WordPress will return the comments left on your post, not actual content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Displaying Post Category Feeds
Some your site users may only be interested in subscribing to content about specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
With WordPress, you can easily create category feeds.
Just use the format shown below:
(Format for WP post categories feed)
Copy the selected category URL …
(Copy the category link address …)
Append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(Use this format for WP category RSS feed)
The RSS feed now only contains content specific to this category …
(Category 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 Your Own Directory Of Feeds For Subscribers
You can provide a directory of feeds for your subscribers that allows readers to subscribe to content in specific categories, just like large authoritative sites …
(Publish A Page Of RSS Feeds)
You can also link a button graphic to a feed URL and then create a table or a list of all individual feeds on a separate page …
(RSS icon. Source: public-domain-photos.com)
We have created a detailed tutorial about adding tables to WordPress content here:
WordPress RSS – Notes
Feeds can be customized in various different ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows various feed configurations that do not require messing with code. Here are some examples of feeds you can display …
(Different Custom Feeds You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed in the diagram above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – RSS feed that displays your latest posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Displays the latest comments left on your site
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed containing individual items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Displays the latest comments made on a single post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Contains latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/02/10/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/01/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Displays latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Contains the latest entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Displays the latest post entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One more thing …
Remember to promote your RSS feeds. Place your subscribe button somewhere visible …
(Encourage your visitors to subscribe to your feeds!)
Keep in mind that other website owners will only subscribe to your content if you provide your visitors with high-quality information that will add great value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Add someone else’s content and get others to syndicate your content online using 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 🙂
RSS – Resources:
- RSS Images – Visit Iconspedia or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss logo download”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS images and icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to learn more about RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about the history and benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex – Official WordPress documentation and reference site. Go here to learn more about using WordPress feeds.
Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, and how to add someone else’s content to your site via RSS feeds.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you grow your business online. To read more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website or blog please see other posts 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)