No matter what product or service you sell or what industry your business is in, providing high-quality information on your site or blog is essential. For example, if you provide health-related services, it’s a good idea to publish useful information from the health department, such as news and updates on medical research, health and fitness advice, etc.
The problem with creating this type of information, however, is that it involves an enormous amount of work and expertise. 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 continually ensure that this information is 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 an easier way to keep your readers up-to-date with your information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the easiest way to provide your site visitors with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Does RSS Stand For?
- RSS is short for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred, Really Simple Syndication. It is also often referred to as a “feed” or “news feed”.
- RSS allows content publishers to automatically syndicate their content so that their users can read it without having to keep revisiting their site to check for updates.
- RSS feeds are typically used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog entries, news, video lists, etc., which any user can choose to subscribe to.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is a structured XML document that includes either full or summarized text along with other metadata like published date, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on sites that publish feeds and then view any updates posted on these websites using a feedreader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate content.
- There are different kinds of feeds, read by different feed aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom (also called AtomPub or APP feeds and RDF feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure that feeds are compatible with different devices, readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also let you combine multiple RSS feeds to display news and updates from various sources.
This article explains where your RSS feed is located, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to add someone else’s content to your site using RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful way of sharing content online. Feeds provide a way for web users to stay up-to-date with the latest information published on websites and blogs they are interested in.
First, let’s look at how syndication is used.
Most online newspapers rely heavily on content syndication to publish news and stories from content sources around the world.
Syndication allows most news reporting agencies to deliver readers up-to-the-minute newsworthy items from around the planet without actually having to employ and send additional news reporters and writers to every location around the world …
(News reporting agencies rely heavily on content syndication to publish news and stories from other news agencies around the world.)
Syndication is used to share newsworthy content legitimately. online media publications syndicate their content using news feeds …
(Online newspapers syndicate their content using feeds)
Most websites actually would like you to syndicate their information. Syndicating content not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the original site that published the content being syndicated. This provides websites with new opportunities to generate significant web traffic.
Major content sites have a feed section (look for links in the navigation menu that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, 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 content sites include a feed section. Image: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link brings up a list of RSS feeds for different content topics on the site …
(RSS feeds section. Image Source: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
Each of these feeds allows readers to access content from different areas of the site (e.g. technology news, entertainment news, jobs, etc.)
A feed list can also include subcategory feeds …
(RSS Feed section. Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: A feed is just a URL. All you need to do to use RSS feeds is to copy the URLs and paste these into an application that can process the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Using Feeds
Syndicating someone else’s content on your site has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s content additional exposure online and adds value to your site without you having to create that content …
(Syndicating Content Has Many Benefits!)
While adding an RSS feed 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 you also want other sites to use your content.
When other websites and blogs syndicate your RSS feed, this gives your business the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive new web traffic …
(Get users to syndicate your content … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)
WordPress Feed – About
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on your WordPress theme, there are a few ways to get your RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget in a navigation menu …
(The feed page will show as many recent posts as you have specified in your Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in the WordPress Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display each article as full text, or just a summary …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’: ‘Full text’ or ‘Summary’)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts affect how content in feeds appear)
If you need help using WordPress Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, all that’s required to view a feed’s content is to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that can read and translate feeds into readable content.
Let’s take a look at how this works.
First, find a website whose feed you want to syndicate and search for a ‘subscribe’ button …
(Search for a ‘subscribe’ icon or link. Image source: http://www.yourcoffeeguru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL)
If you want, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste your URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds and convert these into readable content.
How To Add A Feed To Your WP Site
Let’s show you how to add content sourced from another website or blog to your site.
Adding An RSS Feed To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you operate in, you can display on your site the latest updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing their RSS feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, social media comments, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add content sourced from an RSS feed to your sidebar …
(Let’s add an RSS feed to your sidebar)
copy the RSS feed URL from a site that publishes content that you would like to add to your sidebar to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed to the clipboard)
Next, go to your WordPress Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets and paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(Widgets Screen – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Load your site in your browser. The content from the RSS feed can now be seen in 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:
How To Add Feed Content To WordPress Posts
What if you want to add content from RSS feeds to a post instead of the sidebar?
You can do this using plugins. Search on the WordPress plugin repository for RSS feed, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ search results)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for setup instructions, or contact us if you need assistance configuring plugins.
Here are a number of autoblogging plugins that allow you to create posts using feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from multiple RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange them according to campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator WP Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and autoblogging WordPress plugin with additional functionality with a number of premium extensions (add-ons).
For example, the Feed to Post extension lets you autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into WordPress posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer)
The RSS Post Importer plugin lets you curate, import, syndicate, merge and display full-text feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) on your WordPress website or blog.
RSS Post Importer fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full content of each item in the feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)
POWr RSS Feed automatically combines and displays content from multiple RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust feed priority, use custom backgrounds, colors, fonts, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in any language.
The premium version of this plugin contains a number of additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes)
WP Pipes is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you 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 Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter, export posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to a new level.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress WP Plugin)
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 plugin to create aggregator site (sites that display content from various different sources), or display all your online activity into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog by WPMUDev Plugin)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in the URL of your feed, 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
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types)
By default, WordPress only posts posts in your RSS feed. Use the RSS Includes Pages plugin to include pages in your RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to making RSS feeds of your latest posts available to online users, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of comments posted on your site.
You can access these by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ widget of your sidebar menu …
(WordPress Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors display in your Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed entries viewed on Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on the browser you use …
(Comments feed items viewed with a Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into a feed reader …
(Paste the URL of your comments feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image: Feedreader)
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 – Displaying Feeds For Single Posts
Being able to display an RSS feed for an individual post can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific posts to RSS aggregator sites, or you may have created a valuable resource that other online users will want to syndicate.
The formula for using an RSS feed for individual post items is shown below:
(Feed For Specific Post Item)
To create the above feed, copy the post URI, and add “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of the web address of your post, WordPress will return the comments made on your post, not the content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site users may only want to subscribe to content from specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
WordPress allows you to create category feeds.
Just use the format shown below:
(Format for WP post categories RSS feed)
Select and copy the category URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your category link address …)
Append “feed” to the end of it …
(Format for WP category RSS feed)
The feed will now only include content specific to this 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 – Set Up Your Own Page Of RSS Feeds
You can publish a directory of RSS feeds that allows your readers to subscribe to content in specific categories, just like the larger online publishers do …
(Set Up An RSS Feeds Page)
You can also link an image to each feed and then create a table or a list of your feeds on a new page …
(RSS button. Image: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
We have written a detailed tutorial about adding tables to WordPress here:
RSS Feeds – Additional Notes
You can customize feeds in various different ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows several RSS feed configurations that do not require code editing skills. For example, the table below lists some of the kinds of feeds you can use …
(Different Custom Feeds You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
Here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the diagram above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Includes your latest post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Includes the latest comments posted on your website or blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed for specific posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Feed that includes the latest comments made on a post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Contains the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/11/27/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Feed containing the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/07/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Contains the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Displays latest post entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Contains latest items for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One last thing …
Remember to promote your RSS feed. Make sure you place a ’subscribe to RSS’ link or button somewhere visible …
(Encourage your site users to syndicate your RSS feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that other sites will only want to subscribe to your content if you provide your subscribers with very high-quality content that can add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Easily add someone else’s content and get online users to share your content using WordPress and 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 feed 🙂
Additional Resources:
- RSS Feed Graphics – Visit FeedIcons or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS buttons”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS graphics.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization with three primary duties: publishing the RSS specification, providing guidance to developers who create RSS applications and broadening general public understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about the history and benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress.org – WordPress documentation and reference repository. Visit this site for more information about using WordPress RSS.
Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to add content from other websites to your site using 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 using WordPress please see our related posts section.
***
"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com