No matter what what industry you are a part of, providing quality information to your site readers is important. For example, if your business provides insurance services, it’s not a bad idea to provide users with information from government departments, such as news and updates on statistical findings, insurance tips, etc.
The problem with providing this kind of information, however, is that it is very time-consuming. You have to do a lot of data sifting, researching and organizing, checking the accuracy of your sources, content writing and editing (or hire someone to do this for you), and then ensure that this information is continually up-to-date. As you can imagine, this is not only a huge amount of work but most of the information you are dealing with is beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is a simpler way to continually provide your users with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - The simplest way to provide your readers with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Does RSS Mean?
- RSS stands 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 physically visit and check the source website for updated content. Instead, their web browser will constantly monitor the site and keep feed subscribers updated.
- RSS feeds are often used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog entries, news, videos, etc., which users can then subscribe to.
- You can view the content of an RSS feed with a software called a feedreader, or aggregator. Feedreaders can be used to find new content published on websites and syndicate this content online.
- Feeds can be made available in different formats and read by different feed readers. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom (also called AtomPub or APP feeds and RDF (Resource Description Framework) feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure that feeds are compatible with different devices and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also allow you to combine many RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from a number of other sites.
This article shows you where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, and how to display content from other sites on your site via RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful method used for sharing content online. Feeds provide web users with a simple way to stay up-to-date with the latest information published on different sites.
First, let’s look at syndication.
Global media publications use content syndication to publish news from content sources all around the world.
Content syndication allows digital publishers to deliver readers the latest news items and newsworthy stories from all over the planet without having to send more content writers everywhere in the world …
(Media publications rely on content syndication to publish newsworthy stories from news sources around the world.)
Syndication is used to share content legitimately. News reporting agencies syndicate their news stories using feeds …
(Content syndication is used by global media publications to share newsworthy content with other publications)
Most sites actually would like you to syndicate 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 responsible for creating and publishing the content being syndicated. This creates links that can drive traffic back to their site.
Most online newspapers and major content sites provide links to a feed section (look for links in the navigation menu that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “courier mail rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most leading online media publications contain a feed section. Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section will bring up a directory of RSS feeds for different content sections of the site …
(RSS feeds section. Image Source: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
gives you access to information from different sections of the website (e.g. technology news, entertainment news, jobs, etc.)
A feed directory can also include further feed subdirectories …
(An RSS feed list can also include feed subcategories. Image: LA Times)
Note: A feed is just a URL. To use feeds, all you need to do is to copy the URLs and paste these into an application that can process the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Content Syndication
Syndicating someone else’s content on your website has some obvious benefits. It not only gives additional exposure online to someone else’s website, it also adds value to your site without you having to create this content …
(Using RSS Feeds Has Many Benefits!)
While adding a feed from another site is a great way to add content to your site without having to create it, it’s a great idea to try and get other sites to syndicate your content.
When other sites syndicate content using your RSS feed, you have the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive more web traffic …
(Get users to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress Feed – About
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing other online users to easily syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on your 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 will show the number of posts as you have specified in the Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in the Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display posts as full text, or just a summary …
(Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed displays …
(Post excerpts can affect how your feed content will display)
We have created a detailed tutorial on WordPress Post excerpts here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, all you have to do to view a feed’s content is to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into an application that can read and translate feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, go to a website or blog and search for a ’subscribe to feed’ button using any of the methods described earlier …
(Search for a ’subscribe to feed’ button or link. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed to the clipboard)
If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of your feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste your URL of your feed into a feed reader to view the content. Image: Feedreader.com)
Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds and convert these into content that is readable by humans.
Adding Feeds To Your Site
Let’s show you how to add RSS content from another site to yours.
How To Add Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you could display on your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply adding their RSS feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, Facebook updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to the WordPress sidebar …
(Let’s add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar)
First, Find a website that publishes content that you want to display on your site and copy its RSS feed URL …
(Copy the URL of your feed to your clipboard)
Next, paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Section – RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content can now be seen in your sidebar …
(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 Posts
Can content from an RSS feed be added to WordPress posts instead of the sidebar? Yes, it can!
You can do this using WordPress plugins. Just search inside the Plugins admin section for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ search results – WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for instructions, or contact us for assistance with plugin configuration.
Here are a few plugins that allow you to add RSS feeds to your pages and posts:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico – WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an auto blogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds of your choice.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange feeds into categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator WordPress Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and autoblogging WordPress plugin with additional functionality with a number of premium add-ons.
For example, the Feed to Post extension for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin is an advanced, feature-filled importer that allows you to import RSS feeds directly into your WordPress posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
RSS Post Importer can be used to syndicate, curate, import, merge and display full text feeds on your WordPress site.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the entire content of every item in the feed as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed)
With POWr RSS Feed, you can combine and display content from multiple RSS feeds.
This plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust the priority of different feeds, use custom backgrounds, colors, fonts, and more. It is also mobile responsive 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 in your feed, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin)
The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you create 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, autoblogging, auto post to Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, export your posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress)
FeedWordPress provides flexible syndication 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 FeedWordPress to create aggregator sites, or display all your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Facebook, YouTube, or other online services, into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog Plugin For WordPress)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in the URL of your feed, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select the 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 – WordPress Plugin)
Use RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types to include pages in your 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 – Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to giving online users access to RSS feeds of your posts, WordPress also displays RSS feeds of your latest post comments.
You can see this by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ widget area (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) …
(WordPress Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors and users will appear in the Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed content as seen using a Firefox web browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on which browser you use …
(Comments feed entries seen on a Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into a feedreader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feedreader to view the feed content. 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 WordPress site installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Single Item Feeds
Being able to use 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:
(Specific Post RSS Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the post address, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of the post URI, WordPress will return the comments made on that post, not actual content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Category Feeds
Some your site users may only be interested in subscribing to content from one or two post categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
With WordPress, you can easily create category feeds.
All you have to do is use the format below:
(Format for WordPress category RSS feed)
Copy the selected category URL …
(Copy the selected category URL …)
Now, append “feed” to the end of it …
(Feed format for post categories)
Your category RSS feed will now only contain content posted for that category …
(Category-specific 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 A Directory Of RSS Feeds For Your Subscribers
You can provide your own list of RSS feeds that allows readers to subscribe to content in specific categories, just like the larger online publishers do …
(Publish A Page Of Feeds)
Link an RSS button graphic to each feed and then create a table or a list of your individual feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button graphic. Image Source: public-domain-photos.com)
If you need help with creating tables in WordPress content, go here:
WordPress RSS – Notes
You can customize your RSS in various different ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows different RSS feed configurations without messing with code. For example, here are just some of the kinds of custom feed types you can use and how to create these feeds …
(WordPress RSS – Custom Feeds)
Here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Includes your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Displays the latest comments posted on your blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed containing individual posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Includes the latest comments made on an individual post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – RSS feed containing latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/01/28/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Includes latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/04/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Contains latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Displays latest posts for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: RSS feed containing latest post 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 let visitors know that they can subscribe to your feed. Make sure you place a subscribe link somewhere visible …
(Promote your RSS feeds!)
Keep in mind that online users will only want to subscribe to your content if you provide useful information that informs, engages, and entertains. In other words, you must provide high-quality information that can add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Easily add content to your site and get other users to share your content with RSS feeds!)
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 feed 🙂
RSS Resources:
- RSS Feed Graphics – Visit Feedicons or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss logo”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download Free RSS images.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to learn more about RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – General information about the history and benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex – WordPress documentation and reference site. Go here for additional information about WordPress and RSS.
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 their RSS feed.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To read more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website please click on links to visit 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)