No matter what service or product you provide or what industry your business is a part of, providing high-quality information on your site or blog is essential. For example, if you provide taxation services, you may want to publish the latest information from the taxation office, such as news or updates on tax rulings, small business tax tips, etc.
The problem with creating this kind of information, however, is that it is very time-consuming. You have to sift 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 ensure that this information is 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 entirely beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is an easier way to provide your readers with expert, up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the simplest way to provide your readers with great information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – Useful Information
- RSS is short for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly known, Really Simple Syndication. It it is also called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- Once a user subscribes to an RSS feed, they no longer have to manually visit and check the source website for updated content. Instead, their browser constantly monitors the site and keeps subscribers updated.
- Feeds are also used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as blog posts, news, video lists, etc., which users can then subscribe to.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML (Extensible Markup Language) document that includes full or summarized text along with metadata like published date, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then browse updates posted on these websites using a feedreader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate their information.
- There are different kinds of feeds, 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 that feeds are compatible with different machines and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also let you combine many RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates from different sources.
This detailed guide shows you how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to display content from other sites on your site using RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful (and legitimate) way to share web content. Feeds provide a simple way for online users to receive the latest information published on different websites and blogs.
First, let’s look at content syndication.
Many news reporting agencies and many highly-visited online publications use content syndication to publish stories from other news agencies all around the world.
Syndication allows news publishing agencies to deliver readers interesting stories and up-to-the-minute news items from around the planet without actually having to employ and post more news reporters and content writers everywhere in the world …
(Global media publications rely on content syndication to publish newsworthy items from other news agencies around the planet.)
Syndication is used to share content legitimately. Online newspapers syndicate information using feeds …
(Content syndication is a legitimate method of sharing content)
Most websites actually want you to share their information. Syndicating content not only allows great information to be shared, but it also drives visitors back to the original site that published the content being syndicated. This creates links that can drive traffic back to their site.
Most digital content publishing agencies and major online media publications have a feed section (look for links in their navigation menu that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “texas tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most news reporting agencies and major content sites have a feed section. Source: Sydney Morning Herald )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link brings up a list of RSS feeds for different content topics on the site …
(RSS feeds list. Image Source: nytimes.com)
These feeds allow you to source information from different areas of the website (e.g. business news, entertainment news, jobs, etc.)
A feed directory can also contain further feed subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Image: latimes.com feeds)
Note: A feed is just a URL. All that’s required to use an RSS feed is copy the URL and paste it into software that can process the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Content Syndication – Benefits
Syndicating content from someone else’s website or blog on your website has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s website additional exposure online and helps your site by freeing you up from having to create this content …
(The Benefits Of Content Syndication)
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 use your content.
When other websites and blogs syndicate your content, this gives you the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive new web traffic …
(Try to get users to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress RSS Feed – Overview
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing other online users to syndicate your content on their sites.
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 in a standard or custom menu …
(The feed page will display the number of items you have specified in the Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
The other setting in the WordPress Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display each article in a feed as full text, or just as a summary …
(WordPress Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for each article in your feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts affect how content in feeds display)
To learn more about Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, to view the content of an RSDS feed, you have to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that translates feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, find a website or blog and look for an RSS feed icon …
(Search for a ’subscribe to feed’ button. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL to your clipboard)
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. Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds and convert these into content that can be read by your subscribers.
How To Add Feeds To WordPress
Let’s show you how to add content from another website’s RSS feeds to your site.
Adding An RSS Feed To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are part of, you could easily display on your site the latest updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing content from their feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, social media updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add content sourced from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar …
(Let’s add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation area)
First, Find a site that publishes content that you want to add to your site and copy the RSS feed URL …
(Copy your feed URL to your clipboard)
Next, go to your WordPress Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets and paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(Widgets Area – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content from the RSS feed will now display in your sidebar …
(RSS Feed Content Added To WordPress Sidebar)
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 Feed Content To Your Posts
Can content from RSS feeds be added to WordPress posts instead of the sidebar? It sure can!
You can easily do this using plugins. Search on WordPress.org plugin directory for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.
(WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for complete instructions, or contact us for assistance with plugin configuration.
Here are a few plugins you can check out that let you add RSS feeds to your content:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico – WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from selected RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange them according to campaigns and categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and autoblogging WordPress plugin that offers premium add-ons for additional functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension is a feature-filled importer that lets you import RSS feeds directly into WP posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer – WordPress Plugin)
The RSS Post Importer plugin allows you to curate, import, syndicate, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress blog.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the entire content of each item in the feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin For WordPress)
With POWr RSS, you can automatically combine and display content from a number of different content using RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS Feed plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust feed priority, use custom fonts, colors, backgrounds, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in every language.
The premium plugin version contains many 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 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 other sources.
This plugin provides features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Twitter/LinkedIn/Facebook, export WordPress posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress)
FeedWordPress is a versatile 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.
FeedWordPress can be used to create aggregator site (sites that bring together posts from various different sources), or bring together all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, LinkedIn, YouTube, or other online services, into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog Plugin)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in your feed URL, give it a name of your choosing (for admin purposes) and select a blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types WP Plugin)
Install RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed in addition to posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WP 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.
To access your comments feed, locate the ‘Meta’ widget area on your sidebar menu (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) and click on Comments RSS …
(Comments Feed)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors and users can be seen in the Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed entries seen using Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on the web browser you are using …
(RSS comments feed content viewed on a Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feed reader …
(Paste your URL of your comments feed into a feed reader to view the 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 website is located in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Accessing RSS Feeds For Specific Posts
Being able to create an RSS feed for an individual post item 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 accessing an RSS feed for an individual post item is shown below:
(Specific Post RSS Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the post URI, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of a post URI, WordPress will return the comments for that post, not the content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site users may only want to syndicate content from specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
With WordPress, you can easily create separate category feeds.
Just use the format below:
(WordPress RSS feed format for post categories)
Select and copy the category URL …
(Select and copy your category URL …)
Append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(WordPress post categories RSS feed format)
Your RSS feed now only contains content published in this 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 – Create Your Own Page Of Feeds
You can publish your own RSS feeds list that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in specific categories …
(Publish Your Own List Of RSS Feeds For Your Visitors)
You can also link an icon like the one shown below to your category feed URLs and then create a table or a list of your individual feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button graphic. Image: public-domain-photos.com)
If you need help with creating tables in WordPress, go here:
RSS Feeds – Additional Notes
You can customize your feeds in various different ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows you to configure various feed formats that do not require code editing skills. Below are examples of some of the kinds of custom feeds you can create …
(Different Custom Feeds You Can Create With WordPress RSS)
Below are the different 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 displaying 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/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: RSS Feed for the latest comments made on an individual post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/03/06/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/11/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Displays the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Contains latest entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: RSS feed that contains latest items for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One last thing …
It’s a good idea to promote your feeds. Make sure you place your subscribe button image in a visible location …
(Remember to make your RSS feeds visible your feeds!)
Finally, keep in mind that online users will only want to syndicate your content if you provide your visitors with high-quality information that will add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Add content to your site and get others to syndicate your content using WordPress and 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 🙂
Resources:
- RSS Images – Visit a site like Feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss logo”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable RSS images and icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information and links to resources about RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about RSS.
- WordPress Codex: RSS Feeds – WordPress documentation repository. Go here to learn more about using 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 add content from other sites to your site using RSS.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business web site please see our related posts section.
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