No matter what service or product you provide or what industry your business belongs to, providing high-value information on your site or blog is important. For example, if you provide insurance services, you may want to provide users with useful 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 is very time-consuming. You have to filter through, research, and organize a lot of information, check your sources for accuracy, write and edit content (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 lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is a simpler way to regularly provide your readers with up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the simplest way to provide your blog subscribers with great information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What You Need To Know About RSS
- RSS is short for Rich Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred, Really Simple Syndication. It is also often referred to as a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
- Once a user subscribes to a website’s feed, they no longer have to manually visit and check the source website for updated content. Instead, their web browser constantly monitors the site and keeps feed subscribers automatically updated.
- RSS feeds are typically used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog posts, news headlines, videos, etc., to which other users can choose to subscribe.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is a structured XML document that includes 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 an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate content.
- Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different feed aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom Publishing Protocol) feeds and RDF (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, readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also allow you to combine several RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from many sites.
In this detailed guide, we will show you how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to add content from other websites to your site using RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful (and legitimate) way of sharing web content. Feeds provide a simple and easy way for web users to stay up-to-date with the latest information posted on sites and blogs they are interested in.
First, let’s look at content syndication.
Online media publications use content syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies around the world.
Content syndication allows news reporting agencies to deliver readers the most recent news items from around the globe without actually having to hire and post additional news reporters and content writers to every location around the world …
(News reporting agencies and popular online media publications use content syndication to publish newsworthy items from news sources around the world.)
Syndication is used to share newsworthy content legitimately with other sites. online media publications syndicate their news stories using news feeds …
(Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing newsworthy content)
Most websites actually want you to share their information. Content syndication not only allows information to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the original site that created and published the content being syndicated. This creates links that can drive traffic back to their site.
Major content sites include a 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”, “nz herald rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many news reporting agencies and leading online media publications have a feed section. Image Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section will bring up a list of different RSS feeds …
(RSS directory. Image: nytimes.com)
These feed items allow you to source information from different areas of the website (e.g. business news, entertainment news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain feed subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Image: Los Angeles Times)
Note: An RSS feed is simply a URL. To use RSS feeds, all you have to do is copy the URLs and paste these into software that can process the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Using RSS Feeds
Adding content from someone else’s website on your website has some obvious benefits. It helps someone else’s content and helps your site by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(Content Syndication Benefits Someone Else’s Business And Yours!)
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 you also want other sites to syndicate your content.
When other websites and blogs syndicate content using your RSS feed, this gives you the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive more visitors …
(It’s worth trying to get users to syndicate your feed … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)
WordPress RSS Feed
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on which theme you have installed, there are a number of ways to get your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to display on your sidebar or footer, you can scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(Meta section – Accessing your RSS feed)
2) You can also find links and/or buttons on certain themes that let your visitors copy your feed.
In the screenshot below, for example, a visitor can copy the RSS feed URL by clicking on on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy feed URLs to your clipboard from “subscribe to RSS” buttons)
3) On many sites and again, depending on the WordPress theme you have installed, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Link To Us, Share, or Subscribe toolbar …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Link To Us, Share, or Keep In Touch toolbar)
4) You can also view your WordPress site’s feed by 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 installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up a page containing your site’s feed …
(Feed items seen on Firefox)
Note that your feed items will display differently depending on the browser you use …
(Feed entries displayed on Google Chrome)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
To specify how many items you would like to display in your RSS Feed section, go to your Reading Settings section and select the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(WP Reading Settings – Syndication feeds)
Your feed will show the number of posts as you have specified in the Reading Settings section …
(The feed will display as many recent posts as you have specified in the Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in your Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display each article in a feed as full text, or just a summary …
(WordPress Reading Settings – Display ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for each article in your feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts can affect how content in feeds display)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using excerpts in WordPress Posts here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, all you need 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 translate feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, find a website whose feed you want to syndicate and look for an RSS feed icon …
(Look for an RSS feed 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 what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feed reader to view the content. Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feed readers, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds.
How To Add An RSS Feed To Your Site
In the example below, we’ll add content from another website or blog to your WordPress site.
How To Add A Feed To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are part of, you could easily add to your site the latest content from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing their feed. You can use feeds to 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 RSS content to your sidebar …
(Add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar)
First, Find a website or blog containing content that you would like to add to your sidebar and copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL to the clipboard)
Next, paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content will now appear in your sidebar (or wherever the RSS widget has been added) …
(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 RSS Feeds To Your WordPress Posts
Can you add content from RSS feeds to posts instead of the sidebar? You sure can!
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Search inside the ’Add Plugins’ section for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ search results – RSS plugins for WordPress)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us if you need help with plugin configuration.
The plugins below can be used to feed content to posts, or “auto blog” (An autoblog is a blog with content that is automatically gathered and compiled from RSS feeds):
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin For WordPress)
WPeMatico is an easy to use autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from multiple RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize feeds into categories and campaigns.
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 that offers extended functionality with premium add-ons.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on allows you to import RSS feeds directly into posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer – WordPress Plugin)
RSS Post Importer can be used to import, syndicate, curate, merge and display full text RSS feeds on your WordPress blog.
The plugin 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)
With the POWr RSS Feed plugin, you can automatically combine and display content from multiple RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS Feed plugin also lets you display videos, images, and articles, adjust feed spacing and size, use custom borders, colors, fonts, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in any language.
The premium edition of POWr contains many additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes WP Plugin)
The WP Pipes plugin is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.
This plugin provides functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to Twitter/LinkedIn/Facebook, export WordPress posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to new levels.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin For WordPress)
FeedWordPress provides versatile syndication for WordPress-generated 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.
FeedWordPress can be used to create aggregator sites, or bring together all your online activity in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog by WPMUDev 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, 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 – WordPress Plugin)
The RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types plugin modifies RSS feeds to include pages and not just posts.
For more details, go here:
WordPress RSS – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to giving online users access to feeds of your posts, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of comments posted on your site.
To see these, go to the ‘Meta’ widget on your sidebar (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) and click on Comments RSS …
(WordPress Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors and users display in the Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed content seen on a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on the browser you use …
(Comments feed items seen on a Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste the comments feed URL into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image Source: 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 or blog has been installed in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Using Feeds For Individual Post Items
Being able to use an RSS feed for specific post items 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 accessing an RSS feed for individual post items is shown below:
(Feed For Individual Post)
To create the above feed, copy the URL of your post, and add “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of the post, WordPress will return the comments associated with your post, not the content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Post Category Feeds
Some your site users may only want to subscribe to content from a specific category. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
If you publish content under several categories, WordPress allows you to easily offer readers a separate feed for each post category.
All you have to do is use the format shown below:
(WordPress category feed format)
Copy the category URL …
(Copy the category link address to your clipboard …)
And append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(WP post categories feed format)
The category feed now only displays content published under that particular 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 Feeds List
You can provide your own RSS feeds directory that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in the categories they are interested in, just like large websites …
(Set Up A Directory Of RSS Feeds On Your Site)
You can also link an image to a feed and then create a table or a list of all your category feeds on a new page …
(RSS icon. Image: public-domain-photos.com)
If you need help with inserting tables into WordPress content, see this tutorial:
WordPress RSS – Notes
You can customize RSS in various different ways, such as adding images and videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows you to configure several feed types that do not require touching code. For example, the table below shows some of the kinds of custom feed formats you can create …
(Different Custom Feeds You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
Below are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the diagram above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – RSS feed that includes your latest post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – RSS feed that contains the latest comments left on your site
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed for specific post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Includes the latest comments made on specific post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Displays latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/02/11/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/07/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Feed containing the latest entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Includes 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 feeds. Make sure you place your subscribe button in a visible location …
(Remember to promote your RSS feeds!)
Finally, keep in mind that other sites will only subscribe to your content if you provide your subscribers with very high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Easily add someone else’s content and get other 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 RSS feed 🙂
RSS Resources:
- RSS Graphics – Visit Feedicons or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss icon”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable Free RSS images and icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization with three primary duties: publishing RSS specifications, providing guidance to developers who create RSS applications and furthering the understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about the history and benefits of using RSS.
- WordPress.org – WordPress software documentation. Visit this site to learn more about feeds in WordPress.
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 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 the benefits of using the WP website management software please see our related posts section.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now