No matter what service or product your business sells, providing quality information on your site or blog is essential. For example, if your business provides travel-related services, you may want to publish useful information from government and foreign travel departments, such as news or updates on travel warnings, advice from consulates, etc.
The problem with providing this kind of information, however, is that it is really time-consuming. You have to do a ton of data sifting, researching and organizing, fact-checking, 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 lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a simpler way to continually provide your users with up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is one of the easiest ways to provide your site readers with great information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – What You Need To Know
- RSS, which, according to some definitions stands for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly referred to as Really Simple Syndication. It is also often called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- When users subscribe to an RSS feed, they no longer have to physically check the source website for content updates. Instead, their web browser constantly monitors the site and keeps subscribers updated.
- Feeds are often used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as blog post items, news headlines, video playlists, etc., to which any user can then subscribe.
- RSS feed content can be viewed with software programs called feed readers, or feed aggregators. Feed readers can be used to find content on all kinds of topics and distribute this content online.
- There are different feed formats and these can be read by different feed readers. 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, feed readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also let you combine many RSS feeds to receive news and updates from different sources.
This detailed guide explains how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to display someone else’s content on your site via RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful method used for sharing content online. Feeds provide a simple and easy way for online users to stay up-to-date with the latest information published on different sites.
First, let’s take a look at how syndication is used.
Most news reporting agencies use syndication to publish content from news agencies all around the world.
Syndication allows many news reporting agencies and highly-visited online media publications to deliver readers fresh news and content of interest from all around the globe without actually having to post additional staff to every location around the world …
(Online newspapers use syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies all around the planet.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing content. Global media publications syndicate information using news feeds …
(Content syndication is used by global media publications to share content with other news publications)
Most websites actually want you to syndicate their content. Content syndication not only allows information to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the site that published the original content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Many digital content publishing agencies and major sites will include an RSS feed section (look for menu links that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, 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 will have a feed section. Image Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link brings up a list of different RSS feed sections of the site …
(RSS feeds list. Source: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
These feed items give you access to content from different sections of the site (e.g. business news, sports news, jobs, etc.)
An RSS feed list can also contain further subcategory feeds …
(RSS Feed section. Image Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: A feed is only a URL. To use RSS feeds, all you need to do is 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 Content Syndication
Syndicating content from someone else’s website on your website has some obvious benefits. It helps someone else’s website and adds value to your site without you having to create that content …
(The Benefits Of Syndicating Content)
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 syndicate your RSS feed, this gives you the opportunity to get increased exposure online and drive new web traffic …
(Consider trying to get other websites and blogs to syndicate content using your RSS feed … it will help to increase your exposure online!)
WordPress RSS – About
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on your WordPress theme, there are a few ways to get the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget on your sidebar or footer …
(Your feed page will display as many recent posts as you have specified in your WP Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in your WP Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display each article as full text, or just as a summary …
(Settings – Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for posts in a feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed displays …
(Post excerpts affect how your feeds appear)
If you need help using excerpts in WordPress Posts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, to view a feed’s content, you have 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 for humans.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, go to a website whose feed you want to syndicate and search for an RSS feed icon using any of the methods described earlier …
(Search for a ’subscribe to feed’ icon. 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 feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste the URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the content. Image: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds.
How To Add Feeds To Your WordPress Site
In the example below, we are going to add content sourced from another website or blog to yours.
Adding A Feed To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you can 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 easily 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 URL from a website containing content that you want to add to your site …
(Copy the URL of your feed to the clipboard)
Next, paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Section – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:
Refresh your web browser. The content from the RSS feed should now appear on your sidebar (or wherever the RSS widget has been inserted) …
(RSS Feed 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 RSS Feed Content To Your WordPress Posts
Can content from an RSS feed be added to posts instead of a sidebar? Yes, it can!
You can do this using WordPress plugins. Just search inside the ’Add Plugins’ screen (Plugins > Add New) for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.
(RSS plugins)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for configuration instructions, or contact us if you need help configuring plugins.
Here are some auto blogging plugins for WordPress that let you automatically add new using feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico – WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an auto blogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from selected RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize them into campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin that offers 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 or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer WP Plugin)
RSS Post Importer allows you to syndicate, curate, import, 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 entire content of each item in your feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed WP Plugin)
With POWr RSS, you can automatically combine and display content from a number of different RSS feeds.
This plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust feed spacing and size, use custom fonts, borders, colors, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in every language.
The premium plugin version contains many additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes WordPress Plugin)
The WP Pipes plugin 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 functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter, export posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a versatile Atom/RSS syndication plugin 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.
FeedWordPress can be used to create aggregator site (sites that combine and display posts from various different sources), or bring together all your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Twitter, YouTube, or other online services, into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog)
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 your feed URL, give your feed a name (for admin purposes) and select the blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages – WordPress Plugin)
By default, WordPress only posts posts in your RSS feed. Use a plugin like RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed and not just posts.
For more details, go here:
Using WordPress RSS – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WordPress Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of your post comments in addition to making RSS feeds of your posts available to online users.
You can inspect this by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ widget area of your sidebar menu …
(WordPress Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in the Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items viewed using Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on which browser you use …
(Comments feed items as seen on Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the comments feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feed reader …
(Paste your URL of your comments feed 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 WP site installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Creating Feeds For Specific Items
Being able to select an RSS feed for individual 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 displaying an RSS feed for an individual post item is shown below:
(RSS Feed For Single Post Item)
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 add “/feed” to the end of your post address, WordPress will return the comments left on your post, not the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Using Category Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in syndicating content from specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
With WordPress, you can create separate category feeds.
Just use the format shown below:
(WordPress RSS feed format for post categories)
Copy the category URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your category link address …)
Append “feed” to the end of it …
(RSS feed format for post categories)
Your feed now only includes content posted under that particular 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 An RSS Feeds List
You can create an RSS feeds list that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in specific categories, just like large online publishers …
(Provide Your Own List Of Feeds On Your Site)
All you need to do is link an icon to the URL of your feed and then create a table or a list of your individual feeds on a separate page …
(RSS icon. Source: public-domain-photos.com)
For a detailed tutorial about creating tables in WordPress, go here:
RSS Feeds – Additional Notes
RSS feeds can be customized in several different ways, such as adding videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows you to configure various feed types without touching code. For example, here are some of the kinds of feed formats you can use and how to create your feeds …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create With WordPress RSS)
For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the image above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Feed that includes your latest post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Contains the latest comments posted on your website
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed containing single items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: RSS Feed for the latest comments made on individual post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Displays the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/08/20/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/04/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/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: Includes the latest entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One last thing …
Remember to let your site users know that they can subscribe to your RSS feed. Place a ’subscribe to RSS’ button in a visible location …
(Promote your feeds!)
Keep in mind that online users will only subscribe to your content if you provide your subscribers with high-quality information that will add great value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Easily add someone else’s content and get other users to share your content with 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 feed 🙂
Additional RSS Resources:
- Feed Graphics – Visit an online resource site like Iconspedia or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “rss buttons”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download Free RSS images.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information and resources about RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – General information about RSS.
- WordPress Codex: WordPress Feeds – WordPress documentation and reference repository. Go here for more information about WordPress RSS feeds.
Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to display someone else’s content on 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 WordPress CMS platform 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