No matter what service or product you provide or what industry your business is a part of, it’s important to provide quality information to your site or blog readers. For example, if you provide medical services, you may want to publish useful information from the health department, such as news or updates on medical research, health and fitness advice, etc.
The problem with creating this type of information, however, is that it takes a great deal of work and resources. You have to sort through, gather, and organize a ton of information, check your facts, write and edit content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually make sure that this information is 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 entirely beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a much simpler way to continually provide your site readers with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - One of the simplest ways to provide your subscribers with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – What Is It?
- RSS, which, according to some stands for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly known as Really Simple Syndication. It it is also called a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
- When a user subscribes to an RSS feed, they no longer have to manually check the source website for content updates. Instead, their browser constantly monitors the site and keeps feed subscribers up-to-date.
- Feeds are typically used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog post items, news, video playlists, etc., to which any user can choose to subscribe.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML (XML = Extensible Markup Language) document that includes either full or summarized text along with metadata such as published date, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then view any updates posted on these sites through a feedreader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate their content automatically.
- Feeds can be made available in different formats and 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 compatibility with different machines and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also let you combine several RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from various sites.
In this in-depth article, we show you where 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 sites to your site via RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a very powerful way of sharing content online. Feeds provide a simple and easy way for web users to receive the latest information published on different websites.
First, let’s take a look at content syndication.
Media publications rely heavily on syndication to publish stories from content sources all around the world.
Content syndication allows online newspapers to deliver readers stories on all kinds of topics as well as the latest newsworthy content from around the planet without actually having to hire and set up additional reporters everywhere in the world …
(Digital news publishing agencies and highly-visited online media publications use syndication to publish stories from news sources all around the world.)
Syndication is used to share information legitimately. Online newspapers syndicate information using feeds …
(Online newspapers syndicate newsworthy content using feeds)
Most sites actually would like you to syndicate their content. Syndicating content 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 can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Many digital content publishing agencies and major online media publications contain an RSS feed section (look for links 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.) …
(Most leading online media publications have an RSS feed section. Image: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section brings up a directory of different RSS feed sections of the site …
(RSS feeds section. Image: nytimes.com)
These RSS feed items give you access to information from different sections of the website (e.g. technology news, sports news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
An RSS feed directory can also include feed subdirectories …
(RSS Feed section. Image: latimes.com feeds)
Note: An RSS feed is just a URL. To use RSS feeds, all you need to do is copy the URLs and paste these into a program that can process the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Using RSS Feeds
Syndicating content from someone else’s site on your website has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s site additional exposure online and helps your site by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Website And Yours!)
While adding feeds from another site is a great way to add content to your site that you don’t have to create, it’s worth keeping in mind that there are benefits in getting other sites to use your content.
When other websites and blogs syndicate your content, this gives you the opportunity to get increased exposure online and drive new visitors …
(Try to get visitors to syndicate content using your feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress RSS Feed – About
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing other online users to easily syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on your theme, there are a number of ways to access the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to display in a standard or custom menu, scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(WordPress Meta widget)
2) You can also find links and buttons on certain WordPress themes that allow your visitors to copy your feed.
For example, in the screenshot below, a visitor can simply copy the feed URL by clicking on on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy RSS URLs to your clipboard from “subscribe” buttons)
3) On many websites and again, depending on which theme you have installed, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Follow Us, Links, or Share toolbar section …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Share, Follow Us, or Link To Us section)
4) You can also view your RSS feed by simply typing your site’s URL into a web browser and adding “/feed” after the URL, e.g.:
- http://www.yourdomain.com/feed
- http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/feed (if your WordPress installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up your WordPress RSS page …
(RSS feed items as seen on Firefox web browser)
Note that your feed items will display differently depending on the web browser you use …
(RSS items viewed on Chrome web browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
To specify how many posts you would like displayed in your Feeds section, go to your Reading Settings section and enter the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(WordPress Reading Settings – Number of syndication feed items field)
The feed section will show as many recent posts as you have specified section …
(The feed will show as many recent posts as you have specified in the Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
The other setting in your Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display posts as full text, or just as a summary …
(WordPress Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’: ‘Full text’ or ‘Summary’)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …
(Post excerpts can affect how your feed content will appear)
To learn more about WordPress Post excerpts, see this tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, 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 can translate feeds into readable content.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, go to a website or blog and search for their RSS feed icon using any of the methods described earlier …
(Search for a ’subscribe to feed’ link or button. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into a feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image Source: Feedreader)
Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process RSS feeds and convert these into human-readable content.
Adding An RSS Feed To WordPress Sites
Let’s show you how to add content from other website’s RSS feeds to yours.
Adding Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you can easily display on your site the latest updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply importing their feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site such as 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 navigation area)
copy the feed URL from a site that publishes content that you would like to display on your sidebar to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
Next, paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content from the RSS feed 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:
How To Add Feed Content To Your WordPress Posts
What if you want to add content from RSS feeds to a post instead of your sidebar?
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Just search on the WordPress plugin repository for RSS Post, 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 if you need help with plugin configuration.
Here are a number of auto blogging plugins for WordPress that let you automatically add posts using feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin For WordPress)
WPeMatico is an autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds of your choice.
You can manage all the feeds you import and organize them into categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and autoblogging plugin for WordPress that offers additional functionality with a number of premium add-ons.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on allows you to add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress)
The RSS Post Importer plugin lets you curate, import, syndicate, merge and display full text feeds on your WordPress website or blog.
The plugin fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full content of each item in your feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed WordPress Plugin)
POWr RSS lets you combine and display content from various RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust feed priority, use custom borders, colors, fonts, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in every language.
The premium edition of POWr contains many additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, accept or reject posts, 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 allows you to 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/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 syndication plugin for WordPress content.
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 FeedWordPress to create aggregator sites, or display all your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Twitter, YouTube, or other online services, in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog Plugin)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in the URL of your feed, name your feed (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 WP Plugin)
Install RSS Includes Pages if you would like 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:
Using WordPress RSS – 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 the latest comments posted on your site.
To see this feed, go to the ‘Meta’ widget on your sidebar menu (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) and click on Comments RSS …
(Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors and users can be seen in the Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed entries displayed on Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on which web browser you are using …
(Comments feed entries viewed using Google Chrome)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into a feedreader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
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 subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Accessing RSS Feeds For Specific Posts
Being able to use an RSS feed for single post items 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 single post items is shown below:
(Single Post Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the post URL, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of your post URI, WordPress will return the comments associated with your post, not actual content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Using Post 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 all of your site’s content.
If your website or blog publishes content under various categories, WordPress allows you to offer readers a separate RSS feed for each different category.
Just use the format below:
(Feed format for category)
Select and copy the category link address …
(Copy the category link address to your clipboard …)
Append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(WP post categories feed format)
The category feed will now only display content posted under this category …
(Category 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 – Provide An RSS Feeds Directory
You can set up your own feeds page that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in specific categories …
(Provide A Directory Of RSS Feeds For Your Subscribers)
Link an image to category (or single post) feeds and then create a table or a list of all your category feeds on a new page …
(RSS button graphic. Image: public-domain-photos.com)
To learn more about adding tables to WordPress posts and pages, go here:
RSS Feeds – Notes
You can customize your RSS in several ways, such as adding videos and images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows different RSS feed configurations without code editing skills. For example, here are just some of the kinds of custom feeds you can display …
(Different Custom Feeds You Can Create With WordPress RSS)
For your convenience, here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown 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 – Contains the latest comments posted on your blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed containing specific posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/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 latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/05/18/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/05/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – RSS feed that includes latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Displays the latest post 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 …
It’s a good idea to promote your RSS feeds. Place your ’subscribe to RSS’ link or button in a visible location …
(Remember to make your feeds visible your feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that online users will only subscribe to your content if you provide useful content. In other words, provide high-quality information that will add great value to their sites and benefit their users.
(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 RSS feed 🙂
Resources:
- RSS Feed Icons – Visit a site like feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss icon”, etc.) for sites that contain downloadable RSS graphic elements.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization with three primary duties: publishing RSS specifications, guiding developers who create RSS applications and helping the public gain a better understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – Learn more about the benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex: WordPress Feeds – WordPress software documentation and information site. Go here for additional information about using WordPress feeds.
Congratulations! Now you know where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, and how to add content from other websites to your site using RSS feeds.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you improve your business online. To read more about using the WordPress software please see our related posts section.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)