No matter what your business provides or what industry you belong to, it’s important to provide high-quality information on your site or blog that better educates, informs, and engages your visitors. For example, if your business provides medical services, it’s a good idea to include the latest information from the health department, such as news and updates on medical research, health and fitness tips, etc.
To create and publish this kind of information, however, requires a lot of work and expertise. You have to do a lot of data gathering, researching and organizing, fact-checking, writing and editing 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 not only involves a huge amount of work but most of the information you are dealing with is well beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is an easier way to continually provide your readers with up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - One of the easiest ways to provide your blog subscribers with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – Basic Definition And Information
- RSS, which, according to some is an acronym for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly referred to now as Really Simple Syndication. It is often called a “feed” or “news feed”.
- RSS allows content publishers to automatically syndicate their content to save readers time from having to keep revisiting their site to check for updates.
- RSS feeds are also used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as new blog entries, news, audios, etc., which users can choose to subscribe to.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is a structured XML document that includes either full or summarized text along with other metadata such as published date, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then browse any updates posted on these sites through an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate their web content automatically.
- Feeds can be made available in different formats and read by different aggregators. 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 devices and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also let you combine many RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from a number of sites.
In this detailed guide, you are going to learn 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 via RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful and legitimate way to share web content. RSS Feeds provide online users with an easy way to receive the latest information posted on different websites.
First, let’s look at content syndication.
Global media publications rely on content syndication to publish stories from other news agencies all around the world.
Syndication allows most leading news publishing agencies to deliver readers stories on all kinds of topics from all around the planet without having to employ and send more reporting agencies to every place around the world …
(News reporting agencies and many highly-visited online media publications use syndication to publish news and stories from news sources all around the world.)
Syndication is used to share newsworthy content legitimately with other sites. Online newspapers syndicate news stories using news feeds …
(Content syndication is used by global media publications to share information with other publications)
Most sites actually want you to share their content. Content syndication not only allows great information to be shared, but it also drives visitors back to the site that published the original content being syndicated. This provides websites with additional opportunities to generate significant web visitors.
Most leading online media publications provide links to an RSS feed section (look for links in their navigation menu that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “courier rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most leading online media publications have an RSS feed section. Image Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section will bring up a list of RSS feeds for different areas of the site …
(RSS feeds directory. Source: New York Times RSS)
These RSS feeds give readers access to content from different sections of the site (e.g. business news, sports news, science news, etc.)
A feed list can also contain subcategory feeds …
(RSS Feed section. Image Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: A feed is only a URL. All you need to do to use feeds is copy the URLs and paste these into a program that can process the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
RSS Feeds – Benefits
Adding someone else’s content to your site has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s business additional exposure online and helps you by freeing you up from having to create this 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 that you don’t have to create, it’s a great idea to try and get other sites to syndicate your content.
When other websites syndicate your feed, this gives you the opportunity to gain more exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Try to get other website owners to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)
WordPress RSS – About
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on your WP theme, there are a few ways to access your RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to display on your sidebar or footer menu, just scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(Access your WordPress RSS feed in the Meta section)
2) You can also find links and buttons on certain WordPress themes that allow your visitors to copy your RSS feed.
In the screenshot below, for example, a visitor can simply copy the RSS feed URL by right-clicking and copying on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy feed URLs to your clipboard from “subscribe to RSS” buttons)
3) On some sites and again, depending on your WordPress site’s theme, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Share, Links, or Stay In Touch toolbar …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Links, Follow Us, or Social Share section)
4) You can also view your WordPress RSS 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 website or blog has been installed in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up a page containing your WordPress RSS …
(RSS content viewed on Firefox)
Note that your feed items will display differently depending on which browser you use …
(RSS feed items seen with Google Chrome)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
Specify how many posts you want to show in your RSS section in the Reading Settings section. Select the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(WordPress Reading Settings – Syndication items field)
The feed will display as many recent items you have specified in the Reading Settings section …
(The feed will show the number of posts as you have specified in the WP Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in the Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display articles as full text, or just as a summary …
(Settings – Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for each article in your RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts affect how feeds display)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using WordPress Post excerpts here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, all that’s required to view a feed’s content is 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 take a look at how this works.
First, find a website whose feed you want to subscribe to and look for a ’subscribe to feed’ link or icon …
(Look for a ’subscribe to feed’ icon. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL)
If you want, 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. Image Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process RSS feeds and convert these into content that can be read by your subscribers.
How To Add An RSS Feed To Your WP Site
In the example below, we’ll add content from another website’s RSS feeds to yours.
How To Add Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is in, you can easily display on your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply importing 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 area …
(Let’s add content from an RSS feed to your sidebar)
First, Go to a site containing content that you want to add to your sidebar and copy its RSS feed URL …
(Copy the URL of your feed to the clipboard)
Next, go to your Widgets screen and paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(Widgets Section – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Load your website in 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:
How To Add Content From RSS Feeds To Posts
What if you want to add content from an RSS feed to a post instead of the sidebar?
You can easily do this using plugins. Just search on the WordPress plugin repository for RSS feed, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ screen)
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 few WordPress plugins that allow you to add RSS feeds to your pages and posts:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds of your choice.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and arrange feeds according to categories and campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and autoblogging WordPress plugin with a number of premium add-ons for additional functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on allows you to autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into WordPress posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer)
RSS Post Importer lets you import, syndicate, curate, merge and display full-text feeds on your WordPress site.
RSS Post Importer fetches an RSS feed and publishes the entire content of each feed item as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin)
With the POWr RSS Feed plugin, you can combine and display content from multiple sources using RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust feed spacing and size, use custom colors, fonts, borders, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in every language.
The premium version contains a number of additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, manually accept or reject posts, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin)
WP Pipes is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.
This plugin provides loads of features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn, export WordPress 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.
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 sites, or bring together all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, LinkedIn, YouTube, or other online services, in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in your feed URL, give the feed a name of your choosing (for admin purposes) and select a blog that you want it to post to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages WP Plugin)
By default, WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed. Use RSS Includes Pages if you want to include pages in your RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Using WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to making RSS feeds of your latest posts available, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of your latest post comments.
To view this feed, locate the ‘Meta’ widget area on your sidebar (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) and click on Comments RSS …
(Comments RSS)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed entries as seen on Firefox web browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on the web browser you are using …
(Comments feed entries as seen on Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into a feed reader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feed reader to view the 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 website or blog has been installed in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Accessing Specific Item Feeds
Being able to use an RSS feed for individual post items can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific items 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 specific posts is shown below:
(Specific Post Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the web address of your post, 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 associated with your post, not the content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Using Post Category Feeds
Some your site visitors may only want to syndicate content from specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
If your website or blog publishes content under various categories, you can easily provide a separate RSS feed for each category.
Just use the format shown below:
(Feed format for category)
Select and copy the category link address to your clipboard …
(Copy the category link address …)
Append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(RSS feed format for post categories)
Your RSS feed will now only contain content posted in this particular 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 Feeds List
You can set up a feeds directory that allows readers to subscribe only to content in the categories that interest them, just like the larger authoritative sites do …
(Create Your Own Feeds Directory)
All you need to do is link an icon to a category feed URL and then create a table or a list of all your feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button. Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
We have created a detailed tutorial about inserting tables into WordPress content here:
WordPress RSS – Notes
You can customize your feeds in various different ways, such as adding images and videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows a number of RSS feed configurations that do not require editing code. Here are some examples of feed formats you can use and how to format the feeds …
(WordPress RSS – Feed Formats)
Here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed 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 site
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed that displays individual post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Includes the latest comments made on single items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/09/03/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/05/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Feed containing latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Contains latest items for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: RSS feed containing the latest post entries 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 let your visitors know that they can subscribe to your RSS feeds. Make sure you place your ’subscribe to RSS’ buttons in a visible location …
(Encourage visitors to syndicate your feeds!)
Keep in mind that online users will only syndicate your content if you provide your subscribers with high-quality content that will add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Add someone else’s content and get other sites to syndicate your content using 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 🙂
Additional RSS Resources:
- Feed Buttons – Visit an online resource site like FeedIcons or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “rss logo”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS graphic elements.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization responsible for publishing RSS specifications, guiding developers who create RSS applications and broadening the public understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about the history and benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress.org/Feeds – WordPress documentation and reference site. Go here for additional information about WordPress RSS feeds.
Congratulations! Now you know 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 websites to your site via their RSS feed.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To learn more about using WordPress please see our related posts section.
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"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)