No matter what service or product your business provides, it’s important to provide high-quality information on your site or blog that better educates, informs, or improves engagement with your visitors. For example, if your business provides insurance services, it’s not a bad idea to include the latest information from government departments, such as news and updates on statistical findings, insurance tips, etc.
The problem with creating this type of information, however, is that it requires a great deal of effort and resources. You have to sift 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 make sure that this information is continually kept 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.
Fortunately, there is a simpler way to regularly provide your site readers with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is one of the simplest ways to provide your users with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Is RSS?
- RSS, which, according to some experts is short for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly known as Really Simple Syndication. It can also be called a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
- After a user subscribes to a website’s feed, they no longer have to manually check the website for content updates. Instead, their browser will continually monitor the content and keep feed subscribers automatically updated.
- Feeds are often used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog entries, news headlines, video lists, etc., to which any user can choose to subscribe.
- You can view the content of RSS feeds using software-based programs called feedreaders, or aggregators. Feed readers are used to access new content published on websites and syndicate this content (and updates made to this content) to other online properties.
- Feeds can be made available in different formats and 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 compatibility with different devices, feed readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also allow you to combine multiple RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from various sites.
This article explains 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.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful and legitimate method used for sharing web content. RSS Feeds provide web users with a way to keep up with the latest information posted on websites and blogs they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at how content syndication is used.
Online media publications rely on content syndication to publish news from news sources around the world.
Content syndication allows news reporting agencies to deliver readers up-to-the-minute news items and newsworthy stories from all over the planet without having to post additional writers to every location in the world …
(News publishing agencies use syndication to publish newsworthy items from other news agencies all around the planet.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing content. online media publications syndicate their information using news feeds …
(Content syndication is used by global media publications to share content with other news publications)
Most sites actually would like you to share their information. Syndicating content not only allows high-quality information to be shared, but it can also drive visitors back to the site that published the original content being syndicated. This creates links that can drive traffic back to their site.
Many news reporting agencies and major sites have a feed section (look for links in the navigation menu that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “miami herald rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many digital content agencies provide links to a feed section. Image Source: Sydney Morning Herald )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link brings up a list of different RSS feed sections of the site …
(RSS feeds section. Source: New York Times RSS)
These RSS feeds let readers access information from different sections of the site (e.g. technology news, arts news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
Feed sections can also include further feed subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Image: latimes.com)
Note: An RSS feed is only a URL. All you have to do to use an RSS feed is to copy the URL and paste it into a program that can process the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Using Feeds
Adding content from someone else’s website or blog on your site has some obvious benefits. It not only helps someone else’s site, it also helps your site by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(Content Syndication - Benefits)
While adding a feed 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 there are benefits in getting other websites to use YOUR content.
When other sites syndicate your content, this gives you the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive more web traffic …
(Try to get visitors to syndicate your content … it will help to increase your web traffic!)
WordPress RSS
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on your WP theme, there are a few ways to access your RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget on the sidebar or footer menu …
(Your feed will display the number of posts as you have specified in the Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in the WP Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display articles as full text, or just a summary …
(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 feeds display)
If you need help Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, all you have to do to view the content of an RSS feed is to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into 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 content you want to subscribe to and search for a ’subscribe to feed’ button …
(Look for an RSS feed button. 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 feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feedreader to view the feed content. Source: Feedreader)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS feeds.
Adding RSS Feeds To Your Site
Let’s show you how to add content from another website or blog’s RSS feeds to yours.
How To Add RSS Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is in, you can add to your site the latest content from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply adding their feed. You can easily 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 content sourced from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu …
(Add an RSS feed to your sidebar)
copy the RSS feed from a website or blog containing content that you want to add to your site …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
Next, go to your Widgets panel and paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(Widgets Area – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Load your website in your web browser. The content from the RSS feed should now appear on 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 RSS Feeds To Posts
What if you want to add content from an RSS feed to WordPress posts instead of a sidebar?
You can do this using plugins. Just search on WordPress.org plugin repository for RSS feed, RSS feed to post, etc.
(WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for setup instructions, or contact us for assistance configuring plugins.
The plugins listed below are useful for adding feed content to posts, or “autoblog” (An auto blog is a blog with content that is automatically gathered and compiled from RSS feeds):
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico – WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an autoblogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds of your choice.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange feeds according to categories and campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin For WordPress)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and auto blogging plugin for WordPress with a number of premium add-ons for extended functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on lets you 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)
The RSS Post Importer plugin lets you import, syndicate, curate, merge and display full text RSS feeds on your WordPress website or blog.
RSS Post Importer fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full article content of each feed item as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)
The POWr RSS Feed plugin lets you automatically combine and display content from various RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust the priority of different feeds, use custom borders, fonts, colors, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in any language.
The premium version contains a number of additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin For WordPress)
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 other sources.
This plugin provides loads of 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 more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress)
FeedWordPress is a simple and flexible 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.
You can use this FeedWordPress to create aggregator site (sites that bring together content from multiple sources), or bring together all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Facebook, Flickr, or other online services, 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 the URL of your feed, give your feed a name (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 and Custom Post Types)
The RSS Includes Pages plugin modifies your default WordPress RSS feed to include pages in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to displaying feeds of your posts, WordPress also displays RSS feeds of your latest post comments.
You can see this by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ section of your sidebar (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) …
(Comments RSS)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors and users display in the Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed items seen with a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on which web browser you use …
(Comments feed items viewed with Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feed reader …
(Paste your comments feed URL into a feed reader to view the content. Source: 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 WordPress site installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Accessing Single Item RSS Feeds
Being able to create an RSS feed for specific posts 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 making an RSS feed for single posts is shown below:
(RSS Feed For Individual Post Item)
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 a post URI, WordPress will return the comments made on your post, not the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only want to subscribe to content from a particular category. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
With WordPress, you can create category feeds.
All you have to do is use the format below:
(WordPress RSS feed format for category)
Select and copy the category URL …
(Copy the category URL …)
Append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(WordPress RSS feed format for category)
Your feed will now only include content specific to that category …
(Category-specific 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 Directory Of RSS Feeds For Subscribers
You can publish a feeds directory that allows readers to subscribe to specific categories …
(Provide A Page Of RSS Feeds For Your Visitors)
Link an RSS button image like the one shown below to each category feed and then create a table or a list of all feeds on a new page …
(RSS icon. Image Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
We have written a detailed tutorial about inserting tables into WordPress posts here:
WordPress RSS – 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 a number of feed types that do not require code editing skills. Here are some examples of feeds you can display …
(Different Feed Formats You Can Create With WordPress RSS)
Below are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the diagram above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Includes your latest 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 for a single post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Contains the latest comments made on a post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Contains latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/05/02/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/05/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Contains the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Contains the latest posts for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Feed displaying the latest entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One more thing …
Remember to let your site users know that they can subscribe to your RSS feed. Make sure you place your ’subscribe to RSS’ button somewhere visible …
(Remember to promote your feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that other sites 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.
(Add great content from other sites and get other sites to share your content online 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 Feed Graphics – Visit online resource sites like Iconspedia.com or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “RSS logos”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS images and icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization responsible for publishing the RSS specification, guiding developers who create RSS applications and helping to further the understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – Learn more about the history and benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex: Feeds – WordPress software documentation repository. Visit this site to learn more about using feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know 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 via their RSS feed.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you improve your business online. To read more about using the WordPress web site management software please click on links to visit our related posts section.
***
"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum