No matter what your business sells or what industry you belong to, providing quality information to your site users is important. For example, if you provide travel-related services, you may want to include information from government departments and foreign travel offices, such as news and updates on travel warnings, advice from consular offices, etc.

The problem with providing this kind of information, however, is that it involves a lot of effort and expertise. 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 continually make sure that this information is up-to-date. As you can imagine, this is not only a huge amount of work but most of the information you are dealing with is completely beyond your control.

Thankfully, there is an easier way to provide your site visitors with expert, up-to-date information.

It’s called RSS …

(RSS - One of the simplest ways to provide your users with up-to-date information)

The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS

RSS – Basic Information

• RSS stands for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred, Really Simple Syndication. It it is also referred to as a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
• When users subscribe to a website’s feed, they no longer have to physically visit and check the source website for content updates. Instead, their web browser will continually monitor the feed and keep feed subscribers automatically updated.
• Feeds are often used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as new blog entries, news headlines, audio lists, etc., which any user can then subscribe to.
• Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML 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 websites through a feedreader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate their information.
• There are different feed formats and these can be read by different feed readers. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom feeds and RDF (Resource Description Framework) feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure that feeds are compatible with different devices, feed readers, and programs.
• Many sites and software applications also let you combine many RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from various sites.

In this in-depth article, we explain where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, and how to display content from other websites on your site using their RSS feed.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds

Content syndication is a powerful (and legitimate) way of sharing web content. Feeds provide a way for web users to receive the latest information published on different sites.

First, let’s take a look at content syndication.

Many news reporting agencies and many popular online publications rely heavily on syndication to publish newsworthy content from content sources all around the world.

Syndication allows most leading news reporting agencies to deliver readers fresh news items and content of interest from all over the globe without having to hire and set up additional news reporting agencies in every location around the world …

(Media publications use content syndication to publish newsworthy content from news sources around the world.)

Syndication is used to share content legitimately. Online newspapers syndicate news stories using news feeds …

(Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing newsworthy content)

Most sites actually want you to share their information. Syndicating content not only allows information to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the original site responsible for creating and publishing the content being syndicated. This provides websites with new opportunities to generate significant web visitors.

Many online newspapers include a feed section (look for navigation links that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “times of india rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …

(Many news reporting agencies and major content sites contain an RSS feed section. Image Source: smh.com.au )

Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link will bring up a list of RSS feeds for different areas of the site …

(A website’s list of RSS feeds. Source: NY Times)

gives you access to different areas of the website (e.g. technology news, entertainment news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)

A feed list can also contain further subcategory feeds …

(RSS Feed section. Image Source: Los Angeles Times RSS)

Note: A feed is simply a URL. To use feeds, all you need to do is to copy the URLs and paste these into software that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.

Content Syndication – Benefits

Adding content from someone else’s website on your site has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s site additional exposure online and helps you by freeing you up from having to create that content …

(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Website And Yours!)

While adding a feed 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 use your content.

When other sites syndicate your RSS feed, you have the opportunity to get increased exposure online and drive new visitors …

(Get visitors to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help to increase your exposure online!)

WordPress RSS Feed – About

By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing other online users to easily syndicate your content on their sites.

Depending on your WP theme, there are a number of ways to get the WordPress RSS feed:

1) If your theme displays the Meta widget on your navigation menu …

(The feed page will display 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

The other setting in the Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display each article in a feed as full text, or as a summary …

(WP Settings – Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)

Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …

(Post excerpts affect how content in your feeds appear)

If you need help Post excerpts, go here:

• How To Use WordPress Post Excerpts

View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds

As mentioned earlier, all that’s required to view a feed’s content is to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into an application that reads and translates feeds into readable content for humans.

Let’s see how this works.

First, go to a website or blog and look for a ’subscribe to feed’ icon or link using any of the methods described earlier …

(Look for an RSS feed section. Image source: http://www.yourcoffeeguru.com)

Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …

(Copy the feed URL to the clipboard)

If you want, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feed reader …

(Paste your URL of your feed into a feed reader to view the content. Source: Feedreader.com)

Like feed readers, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds.

How To Add Feeds To WordPress Sites

In the example below, we’ll add content from other sites to your WordPress site.

Adding RSS Feeds To Your Sidebar

As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are part of, you can add to your site the latest news and updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing their feed. You can use RSS feeds to 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 your sidebar …

(Add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar area)

First, Go to a website that publishes content that you would like to add to your sidebar and copy the feed URL …

(Copy the URL of your feed)

Next, paste the feed into an RSS widget …

(RSS Widget)

To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:

• How To Add And Configure WordPress Widgets In Your Sidebar

Load your website in your web browser. The content from the RSS feed will now display in the 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 Set Up Webmaster Accounts

How To Add Feed Content To Posts

Can you add content from an RSS feed to posts? You sure can!

You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Search on WordPress.org plugin repository for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.

(’Add Plugins’ screen)

Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for setup instructions, or contact us if you need help configuring plugins.

Here are a few plugins that allow you to add RSS feeds to your pages and posts:

WPeMatico

(WPeMatico WordPress Plugin)

WPeMatico is an easy to use plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds that you select.

You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize them according to categories and campaigns.

For more details, go here:

• WPeMatico – WordPress Plugin

WP RSS Aggregator

(WP RSS Aggregator WordPress Plugin)

WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and autoblogging plugin for WordPress that offers extended functionality with a number of premium extensions (add-ons).

For example, the Feed to Post extension for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin is an advanced, feature-rich importer that allows you to autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into WordPress posts.

For more details, go here:

• WP RSS Aggregator Plugin

RSS Post Importer

(RSS Post Importer)

RSS Post Importer lets you import, curate, syndicate, merge and display full-text feeds on your WordPress blog.

The plugin will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full content of every item in your feed as a separate post.

For more details, go here:

• RSS Post Importer WordPress Plugin

Powr RSS Feed

(Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin)

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 images, videos, and article content, adjust feed size and spacing, use custom fonts, colors, borders, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on all tablets, phones, and computers and supports text in all languages.

The premium version of this plugin contains many additional features.

For more details, go here:

• Powr RSS Feed

WP Pipes

(WP Pipes Plugin)

WP Pipes 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 features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook, export posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to new levels.

For more details, go here:

• WP Pipes

FeedWordPress

(FeedWordPress WP Plugin)

FeedWordPress provides simple and flexible Atom/RSS syndication options for WordPress site 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 plugin to create aggregator sites, or display all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Facebook, YouTube, or other online services, in one place.

For more details, go here:

• FeedWordPress

Autoblog

(Autoblog by WPMUDev – WordPress Plugin)

Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in your feed URL, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select a blog to post content to.

For more details, go here:

• Autoblog

RSS Includes Pages

(RSS Includes Pages WP Plugin)

Install RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types to include pages in your RSS feed and not just posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).

For more details, go here:

• RSS Includes Pages Plugin For WordPress

Using WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips

Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds

WordPress makes available RSS feeds of comments posted on your site in addition to making RSS feeds of your latest posts available to online users.

You can inspect the comments in your feed by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ widget area of your sidebar (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) …

(WordPress Comments RSS)

Comments posted on your site by visitors display in the Comments RSS page …

(Comments feed entries displayed on a Firefox web browser)

Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on the browser you use …

(RSS comments feed items viewed with Google Chrome)

Again, you can check what the comments feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feed reader …

(Paste your feed URL into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image 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 – Specific Post Item RSS Feeds

Being able to use an RSS feed for specific post items can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific items 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 a specific post item is shown below:

(Specific Post Feed)

To create the above feed, copy the post URI, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.

(Single Post RSS Feed)

Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of the post URL, WordPress will return the comments left on that post, not actual post content itself.

Tip #3 – Using Category Feeds

Some your site visitors may only want to subscribe to content from a specific post category. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.

With WordPress, you can easily create individual category feeds.

All you have to do is use the format below:

(Format for WP category RSS feed)

Select and copy the category link address …

(Copy the category URL to your clipboard …)

Add “feed” to the end of it …

(Use this format for WordPress post categories feed)

The category RSS feed will now only contain content assigned to this 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 – Create Your Own Feeds Directory

You can set up a page of RSS feeds on your site that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in the categories they are interested in, just like large authoritative sites …

(Set Up A List Of Feeds For Your Subscribers)

Link an icon to each category feed and then create a table or a list of all your feeds on a separate page …

(RSS button graphic. Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)

If you need help with adding tables to WordPress, see this step-by-step tutorial:

• How To Insert Tables Into Pages And Posts With WordPress

WordPress RSS – Notes

RSS feeds can be customized in various different ways, such as adding videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.

WordPress allows various feed configurations without editing code. Below are examples of some of the kinds of custom feeds you can use and how to create these feeds …

(WordPress RSS – Feed Formats)

For your convenience, here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed above:

• Feed Type: All Posts
• Description: Content feed – Feed that displays your latest post entries
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/

• Feed Type: All Comments
• Description: Comments feed – Feed that contains the latest comments left on your website or blog
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/

• Feed Type: Individual Posts
• Description: RSS feed that displays single post entries
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/

• Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
• Description: Feed that displays the latest comments made on a single post
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Day – Includes latest post entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/07/29/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Month – RSS feed that includes latest post entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/04/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Year – Includes latest entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/feed/

• Feed Type: Search Results
• Description: Displays latest entries for a search query
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/

• Feed Type: Custom Post Type
• Description: Contains the latest items for a custom type (e.g. book)
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book

One more thing …

Remember to promote your RSS feed. Place your subscribe button somewhere visible …

(Promote your feeds!)

Also, keep in mind that other website owners will only syndicate your content if you provide your subscribers with very high-quality information that will add value to their sites and benefit their visitors.

(Easily add content to your site and get other users to syndicate your content 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 🙂

RSS – Additional Resources:

• Download RSS Buttons – Visit Iconspedia or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss logo download”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable RSS images and icons.
• RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here to learn more about RSS.
• Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about the benefits of using RSS.
• WordPress Codex – WordPress documentation and information. Go here for more information about using RSS feeds in WordPress.

Congratulations! Now you know how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to add someone else’s content to your site via RSS feeds.

Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To read more about using WordPress please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.

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