No matter what your business sells or what industry you are a part of, you need to provide high-value information to your site or blog users. For example, if you provide health-related 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 expertise. You have to sort through, research, and organize a ton of information, check your sources for accuracy, write and edit 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 is not only a huge amount 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 expert, up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the easiest way to provide your site visitors with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Is RSS?
- RSS is short for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred, Really Simple Syndication. It it is also 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.
- Feeds are also used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog post items, news, videos, etc., to which other users can then subscribe.
- You can view the content of an RSS feed using programs called feedreaders, or aggregators. Aggregators are used to find content on all different kinds of topics and distribute this content to many online properties.
- There are different feed formats and these can be read by different feed readers. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom Publishing Protocol) feeds and RDF 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 tools also allow you to combine many RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates sourced from a number of websites.
In this article, we explain where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, and how to add someone else’s content to your site via their RSS feed.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a very powerful (and legitimate) method used for sharing web content. Feeds provide online users with a simple way to keep up with the latest information published on different sites.
First, let’s take a look at content syndication.
Many news reporting agencies and highly-visited online media publications rely on content syndication to publish stories from other news agencies around the world.
Content syndication allows news reporting agencies to deliver readers interesting stories and up-to-the-minute headlines from all around the globe without having to employ and set up more staff in every place around the world …
(News reporting agencies rely on content syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies around the globe.)
Syndication is used to share content legitimately. online media publications syndicate their news stories using news feeds …
(Content syndication is used by online newspapers to share information with other publications)
Most sites actually want you to syndicate their information. Syndicating content not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the original site responsible for publishing the content being syndicated. This provides websites with additional opportunities to generate significant web traffic.
Major sites contain a feed section (look for menu links that say “RSS” 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.) …
(Leading online newspapers provide links to an RSS feed section. Image: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section will bring up a list of RSS feeds for different areas of the site …
(A website’s directory of different feeds. Source: nytimes.com)
These RSS feeds allow you to access content from different areas of the site (e.g. business news, entertainment news, jobs, etc.)
An RSS directory can also include subcategories …
(An RSS feed directory can also contain feed subdirectories. Image Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: A feed is simply a URL. All you need to do to use RSS feeds is to copy the URLs and paste these into an application that can translate the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Content Syndication
Syndicating someone else’s content on your website has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s business additional exposure online and helps your site by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Business And Yours!)
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 sites to syndicate your content.
When other websites syndicate content using your feed, this gives you the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive new visitors …
(Get users to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)
Your WordPress RSS
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on the WP theme you have installed, there are a number of ways to get your RSS feed:
1) If your theme displays the Meta widget in a navigation menu …
(Your feed will display the number of items you have specified in the 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 your posts as full text, or just as a summary …
(WordPress Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for posts in a RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts affect how a feed will appear)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using Post excerpts in WordPress here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, all you have to do 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 show you how this works.
First, go to a website or blog and search for their RSS feed button …
(Search for a ‘subscribe’ icon. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL to the clipboard)
If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into an online feed reader …
(Paste your URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the content. Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process RSS feeds.
Adding A Feed To WordPress
Let’s show you how to add content from other websites to your site.
How To Add Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is a part of, you could display on your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply adding 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 your sidebar …
(Let’s add an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar area)
First, Find a website that publishes content that you want to display on your site and copy the RSS feed …
(Copy the URL of your feed to the clipboard)
Next, go to your WordPress Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets and paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Panel – RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Load your website in your web browser. The content from the RSS feed should now appear on the sidebar …
(RSS Feed Content Added To 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 An RSS Feed To Posts
What if you want to add content from RSS feeds to WordPress posts instead of a sidebar?
You can easily do this using plugins. Just search inside your Plugins admin section (Plugins > Add New) for RSS Post, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ section – RSS plugins for WordPress)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us if you need assistance with plugin configuration.
Here are some plugins you can check out that allow you to add RSS feeds to your posts and pages:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin)
WPeMatico is an auto blogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds of your choice.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange them according to categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator – WordPress Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and autoblogging WordPress plugin with additional functionality with premium extensions (add-ons).
For example, the Feed to Post add-on allows you to 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 Plugin)
RSS Post Importer can be used to syndicate, curate, import, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress blog.
RSS Post Importer fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full article content of every item in the feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)
With POWr RSS, you can combine and display content from a number of different sources using RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust feed priority, use custom fonts, backgrounds, colors, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on all computers, tablets, and phones and supports text in any language.
The premium plugin edition contains a number of additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, accept or reject posts in your feed, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes – WordPress Plugin)
WP Pipes 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, auto blogging, auto post to Twitter/LinkedIn/Facebook, export your posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to a new level.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides flexible Atom/RSS syndication for WordPress.
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 combine content from different sources), or bring together all your online activity in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog Plugin For WordPress)
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 your feed URL, give the 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)
By default, WordPress only posts posts in your RSS feed. Use a plugin like the RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types plugin to include pages in your RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
WordPress RSS – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to displaying feeds of your posts, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of your post comments.
You can access this feed by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ section of your sidebar menu …
(Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors and users display in the Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed items viewed using a Firefox web browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on the browser you are using …
(Comments feed items displayed using a Google Chrome web browser)
Again, you can check what the comments RSS feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste the 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 WordPress installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Displaying Feeds For Single Items
Being able to select an RSS feed for a single post 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 single post item is shown below:
(Feed For Specific Post Item)
To create the above feed, copy the post URI, 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 left on that post, not the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Using Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only want to subscribe to content from specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
If your website or blog contains content published under a number of categories, you can provide a separate feed for each different category.
All you have to do is use the format below:
(WordPress post categories feed format)
Select and copy the category URL …
(Copy the selected category link address …)
Add the word “feed” to the end of it …
(Format for WordPress post categories RSS feed)
The category feed will now only contain content posted under that 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 Your Own Feeds List
You can set up a feeds page that allows readers to subscribe to specific content, just like large authoritative sites …
(Publish Your Own RSS Feeds List)
All you need to do is link a button to category (or single post) feeds and then create a table or a list of your feeds on a new page …
(RSS graphic. Image Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
To learn more about creating tables in WordPress content, see this tutorial:
RSS Feeds – Notes
RSS feeds can be customized in several ways, such as adding videos and images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows a number of RSS feed configurations that do not require code editing skills. Here are some examples of custom feed types you can display …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
For your convenience, here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Includes your latest posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – RSS feed containing the latest comments left on your blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed that displays a post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: RSS Feed that includes the latest comments made on single posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/01/27/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Feed displaying latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/05/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – RSS feed displaying latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Displays latest items for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Contains 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. Make sure you place a subscribe links in a visible location …
(Encourage your site users to subscribe to your RSS feeds!)
Keep in mind that online users will only syndicate your content if you provide your visitors with very high-quality content that can add value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add content to your site and get others to subscribe to 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 Images – Visit Iconspedia.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS logo”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable RSS images.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization with three primary duties: publishing the RSS specification, providing guidance to developers who create RSS applications and furthering the understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about the benefits of using RSS.
- WordPress.org/WordPress Feeds – WordPress documentation site. Go here for more information about using feeds in WordPress.
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 display content from other websites and blogs on your site using RSS.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you grow your business online. To read more about using WordPress please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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"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