No matter what service or product you provide, providing quality information to your site visitors is vitally important. For example, if your business provides accounting or financial planning services, you may want to include information from the taxation office, such as news and updates on tax rulings, small business tax tips, etc.
To create and publish this type of information, however, is really time-consuming. You have to do a ton of data sifting, researching and organizing, fact-checking, writing and editing 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 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 keep your readers up-to-date with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the easiest way to provide your users with great information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – Basic Information
- RSS, which, according to some experts is short for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly known now as Really Simple Syndication. It can also be called a “feed” or “news feed”.
- RSS lets content publishers automatically syndicate their content so that subscribers can read it without having to keep revisiting their site to check for updates.
- RSS feeds are often used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog post items, news headlines, video playlists, etc., which users can choose to 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 updates posted on these sites through an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate their content.
- Feeds can be made available in different types 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 that feeds are compatible with different machines and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also let you combine different RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates from multiple sources.
This article explains where your RSS feed is located, 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.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a very powerful method used to share web content. Feeds provide online users with a simple way to stay up-to-date with the latest information posted on sites they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at content syndication.
Media publications rely heavily on syndication to publish content from content sources all around the world.
Content syndication allows many online newspapers and many highly-visited online media publications to deliver readers up-to-the-minute news and stories of interest from all over the globe without actually having to employ and send more reporters and content writers to every location in the world …
(Global media publications use syndication to publish stories from other news agencies around the globe.)
Syndication is used to share information legitimately. Global media publications syndicate their information using feeds …
(Online newspapers syndicate their content using news feeds)
Most sites actually want you to share their information. Syndicating content not only allows great information to be shared, but it can also drive visitors back to the original site that published the content being syndicated. This provides websites with new opportunities to generate additional web visitors.
Most news reporting agencies include 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”, “la times rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many digital content publishing agencies and major content sites have a feed section. Image Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section will bring up a list of different RSS feed sections of the site …
(RSS feeds directory. Image: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
These RSS feeds give you access to information from different areas of the website (e.g. business news, sports news, health news, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Image Source: latimes.com)
Note: A feed is just a URL. All that’s required to use the feed is to copy the URL and paste it into software that can process the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Using Feeds – Benefits
Adding content from someone else’s site on your website has some obvious benefits. It helps someone else’s website and adds value to your site without you having to create this content …
(The Benefits Of Content Syndication)
While adding feeds from another site is a great way to add content to your site without having to create it, it’s a great idea to try and get other sites to use your content.
When other sites syndicate your content, you have the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive new visitors …
(Try to get users to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help to increase your traffic!)
About Your WordPress RSS
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on your WP theme, there are a few ways to get your RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget on your sidebar or footer …
(The feed page will display as many recent posts as you have specified in the Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in your Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display your posts as full text, or as a summary …
(Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for posts in your RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content displays …
(Post excerpts affect how feeds appear)
To learn more about WordPress Post excerpts, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
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 take a look at how this works.
First, find a website or blog and look for a ’subscribe to feed’ button using any of the methods described earlier …
(Look for an RSS feed link. Image source: 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 feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feed reader to view the feed content. Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process RSS feeds and convert these into readable content for humans.
Adding Feeds To WordPress Sites
In the example below, we are going to add content from other websites to yours.
How To Add A Feed To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is a part of, you can easily display on your site the latest content from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply importing their RSS feed. You can use RSS feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, Facebook comments, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to your sidebar …
(Add an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar area)
First, Find a website that publishes content that you would like to display on your sidebar and copy the RSS feed to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(WordPress RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content will now display in your sidebar (or wherever the RSS widget has been inserted – e.g. footer, custom menu, etc) …
(RSS Feed Content Added To Sidebar Menu)
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 Feed Content To Posts
What if you want to add content from RSS feeds to posts instead of the sidebar?
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Search inside the Plugins admin screen for RSS feed, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ screen – WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for setup instructions, or contact us for help configuring plugins.
The plugins below are useful if you want to add feed content to posts, or “auto blog” (An auto blog is a blog with content that is automatically gathered and compiled from RSS feeds):
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin For WordPress)
WPeMatico is an autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from selected RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize them according to campaigns and 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 a number of premium add-ons for extended functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension is a feature-rich importer that allows you to add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into WordPress posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress)
RSS Post Importer lets you curate, syndicate, import, merge and display full-text feeds on your WordPress blog.
RSS Post Importer fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full article content of each item in the feed as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)
With POWr RSS, you can automatically combine and display content from a number of different RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust feed priority, use custom backgrounds, colors, fonts, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on any computer, phone, or tablet and supports text in all languages.
The premium version 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 – WordPress Plugin)
WP Pipes is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.
This plugin provides functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, export your posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to new levels.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress WP Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a simple and flexible Atom/RSS syndication plugin for WordPress-generated 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 sites, or display all your online activity in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in the URL of your feed, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select a blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types Plugin For WordPress)
Use RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types if you want to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed and not just posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WordPress Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to displaying RSS feeds of your posts, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of comments posted on your site.
To inspect these comments, go to the ‘Meta’ section on your sidebar (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) and click on Comments RSS …
(WordPress Comments Feed)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors will appear in your Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed entries displayed with Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on which browser you are using …
(RSS comments feed items as seen on Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check what the comments feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …
(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 – Using RSS Feeds For Individual Posts
Being able to use an RSS feed for a specific post can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific posts to RSS aggregator sites, or you may have created a valuable resource that other online users will want to syndicate.
The formula for accessing an RSS feed for a single post is shown below:
(Single Post Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the post address, 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 that post, not actual content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only want to subscribe to content from one or two categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
WordPress allows you to create individual category feeds.
All you need to do is use the format shown below:
(WP category feed format)
Copy the selected category link address …
(Copy your category link address …)
Add “feed” to the end of it …
(WP category RSS feed format)
The feed will now only contain content specific to 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 Page
You can provide your own page of RSS feeds for your visitors that allows readers to subscribe only to content in the categories that interest them, just like the larger websites do …
(Publish A Feeds Page)
Link an icon to the URL of your feed and then create a table or a list of all feeds on a new page …
(RSS 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 pages and posts here:
RSS Feeds – Notes
You can customize your feeds in several ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows various RSS feed configurations without touching code. Here are some examples of custom feed formats you can create …
(WordPress RSS – Feed Types)
Below are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed in the diagram above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – displays your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Includes the latest comments left on your blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed for specific post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Displays the latest comments made on a single post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Contains the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/04/09/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/05/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Displays the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Contains latest posts 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 let your visitors know that they can subscribe to your RSS feeds. Place your ’subscribe to RSS’ links in a visible location …
(Encourage your visitors to syndicate your RSS feeds!)
Keep in mind that other website owners will only syndicate your content if you provide your subscribers with high-quality information that can add value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add great content from other sites and get others to subscribe to your content with 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 feed 🙂
Resources:
- RSS Graphics – Visit FeedIcons or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS logo”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable RSS graphics.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization with three primary duties: publishing the RSS specification, guiding developers who create RSS applications and helping the general public to gain a better understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about using RSS feeds.
- WordPress.org – Official WordPress documentation and information site. Go here to learn more about using WordPress RSS feeds.
Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to add content from other sites to your site using their RSS feed.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you grow your business online. To read more about the benefits of using WordPress please see our related posts section.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group