No matter what service or product you provide or what industry your business is in, providing quality information on your site or blog is important. For example, if you provide accounting or financial planning services, you may want to include the latest information from the taxation office, such as news and updates on tax rulings, small business tax deductions, etc.
To create and publish this type of information, however, takes a lot of work and resources. You have to sort through, research, and organize a ton of data, check your facts, write and edit content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually ensure that this information is kept 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.
Thankfully, there is a much easier way to continually provide your site visitors with expert, up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the easiest way to provide your readers with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Does RSS Stand For?
- RSS, which, according to some stands for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly known now as Really Simple Syndication. It is also often referred to as a “feed” or “web 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.
- Feeds are often used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as blog entries, news, audios, etc., to which any user can then subscribe.
- RSS feeds can be viewed with a software program called an RSS reader, or aggregator. Aggregators can be used to find new content published on websites and distribute this content online.
- There are different feed formats and these can be read by different feed aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom (also called AtomPub or APP feeds and RDF (RDF = Resource Description Framework) feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure compatibility with different machines and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also allow you to combine many RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from a number of sites.
This article shows you where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to display someone else’s content on your site via their RSS feed.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a very powerful (and legitimate) method used to share web content. Feeds provide a way for web users to keep up with the latest information published on different websites.
First, let’s look at content syndication.
Most content publishing agencies rely on content syndication to publish news from content sources around the world.
Content syndication allows many digital publishing agencies and influential online publications to deliver readers interesting stories and the most recent news items from all around the globe without having to employ more reporting agencies in every place around the world …
(Many news reporting agencies and leading online media publications use content syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies all around the planet.)
Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing information with other sites. Global media publications syndicate their content using feeds …
(Online newspapers syndicate their stories using feeds)
Most websites actually want you to share their content. Content syndication not only allows information of great value 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.
Leading content agencies have an RSS feed section (look for menu links that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “nz herald rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most news reporting agencies and major sites contain a feed section. Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section will bring up a list of different RSS feed sections of the site …
(RSS directory. Image: nytimes.com)
These feed items give readers access to content from different areas of the site (e.g. technology news, travel news, editorials, etc.)
Feed sections can also include further subcategory feeds …
(Feed sections can also contain feed subdirectories. Image Source: Los Angeles Times)
Note: A feed is just a URL. All that’s required to use the feed is 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 Syndicating Content
Syndicating someone else’s content on your site has some obvious benefits. It gives additional exposure online to someone else’s content and adds value to your site without you having to create that content …
(Content Syndication Benefits Someone Else’s Website 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 you also want other sites to syndicate YOUR content.
When other websites and blogs syndicate your RSS feed, this gives your business the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive new web traffic …
(Get users to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help to increase your web traffic!)
Your WordPress Feed
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on the theme you have installed, there are a few ways to get the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme displays the Meta widget in a navigation menu …
(The feed page will show as many recent items you have specified in the WordPress 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 articles in the feed as full text, or 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 affect how your feed content displays)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using Post excerpts in WordPress here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, to view a feed’s content, you need 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 show you how this works.
First, find a website or blog and search for a ‘subscribe’ link …
(Look for a ’subscribe to feed’ icon. Image source: http://www.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 your feed into an online feed reader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feed reader to view the content. Image Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds and convert these into content that is readable by humans.
How To Add Feeds To Your WP Site
In the example below, we are going to add content from another site to yours.
How To Add An RSS Feed To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you operate in, you can easily add to your site the latest content from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing their RSS feed. You can use RSS feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, social media comments, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to the WordPress sidebar navigation area …
(Let’s add an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu)
First, Go to a website or blog that publishes content that you want to add to your sidebar and copy the feed URL …
(Copy the feed URL to the clipboard)
Next, go to Appearance > Widgets and paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(WordPress RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Refresh your web browser. The content can now be seen 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 Add RSS Feeds To WordPress Posts
Can you add content from an RSS feed to posts? You sure can!
You can do this using WordPress plugins. Search on WordPress.org plugin directory for RSS feed, RSS feed to post, etc.
(RSS plugins for WordPress)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us for help with plugin configuration.
Here are a few plugins that allow you to curate and add content from RSS feeds to your posts:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin For WordPress)
WPeMatico is an easy to use auto blogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds that you select.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize feeds into 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 auto blogging WordPress plugin that offers additional functionality with premium add-ons.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin lets you add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer – WordPress Plugin)
The RSS Post Importer plugin can be used to import, syndicate, curate, merge and display full-text feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) on your WordPress website or blog.
RSS Post Importer fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full article content of each item in your feed as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed)
POWr RSS allows you to automatically combine content from a number of different RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS Feed plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust feed priority, use custom colors, fonts, borders, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in every language.
The premium version of this plugin contains many additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, manually accept or reject posts in your feed, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes)
The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you create 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/LinkedIn/Twitter, export WordPress posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress)
FeedWordPress provides simple and flexible syndication options 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.
You can use this FeedWordPress to create aggregator site (sites that combine and display content from different sources), or display all your online activity in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog WP 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 the URL of your feed, name your feed (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 Plugin)
Install RSS Includes Pages 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 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to giving online users access to RSS feeds of your latest posts, WordPress also displays RSS feeds of your post comments.
To inspect the comments in your feed, locate the ‘Meta’ section on your sidebar menu (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) and click on Comments RSS …
(Comments RSS)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors and users will appear in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed entries as seen with Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on which web browser you use …
(RSS comments feed entries seen with Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the comments RSS 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: 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 WP installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Creating Feeds For Individual Post Items
Being able to display an RSS feed for a single post 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 a single post is shown below:
(Single Post RSS Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the post address, 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 URI of your post, WordPress will return the comments made on that post, not the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Post Category Feeds
Some your site users may only want to subscribe to content from one or two categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
If you publish content under many categories, WordPress allows you to provide a separate feed for each different category.
Just use the format below:
(WordPress post categories feed format)
Select and copy the category URL to your clipboard …
(Select and copy your category URL …)
And append “feed” to the end of it …
(Feed format for post categories)
The RSS feed now only displays content published under this 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 – Publish An RSS Feeds Page
You can create your own RSS feeds directory that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in the categories that interest them …
(Provide Your Own RSS Feeds Directory)
You can also link a button graphic like the one shown below to the URL of your category feed and then create a table or a list of all feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button graphic. Image 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 posts and pages, see this step-by-step tutorial:
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 various feed formats without editing code. Here are some examples of feed formats you can use and how to structure the feeds …
(WordPress RSS – Feed Types)
Below are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed 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 – Feed that displays the latest comments published on your site
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed that contains specific posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Feed that contains the latest comments made on specific items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – RSS feed containing the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/11/02/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/05/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – RSS feed containing the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/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: Includes the latest posts for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One more thing …
It’s a good idea to let your users know that they can subscribe to your RSS feeds. Make sure you place your ’subscribe to RSS’ button in a visible location …
(Encourage your visitors to syndicate your RSS feeds!)
Keep in mind that online users will only subscribe to your content if you provide your subscribers with high-quality content that will add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add content to your site and get other sites to subscribe to your content using RSS feeds!)
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 🙂
Additional Resources:
- RSS Feed Icons – Visit an online resource site like Feedicons or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “rss buttons”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download Free RSS images.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information about RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex – WordPress documentation site. Go here for more information about feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, and how to add content from other websites and blogs to your site via RSS.
Hopefully, now you 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 the benefits of using WordPress for a business website please see our related posts section.
***
"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com