No matter what service or product your business sells, providing quality information to your blog visitors is essential. For example, if your business provides accounting services, it’s a good idea to include useful information from the taxation office, such as news or 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 sort through, gather, and organize a ton of information, check your facts, write and edit 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 not only involves a lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a simpler way to regularly provide your site readers with up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - One of the easiest ways to provide your site readers with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – Useful Information
- RSS, which, according to some experts is an acronym for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly referred to now as Really Simple Syndication. It can also be called a “feed” or “news feed”.
- After a user subscribes to an RSS feed, they no longer have to physically check the source website for content updates. Instead, their browser will constantly monitor the content and keep subscribers up-to-date.
- RSS feeds are also used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as new blog entries, news, audio lists, etc., which other users can then subscribe to.
- RSS feed content can be viewed using web-based, desktop-based, and even mobile-based programs called RSS readers, or aggregators. Aggregators can be used to access content on all kinds of topics and distribute this content to various online properties.
- There are different kinds of feeds, read by different feedreaders. 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 compatibility with different devices and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also allow you to combine multiple RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from various websites.
This guide shows you where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, and how to display someone else’s content on your site using RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a very powerful way to share content online. RSS Feeds provide online users with a way to receive the latest information posted on websites they are interested in.
First, let’s look at syndication.
Media publications rely heavily on syndication to publish stories from other news agencies all around the world.
Syndication allows leading news reporting agencies to deliver readers stories on all kinds of topics as well as headlines from around the planet without having to employ and set up more staff and writers all around the world …
(Online newspapers rely on content syndication to publish stories from news sources all around the world.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing newsworthy content with other sites. Global media publications syndicate content using news feeds …
(Content syndication is used by global media publications to share information with other publications)
Most sites actually want you to share their information. Content syndication not only allows information to be shared, but it also sends visitors back to the original site that published the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Many news reporting agencies and leading online media publications include an RSS feed section (look for navigation links that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “international herald tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Leading online newspapers include a feed section. Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link will bring up a list of different RSS feeds …
(A website’s directory of RSS feeds. Source: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
gives readers access to different sections of the site (e.g. business news, travel news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
Feed sections can also include feed subcategories …
(An RSS feed directory can also contain feed subcategories. Image Source: latimes.com)
Note: A feed is simply a URL. To use RSS feeds, all you have to do is copy the URLs and paste these into a program that can translate the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Content Syndication
Adding someone else’s content to your site has some obvious benefits. It not only gives additional exposure online to someone else’s site, it also adds value to your site without you having to create the content …
(The Benefits Of Syndicating Content)
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 websites syndicate your feed, this gives you the opportunity to get increased exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Try to get visitors to syndicate content using your RSS feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress Feed – About
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing other online users to syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on your theme, there are a few ways to access the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to be displayed on the sidebar or footer menu, scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(You can access your WordPress RSS feed in the Entries RSS menu)
2) You can also find built-in links and/or buttons on certain themes that allow your visitors to copy your RSS feed.
For example, in the screenshot below, a visitor can simply copy the feed URL by clicking on on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy RSS URLs to your clipboard from “subscribe to RSS” buttons)
3) On some sites and again, depending on which theme you have installed, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Share, Follow, or Links toolbar section …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Social Share, Link To Us, or Subscribe toolbar section)
4) You can also view your RSS feed by simply typing your site’s URL into a browser and adding “/feed” after the URL, e.g.:
- http://www.yourdomain.com/feed
- http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/feed (if your WordPress installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up your WordPress RSS page …
(RSS entries viewed on Firefox)
Note that your feed content will display differently depending on the web browser you are using …
(Feed items seen using Google Chrome)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
You can specify how many items you want displayed in your RSS Feed page, by going to your Reading Settings section and entering the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(WP Reading Settings – Number of syndication feed items field)
Your feed section will show the number of items you have specified section …
(Your feed page will display as many recent posts as you have specified in your Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in your Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display articles as full text, or a summary …
(WordPress Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’: ‘Full text’ or ‘Summary’)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content displays …
(Post excerpts can affect how feeds display)
We have created a detailed tutorial about Post excerpts here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, to view the content of a feed, you have to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. 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 or blog and look for an RSS feed button using any of the methods described earlier …
(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 URL of the feed into an online feed reader …
(Paste your URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the content. Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds.
How To Add Feeds To WordPress
Let’s show you how to add content from other websites and blogs to yours.
Adding A Feed To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is in, you could display on your site the latest content from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing content from their feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, social media updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to your sidebar …
(Add an RSS feed to your sidebar)
copy the RSS feed URL from a site that publishes content that you want to display on your sidebar to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL to the clipboard)
Next, paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Section – RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content will now display on 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 Feeds To Posts
Can you add content from RSS feeds to WordPress posts? You sure can!
You can do this using WordPress plugins. Just search on the WordPress plugin repository for RSS feed, RSS feed to post, etc.
(WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for configuration instructions, or contact us if you need assistance configuring plugins.
The plugins below can be used to feed content to posts, or “autoblog” (An autoblog is a blog with content that is automatically gathered and compiled from RSS feeds):
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico WP Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use auto blogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from selected RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize them into campaigns and categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and auto blogging plugin for WordPress with additional functionality with a number of premium extensions (add-ons).
For example, the Feed to Post extension is an advanced, feature-filled importer that 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)
The RSS Post Importer plugin lets you syndicate, curate, import, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress blog.
The plugin fetches an RSS feed and publishes the entire content of every item in your feed as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed)
POWr RSS automatically combines and displays content from a number of different RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust the priority of different feeds, use custom fonts, colors, borders, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in any language.
The premium plugin version contains many additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes – WordPress Plugin)
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 features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Twitter/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 – WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a flexible syndication plugin 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.
FeedWordPress can be used to create aggregator site (sites that display content from various different sources), or display all of your online activity in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog by WPMUDev Plugin For WordPress)
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, give the feed a name (for admin purposes) and select the blog that you want it to post to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages Plugin)
The RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types plugin lets you display pages in your RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Using WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of your latest post comments in addition to making RSS feeds of your latest posts available.
You can inspect your comments feed by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ section (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) …
(Comments RSS)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors display in the Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items seen using a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on which web browser you use …
(RSS comments feed entries displayed on Google Chrome web browser)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into a feedreader …
(Paste your comments feed URL into a feed reader to view the 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 site installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Creating RSS Feeds For Specific Items
Being able to access an RSS feed for a single post item 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 accessing an RSS feed for single post items is shown below:
(Feed For Individual Post)
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, WordPress will return the comments for that post, not actual post content itself.
Tip #3 – Using Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site users may only want to syndicate content about certain categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
If your website publishes content under multiple categories, WordPress allows you to provide a separate RSS feed for each of your categories.
All you need to do is use the format shown below:
(Use this format for WP post categories feed)
Copy the selected category link address to your clipboard …
(Copy the selected category URL …)
Now, append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(RSS feed format for category)
Your category RSS feed will now only display content posted in 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 – Set Up Your Own Feeds Directory
You can create your own directory of RSS feeds for subscribers that allows readers to subscribe to content in the categories they are interested in …
(Publish Your Own List Of RSS Feeds For Subscribers)
All you need to do is link a button to your category feed URLs and then create a table or a list of your feeds on a separate page …
(RSS icon. Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
To learn more about inserting tables into WordPress content, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
WordPress RSS – Additional Notes
RSS feeds can be customized in several different ways, such as adding videos and images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows you to configure several feed types that do not require messing with code. For example, here are just some of the kinds of custom feed formats you can create …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create With WordPress RSS)
Below are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed in the table above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – RSS feed that contains your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Feed containing the latest comments posted on your website or blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed for specific post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Feed containing the latest comments made on a post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Contains latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/09/06/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – RSS feed containing latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/12/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Displays the latest post entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Feed displaying latest posts for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One last thing …
Remember to promote your feeds. Make sure you place your ’subscribe to RSS’ button or link somewhere visible …
(Encourage visitors to syndicate your feeds!)
Finally, keep in mind that other sites will only want to subscribe to your content if you publish great content. In other words, you need to provide high-quality information that will add value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add content to your site and get others to syndicate your content online with 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 RSS Resources:
- Download RSS Feed Graphics – Visit a site like iconspedia.com/search/rss or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “RSS logo”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download Free RSS icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization responsible for publishing RSS specifications, guiding developers who create RSS applications and broadening the public understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about the history and benefits of using RSS.
- WordPress.org – WordPress documentation and information. Go here to learn more about 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 using RSS feeds.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To read more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business web site please see other posts on this site.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)