No matter what your business sells or what industry you are in, it’s vitally important to provide high-value information to your site or blog users. For example, if you provide accounting services, you may want to provide users with information from the taxation office, such as news or updates on tax rulings, small business tax deductions, etc.
To create and publish this type of information, however, involves a huge amount of effort and resources. You have to filter through, gather, and organize a lot of information, check your sources for accuracy, write and edit content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually make sure that this information is kept up-to-date. As you can imagine, this is not only a lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is an easier way to regularly provide your site visitors with expert, up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - One of the simplest ways to provide your site readers with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS Made Simple
- RSS, which, according to some experts stands for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly referred to as Really Simple Syndication. It is also often referred to as a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
- When a user subscribes to an RSS feed, they no longer have to physically check the source website for updated content. Instead, their web browser will constantly monitor the feed and automatically keep subscribers updated.
- RSS feeds are also used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog entries, news headlines, audio playlists, etc., which other users can choose to subscribe to.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML (Extensible Markup Language) document that includes either full or summarized text along with metadata like published date, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then view updates posted on these sites using a feedreader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate information automatically.
- There are different kinds of feeds, read by different feed readers. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom (also called AtomPub or APP feeds and RDF (Resource Description Framework) feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure compatibility with different machines, readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also allow you to combine many RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates sourced from many websites.
In this detailed guide, we will explain where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to add someone else’s content to your site using their RSS feed.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a very powerful method used for sharing content online. RSS Feeds provide web users with a way to keep up with the latest information published on different websites and blogs.
First, let’s take a look at syndication.
Media publications rely on syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies all around the world.
Syndication allows online newspapers and many highly-visited online publications to deliver readers global stories and up-to-the-minute news headlines from all over the globe without actually having to employ and send additional reporting agencies everywhere around the world …
(Global media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish news and stories from news sources all around the world.)
Syndication is used to share content legitimately with other sites. Digital news agencies syndicate their content using news feeds …
(Content agencies syndicate newsworthy content using news feeds)
Most sites actually want you to syndicate their information. Content syndication not only allows information to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the original site responsible for publishing the content being syndicated. This creates links that can drive traffic back to their site.
Leading digital news publishing agencies contain an RSS feed section (look for links in their navigation section 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.) …
(Most news reporting agencies and leading online media publications contain an RSS feed section. Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section brings up a list of RSS feeds for different content topics on the site …
(RSS Feeds. Image Source: nytimes.com)
gives readers access to different areas of the site (e.g. technology news, entertainment news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
Feed sections can also include subcategories …
(An RSS feed directory can also contain feed subdirectories. Source: latimes.com)
Note: A feed is just a URL. All you need to do to use feeds is to copy the URLs and paste these into an application that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Using RSS Feeds – Benefits
Syndicating someone else’s content on your website has some obvious benefits. It not only gives additional exposure online to someone else’s site, it also helps your site by freeing you up from having to create this content …
(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Business And Yours!)
While adding feeds from another site is a great way to add content to your site that you don’t have to create, it’s worth keeping in mind that there are benefits in getting other websites to syndicate YOUR content.
When other websites syndicate your content, this gives your business the opportunity to get increased exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Get users to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)
About Your WordPress RSS Feed
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing other online users to easily syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on the theme you have installed, there are a number of ways to access your RSS feed:
1) If your theme displays the Meta widget in a standard or custom menu …
(Your feed will show as many recent 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 your Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display each article as full text, or just as a summary …
(Settings – 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 will appear)
To learn more about Post excerpts, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, to view a feed’s content, you have to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into an application that reads and translates feeds into readable content.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, find a website whose feed you want to subscribe to and search for their RSS feed section using any of the methods described earlier …
(Look for a ’subscribe to feed’ button or link. Image source: http://www.yourcoffeeguru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed to the clipboard)
If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feedreader to view the content. Image Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS feeds.
Adding A Feed To Your WordPress Site
In the example below, we’ll add RSS content from another website or blog to yours.
Adding An RSS Feed To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you can easily add to your site the latest updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing their RSS feed. You can use feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, Facebook updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu …
(Let’s add content from an RSS feed to your sidebar)
First, Find a site that publishes content that you would like to add to your sidebar and copy its RSS feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
Next, paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Panel – RSS Widget)
To learn more about 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 WP 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 A Feed To Posts
Can you add content from an RSS feed to WordPress posts? Yes, you can!
You can easily do this using plugins. Just search inside the Plugins admin screen (Plugins > Add New) for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ section – RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for complete instructions, or contact us for help configuring plugins.
Here are a few auto blogging tools that allow you to automatically create posts using feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin For WordPress)
WPeMatico is an easy to use plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from specific RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange them into campaigns and categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging 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 lets you import RSS feeds directly into WordPress posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer)
The RSS Post Importer plugin allows you 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 automatically combine and display content from multiple RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust sizing and spacing of feeds, use custom backgrounds, fonts, colors, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in any language.
The premium version contains a number of additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin For WordPress)
WP Pipes is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.
This plugin provides features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook, export your posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress)
FeedWordPress provides versatile 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 sites, or display all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, LinkedIn, YouTube, or other online services, into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog by WPMUDev – WordPress Plugin)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, 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 the blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages Plugin For WordPress)
Use RSS Includes Pages if you would like 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
WordPress displays RSS feeds of your post comments in addition to displaying RSS feeds of your latest posts.
To view the comments in your feed, go to the ‘Meta’ widget on your sidebar menu (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) and click on Comments RSS …
(WordPress Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors and users can be seen in your Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed entries seen using Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on which browser you use …
(Comments feed items viewed with Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the comments feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image: http://feedreader.com/online)
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 website or blog is located in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Using RSS Feeds For Specific Items
Being able to display an RSS feed for specific post items 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 using an RSS feed for an individual post item is shown below:
(Single Post RSS Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the URI of your post, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of a post, WordPress will return the comments left on your post, not actual post content itself.
Tip #3 – Using Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in subscribing to content from specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
If you publish content under different categories, you can provide a separate feed for each of your categories.
Just use the format below:
(Use this format for WP category RSS feed)
Copy the selected category URL …
(Copy the selected category URL …)
Add the word “feed” to the end of it …
(Use this format for WordPress post categories feed)
The RSS feed now only includes content published under this particular 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 – Publish Your Own Directory Of Feeds For Your Site Visitors
You can create your own feeds page that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in the categories they are interested in …
(Create A Page Of Feeds For Visitors)
You can also link an image like the one shown below to category feed URLs and then create a table or a list of all your feeds on a new page …
(RSS button graphic. 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 adding tables to WordPress here:
WordPress RSS – Additional Notes
You can customize your feeds in several different ways, such as adding videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows various feed configurations without code editing skills. For example, the table below contains some of the kinds of feed types you can display …
(Different Feed Formats You Can Create With WordPress RSS)
Below are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Feed that displays your latest posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Feed that includes the latest comments left on your website or blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed that includes single posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Feed that contains the latest comments made on single posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Displays the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/02/24/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Includes the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/08/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Feed that includes the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Feed displaying the latest entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Includes latest items for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One more thing …
Remember to let visitors know that they can subscribe to your RSS feed. Place a subscribe button somewhere visible …
(Promote your feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that other sites will only subscribe to your content if you provide your visitors with high-quality information that can add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Add great content to your site and get other users to share your content online 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 feed 🙂
Additional Resources:
- Feed Icons – Visit a site like Iconspedia.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss logos”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable Free RSS graphic elements.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to learn more about RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – Learn more about the history and benefits of using RSS.
- WordPress Codex: RSS Feeds – Official WordPress documentation and information. Go here to learn more about using 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 sites to your site using RSS.
Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website please click on links to visit other posts on this site.
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