No matter what service or product you sell or what industry your business is a part of, it’s important to provide quality information to your site or blog users. For example, if you provide travel services, it’s a good idea to include information from government and foreign travel-related departments, such as news or updates on travel warnings, tips from consular offices, etc.
To create and publish this type of information, however, requires a huge amount of time and resources. You have to filter through, gather, 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 make sure that this information is kept 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 entirely beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is a simpler way to keep your site visitors up-to-date with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - The easiest way to provide your blog subscribers with great information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – What Does It Mean?
- RSS stands for Rich Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred to, Really Simple Syndication. It is also often called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- Once users subscribe to an RSS feed, they no longer have to physically visit and check the website for updated content. Instead, their web browser constantly monitors the content and keeps feed subscribers automatically updated.
- Feeds are often used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as new blog posts, news headlines, audio lists, 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 like published date, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then view any updates posted on these websites through an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate content automatically.
- Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different feedreaders. 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, feedreaders, and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also let you combine several RSS feeds to receive news and updates from many different sources.
In this in-depth guide, we show you where your RSS feed is located, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to add someone else’s content to your site via RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a very powerful method used for sharing web content. RSS Feeds provide a simple way for online users to receive the latest information posted on websites they are interested in.
First, let’s look at content syndication.
Global media publications rely heavily on syndication to publish stories from news agencies all around the world.
Syndication allows most leading news reporting agencies to deliver readers stories on all kinds of topics and up-to-the-minute news from around the globe without having to employ and set up more reporters and content writers in every location in the world …
(News reporting agencies rely heavily on syndication to publish content from other news agencies around the planet.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing newsworthy content with other sites. Content agencies syndicate their newsworthy content using feeds …
(Online newspapers syndicate stories using feeds)
Most sites actually would like you to syndicate their content. Content syndication not only allows information to be shared, but it also drives visitors back to the original site responsible for publishing the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Many news reporting agencies and leading online media publications contain a feed section (look for links in the navigation menu that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “huffington post rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most online newspapers and major sites have a feed section. Image Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section brings up a directory of RSS feeds for different content sections of the site …
(RSS directory. Source: nytimes.com)
Each of these RSS feed items lets you access content from different areas of the site (e.g. business news, sports news, health news, etc.)
A feed list can also include further feed subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Image Source: latimes.com)
Note: An RSS feed is only a URL. To use the feed, all that’s required is to copy the URL and paste it into an application that can process the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Using RSS Feeds
Syndicating content from someone else’s site on your website has some obvious benefits. It not only gives additional exposure online to someone else’s site, it also helps you by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(Syndicating Content - Benefits)
While adding RSS 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 syndicate your content.
When other websites syndicate your RSS feed, this gives your business the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Look for ways to get users to syndicate content using your RSS feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress RSS Feed – About
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing other online users to easily syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on the WordPress theme you have installed, there are a number of ways to get the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to be displayed in a navigation menu, just scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(Meta widget – Accessing your RSS feed)
2) You can also find links and/or buttons on certain themes that let your visitors copy your RSS feed.
In the screenshot below, for example, a visitor can copy the site’s RSS feed URL by clicking on on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy feed URLs to your clipboard from “subscribe to RSS” buttons)
3) On many sites and again, depending on which theme you have installed, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Follow, Link To Us, or Share section …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Social Share, Follow Us, or Links toolbar)
4) You can also view your feed by simply typing your site’s URL into a web browser and adding “/feed” after the URL, e.g.:
- http://www.yourdomain.com/feed
- http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/feed (if your WP site installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up a page containing your WordPress RSS feed …
(RSS feed items seen on a Firefox browser)
Note that your feed items will display differently depending on the web browser you are using …
(Feed entries seen with a Google Chrome web browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
You can specify how many posts you would like displayed in your RSS section, by going to your Reading Settings section and selecting the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(Settings – Reading Settings – Syndication items)
The feed page will display as many recent items you have specified in the Reading Settings section …
(Your feed will show the number of 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 WordPress Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display articles as full text, or just 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 a feed appears)
If you need help WordPress Post excerpts, see this step-by-step tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, all you have to do to view the content of a feed is to copy the feed’s URL 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, go to a website whose content you want to syndicate and search for a ’subscribe to feed’ link …
(Search for a ’subscribe to feed’ link. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
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. Image: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds.
How To Add Feeds To Your Site
Let’s show you how to add content from other websites to your WordPress site.
Adding A Feed To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you could add to your site the latest news and updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply adding content from their feed. You can easily 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 sourced from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu …
(Add an RSS feed to your sidebar)
copy the feed URL from a site containing content that you would like to add to your sidebar …
(Copy the feed URL)
Next, paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(Widgets Area – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Refresh your web browser. The content will now display 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 Content From RSS Feeds To WordPress Posts
Can content from an RSS feed be added to a post instead of your sidebar? It sure can!
You can easily do this using plugins. Search inside the ’Add Plugins’ screen for RSS feed, RSS feed to post, etc.
(RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for configuration instructions, or contact us for help configuring plugins.
The plugins below are useful if you would like 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 – WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use auto blogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from selected RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize feeds according to categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin For WordPress)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin with premium add-ons for extended functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin is an advanced, feature-filled importer that lets you autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer WordPress Plugin)
RSS Post Importer lets you curate, import, syndicate, merge and display full-text feeds on your WordPress site.
The plugin fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full content of every item in the feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed WordPress Plugin)
With POWr RSS Feed, you can combine and display content from a number of different sources using RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS Feed plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust feed spacing and size, use custom colors, fonts, backgrounds, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in any language.
The premium edition of POWr contains many additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes WP Plugin)
The WP Pipes plugin is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.
This plugin provides features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, export posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress)
FeedWordPress is a flexible 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 plugin to create aggregator sites, or bring together all your online activity 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 in minutes, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in the URL of your feed, give your feed a name (for admin purposes) and select a blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages WP Plugin)
Use RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed in addition to posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).
For more details, go here:
WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress makes available RSS feeds of the latest comments posted on your site in addition to making RSS feeds of your posts available to online users.
You can view this feed by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ section …
(WordPress Comments Feed)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed entries seen with Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on the web browser you use …
(RSS comments feed entries viewed using Google Chrome)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into an online feed reader …
(Paste your comments feed URL into a feedreader to view the content. Source: 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 WordPress installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Creating Feeds For Single Items
Being able to select an RSS feed for individual post items can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific items to RSS directories, or you may have created a valuable resource that other online users will want to syndicate.
The formula for displaying an RSS feed for individual posts is shown below:
(RSS Feed For Single Post)
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 a post address, WordPress will return the comments associated with your post, not actual post content itself.
Tip #3 – Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site users may only be interested in subscribing to content about specific topics. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
WordPress allows you to create individual category feeds.
Just use the format below:
(Use this format for WP category RSS feed)
Select and copy the category URL …
(Copy the category link address …)
And add “feed” to the end of it …
(Format for WordPress post categories RSS feed)
The category feed will now only display content posted in that particular category …
(Category-specific RSS feed page)
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 Directory Of Feeds
You can create your own page of RSS feeds for your visitors that allows your readers to subscribe only to specific content, just like large websites …
(Publish A List Of RSS Feeds For Your Subscribers)
Link an icon like the one shown below to the URL of your category feed and then create a table or a list of all your category feeds on a new page …
(RSS button graphic. Image: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
We have created a detailed tutorial on inserting tables into WordPress pages and posts here:
RSS – Additional Notes
RSS feeds can be customized in various different ways, such as adding images and videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows different RSS feed configurations that do not require touching code. Below are examples of some of the kinds of feed types you can use …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create With WordPress RSS)
Here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed in the diagram above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Feed that contains your latest post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – RSS feed that includes the latest comments published on your blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed for specific post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Contains the latest comments made on specific posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Contains latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/05/18/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Includes latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/09/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Feed that includes the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Includes latest posts 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 …
Remember to let your site users know that they can subscribe to your feed. Place your ’subscribe to RSS’ link or button in a visible location …
(Remember to promote your RSS feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that other sites will only want to syndicate your content if the information that you publish on your site is useful, informative, or highly entertaining. In other words, you need to provide high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Easily add someone else’s content and get other users to share your content using 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 RSS feed 🙂
RSS – Resources:
- Download RSS Buttons – Visit Iconspedia.com or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “RSS images”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable RSS icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization responsible for publishing the RSS specification, guiding developers who create RSS applications and broadening the general public understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about RSS.
- WordPress.org/WordPress Feeds – WordPress software documentation and reference. Visit this site to learn more about WordPress feeds.
Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to add someone else’s content to your site via RSS feeds.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you expand your business online. To read more about using the WordPress content publishing platform please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now