No matter what service or product you provide or what industry your business is in, providing high-quality information to your blog visitors is important. For example, if you provide accounting services, you may want to include the latest 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 sift through, gather, and organize a ton of data, check your facts, 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.
Thankfully, there is a much simpler 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 users with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – A Basic Overview
- RSS, which, according to some experts is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly referred to as Really Simple Syndication. It can also be called a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
- When users subscribe to an RSS feed, they no longer have to physically check the source website for content updates. Instead, their browser constantly monitors the content and keeps subscribers up-to-date.
- RSS feeds are often used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog post items, news headlines, audio lists, etc., which other users can choose to subscribe to.
- RSS feeds can be viewed using software called feedreaders, or feed aggregators. Aggregators can be used to access content on all different kinds of topics and distribute this content to other sites.
- Feeds can be made available in different formats and 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, feedreaders, and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also allow you to combine several RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates sourced from multiple sites.
In this article, we will show you where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to display content from other websites and blogs on your site via their RSS feed.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful and legitimate method used for sharing content online. RSS Feeds provide online users with an easy way to keep up with the latest information posted on different websites and blogs.
First, let’s take a look at syndication.
Online newspapers and popular online media publications use syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies around the world.
Syndication allows news reporting agencies and highly-visited online media publications to deliver readers stories from around the planet without actually having to employ and send additional reporters and content writers all around the world …
(Many news reporting agencies rely heavily on content syndication to publish stories from other news agencies all around the world.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing newsworthy content. online media publications syndicate newsworthy content using feeds …
(Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing newsworthy content)
Most websites actually would like you to share their content. Content syndication not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it can also drive visitors back to the original site responsible for creating and publishing the content being syndicated. This provides websites with additional opportunities to generate significant web traffic.
Most leading online media publications provide links to 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”, “belfast telegraph rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most digital agencies and major online media publications provide links to an RSS feed section. Image: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section brings up a directory of RSS feeds for different content topics on the site …
(RSS feeds list. Source: NY Times RSS)
These feed items give you access to content from different sections of the website (e.g. technology news, travel news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
An RSS list can also contain further subcategory feeds …
(RSS Feed section. Image Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: An RSS feed is just a URL. To use RSS feeds, all you have to do is copy the URLs and paste these into an application that can process the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
RSS Feeds – Benefits
Syndicating someone else’s content on your site has some obvious benefits. It gives additional exposure online to someone else’s website and helps your site by freeing you up from having to create that content …
(Content Syndication Benefits Someone Else’s Website And Yours!)
While adding an RSS 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 syndicate your RSS feed, you have the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive new visitors …
(Get other websites to syndicate your feed … it will help to increase traffic!)
WordPress Feed – Overview
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing others to 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 on your sidebar menu, scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(WordPress Meta widget – Accessing your RSS feed)
2) You can also find links and/or buttons on certain WordPress themes that let your visitors copy your RSS feed.
In the screenshot below, for example, a visitor can simply copy the site’s RSS feed URL by clicking on on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy feed links to your clipboard from “subscribe to RSS” buttons)
3) On some websites and again, depending on your WordPress site’s theme, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Social Share, Links, or Subscribe toolbar section …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Follow, Link To Us, or Social Share fixed, floating, or slide-out toolbar)
4) You can also view your WordPress RSS feed by 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 website or blog has been installed in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up a page containing your RSS feed …
(Feed entries displayed using Firefox)
Note that your feed items will display differently depending on which browser you are using …
(Feed items displayed using a Google Chrome browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
To specify how many items you want displayed in your Feeds page, go to your Reading Settings section and select the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(Reading Settings – Number of syndication feed items setting)
The feed will display the number of posts as you have specified in your WordPress Reading Settings section …
(The feed 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 RSS feed is whether to display your posts as full text, or just as a summary …
(WP Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …
(Post excerpts can affect how a feed displays)
To learn more about using WordPress Post excerpts, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
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 an application that can translate feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, go to a website or blog and search for a ’subscribe to feed’ button or link using any of the methods described earlier …
(Look for an RSS feed section. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL to the clipboard)
If you want, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feed reader to view the content. Image: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process RSS feeds.
Adding A Feed To Your Site
In the example below, we’ll add content from other sites to your WordPress site.
Adding RSS Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business operates in, you can easily display on your site the latest news and updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply importing their feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, social media 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 area …
(Let’s add an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation area)
copy the feed URL from a website or blog that publishes content that you want to display on your site to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed to your clipboard)
Next, paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(WP RSS Widget)
To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content from the RSS feed should now appear on your sidebar …
(RSS Feed Added To WP Sidebar)
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 Your WordPress Posts
What if you want to add content from an RSS feed to WordPress posts instead of a sidebar?
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Just search on WordPress.org plugin directory for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ search results – WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us if you need assistance with plugin configuration.
Here are some plugins you can check out that allow you to curate and add content from RSS feeds to your posts:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use auto blogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from multiple RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange feeds according to categories and campaigns.
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 with additional functionality with premium extensions (add-ons).
For example, the Feed to Post extension for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin allows you to autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into your WordPress 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 allows you to syndicate, curate, import, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress site.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full article content of every item in your feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin For WordPress)
With the POWr RSS Feed plugin, you can automatically combine and display content from various RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust feed size and spacing, use custom colors, fonts, borders, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on all tablets, computers, and phones and supports text in every language.
The premium plugin version contains many additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, accept or reject posts in your feed, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes)
The WP Pipes plugin is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.
This plugin provides features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter, 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 provides simple and flexible syndication options 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.
FeedWordPress can be used to create aggregator sites, or bring together all your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Twitter, Flickr, or other online services, in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog – 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 your feed URL, 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 and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types)
The RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types plugin modifies your RSS feeds to include pages and not just posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WordPress Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to giving online users access to feeds of your posts, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of comments posted on your site.
You can view this by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ widget …
(Comments Feed)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors and users will appear in your Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed content as seen using Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on the web browser you use …
(Comments feed entries seen with Google Chrome)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your comments feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image 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 WP installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Creating Feeds For Single Posts
Being able to select an RSS feed for an individual post item 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 creating an RSS feed for individual post items is shown below:
(Individual Post RSS Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the post URL, and add “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of a post URL, WordPress will return the comments for your post, not actual content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Using Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only want to syndicate content from a particular category. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
With WordPress, you can easily create individual category feeds.
Just use the format shown below:
(Format for WordPress category feed)
Select and copy the category link address …
(Select and copy your category URL …)
Add “feed” to the end of it …
(WP post categories RSS feed format)
The RSS feed will now only display content posted in that category …
(Category RSS 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 A List Of RSS Feeds
You can provide your own feeds directory that allows readers to subscribe to specific content …
(Publish A List Of RSS Feeds For Your Subscribers)
Link an RSS icon like the one shown below to category feeds and then create a table or a list of your feeds on a new page …
(RSS graphic. Image Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
To learn more about adding tables to WordPress posts and pages, go here:
WordPress RSS – Additional Notes
You can customize your RSS in a number of ways, such as adding videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows you to configure a number of feed formats that do not require messing with code. Below are examples of some of the kinds of feeds you can use …
(Different Custom Feeds You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Includes your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Contains the latest comments posted on your website
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed containing individual posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Includes the latest comments made on a specific post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – RSS feed that displays latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/08/25/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Includes latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/08/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – RSS feed that contains the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Contains latest entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Displays latest entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One last thing …
Remember to promote your feed. Make sure you place a subscribe link somewhere visible …
(Remember to promote your RSS feeds!)
Keep in mind that other website owners will only subscribe to your content if you provide great information that informs, engages, and entertains. In other words, you need to provide high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add great content to your site and get visitors to syndicate your content 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 🙂
RSS – Resources:
- RSS Feed Icons – Visit Iconspedia or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “rss images”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download Free RSS images.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to learn more about RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – General information about the history and benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress.org/RSS Feeds – WordPress documentation and information repository. Visit this site for additional information about using 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 content from other websites to your site using RSS.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website 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 great content we have published on this site.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum