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 health-related services, you may want to provide users with the latest information from the health department, such as news or updates on medical research, health and fitness tips, etc.
To create and publish this kind of information, however, is really time-consuming. You have to sort through, research, and organize a lot of data, check your facts, write and edit content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then ensure that this information is continually 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 completely beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is a simpler way to keep your site visitors up-to-date with the latest information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - One of the easiest ways to provide your site visitors with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – What Does It Mean?
- RSS stands for Rich Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred, Really Simple Syndication. It is often called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- When a user subscribes to a website’s feed, they no longer have to physically visit and check the website for updated content. Instead, their web browser will continually monitor the feed and automatically keep subscribers updated.
- RSS feeds are typically used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog entries, news headlines, audios, etc., which users can choose to subscribe to.
- RSS feed content can be viewed using a software-based tool called an RSS reader, or aggregator. Feedreaders can be used to find content on all kinds of topics and syndicate this content to other online properties.
- There are different kinds of feeds, read by different feed readers. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom Publishing Protocol) feeds and RDF (RDF = Resource Description Framework) feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure that feeds are compatible with different machines and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also let you combine several RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from many websites.
This article shows you where your RSS feed is located, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to display content from other websites on your site using RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful and legitimate method used for sharing content online. RSS Feeds provide a way for web users to receive the latest information published on different websites.
First, let’s look at syndication.
Global media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish newsworthy content from news sources all around the world.
Syndication allows leading digital news publishing agencies to deliver readers stories on all kinds of topics as well as the most recent newsworthy content from all around the planet without having to post additional news reporters and writers all around the world …
(News reporting agencies use syndication to publish newsworthy stories from other news agencies around the planet.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing newsworthy content. Online newspapers syndicate their information using news feeds …
(Content syndication is used by news reporting agencies to share information with other publications)
Most sites actually want you to syndicate 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 publishing the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Many news publishers and major content sites will have a feed section (look for navigation links that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “courier mail rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many digital content publishers and major content sites contain a feed section. Image: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section brings up a directory of different RSS feeds of the site …
(RSS feeds directory. Source: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
These feed items allow you to source content from different areas of the site (e.g. technology news, arts news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
Feed sections can also include feed subcategories …
(Feed sections can also include feed subcategories. Image Source: LA Times)
Note: An RSS feed is simply a URL. To use feeds, all you have to do is copy the URLs and paste these into a program that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Content Syndication
Adding content from someone else’s site on your website has some obvious benefits. It helps someone else’s business and helps you by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(Content Syndication Benefits Someone Else’s Business And Yours!)
While adding a feed from another site is a great way to add content to your site that you don’t have to create, it’s a great idea to try and get other sites to use your content.
When other sites syndicate your content, this gives your business the opportunity to gain more exposure online and drive new visitors …
(Look for ways to get users to syndicate your content … it will help to increase traffic!)
WordPress Feed – Overview
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing other online users to easily syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on the WP theme you have installed, there are a few ways to access your RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget in a navigation menu …
(Your feed page will display the number of items you have specified in your WP 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 each article in a feed as full text, or as a summary …
(Reading Settings – Display ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for articles in a feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …
(Post excerpts affect how a feed appears)
If you need help WordPress Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, all that’s required to view the content of an RSS feed is to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that can translate feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s see how this works.
First, find a website whose content you want to syndicate and search for a ’subscribe to feed’ icon or link using any of the methods described earlier …
(Look for a ‘subscribe’ icon. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed to your clipboard)
If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of your feed into an online feed reader …
(Paste your URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feed readers, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS feeds.
How To Add RSS Feeds To Your Site
Let’s show you how to add content sourced from another site to yours.
How To Add Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business operates in, you can display on your site the latest updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing their feed. You can use feeds to 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 RSS content to the WordPress sidebar navigation area …
(Let’s add content from an RSS feed to your sidebar)
copy the RSS feed from a website or blog that publishes content that you want to add to your site to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL to your clipboard)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Area – RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Load your site in your web browser. The content will now display in your sidebar (or wherever you have added the RSS widget – e.g. custom menu) …
(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 Feed Content To Your WordPress Posts
Can content from an RSS feed be added to posts? It sure can!
You can easily do this using plugins. Search on WordPress.org plugin repository for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.
(WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us for help with plugin configuration.
Here are a number of WordPress plugins that you can use to curate and add content from RSS feeds to your pages:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico 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 campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator – WordPress Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and auto blogging plugin for WordPress that offers a number of premium add-ons for extended functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on is a feature-rich importer that allows you to autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
The RSS Post Importer plugin can be used to curate, syndicate, import, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress website or blog.
The plugin will fetch an RSS feed and publish the entire content of each feed item as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)
POWr RSS Feed allows you to automatically combine content from multiple RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display videos, images, and articles, adjust sizing and spacing of feeds, use custom borders, colors, fonts, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in all languages.
The premium plugin version contains many additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, manually accept or reject posts, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin)
WP Pipes is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.
This plugin provides loads of powerful features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn, export your posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a simple and flexible Atom/RSS 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.
You can use this plugin to create aggregator sites, or bring together all of your online activity in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog by WPMUDev WP 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 your feed URL, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select the blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages Plugin For WordPress)
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types lets you display pages in your RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress makes available RSS feeds of the latest comments posted on your site in addition to displaying feeds of your posts.
You can see your comments feed by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ widget area of your sidebar menu (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) …
(Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items displayed with Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on which web browser you are using …
(RSS comments feed content seen on Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into an online feed reader …
(Paste your URL of your comments feed into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image: Feedreader)
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 subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Specific Post Feeds
Being able to select an RSS feed for single post items 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 individual posts is shown below:
(Feed For Individual Post Item)
To create the above feed, copy the URL of your post, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of the URI of your post, WordPress will return the comments for your post, not actual post content itself.
Tip #3 – Displaying Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only want to syndicate content from a particular category. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
With WordPress, you can create category feeds.
All you have to do is use the format below:
(Format for WordPress post categories RSS feed)
Copy the selected category link address …
(Copy the category URL …)
Append “feed” to the end of it …
(Feed format for post categories)
Your RSS feed will now only display content posted under that category …
(Category 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 – Publish An RSS Feeds List
You can set up your own directory of feeds that allows readers to subscribe to content in specific categories, just like the larger online publishers do …
(Set Up An RSS Feeds List)
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 category feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button graphic. 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 content, go here:
RSS – Notes
You can customize your RSS in a number of ways, such as adding videos and images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows different RSS feed configurations that do not require messing with code. Here are some examples of custom feeds you can use …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the diagram above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – RSS feed that includes your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Displays the latest comments posted on your site
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed that displays single post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Displays the latest comments made on a post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – RSS feed containing latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/07/16/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – RSS feed that includes latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/09/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Contains the latest items for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Includes 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 site users know that they can subscribe to your feeds. Make sure you place a ’subscribe to RSS’ buttons in a visible location …
(Remember to promote your feeds!)
Keep in mind that other website owners will only want to syndicate your content if you provide your visitors with high-quality information that will add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add great content from other sites and get others to syndicate your content online using RSS!)
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 RSS feed 🙂
RSS – Additional Resources:
- Download RSS Graphics – Visit an online resource site like Iconspedia.com or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “rss buttons”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS images.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information and resources about RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about the benefits of using RSS.
- WordPress Codex – WordPress software documentation and reference. Visit this site for more information about using WordPress feeds.
Congratulations! Now you know how 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 via RSS feeds.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To read more about using WordPress for a business web site please click on links to visit other great articles and tutorials 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