No matter what your business sells or what industry you are a part of, providing quality information on your site or blog is essential. For example, if your business provides health-related services, it’s not a bad idea to publish useful 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 filter through, research, 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 ensure that this information is continually kept up-to-date. As you can imagine, this not only involves a huge amount 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 is one of the simplest ways to provide your site visitors with great information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
Basic Information About RSS
- RSS, which, according to some is an acronym for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly referred to as Really Simple Syndication. It it is also called a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
- RSS allows content publishers to automatically syndicate their content so that users can read it without having to keep revisiting sites to check for updates.
- RSS feeds are typically used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as new blog entries, news, video lists, etc., which users can choose to subscribe to.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML (Extensible Markup Language) document that includes full or summarized text along with other metadata such as published date, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then keep up with any updates posted on these sites through an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate information.
- Feeds can be made available in different formats and read by different aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom 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 devices, readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also let you combine many RSS feeds to display news and updates from multiple sources.
In this article, you are going to learn 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 powerful and legitimate method used to share web content. RSS Feeds provide online users with a simple and easy way to keep up with the latest information published on sites they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at syndication.
Media publications rely heavily on syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies around the world.
Content syndication allows most leading online newspapers to deliver readers up-to-the-minute news items from all around the globe without actually having to send additional news reporting and content writing departments to every place around the world …
(Media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish news and stories from news sources around the planet.)
Syndication is used to share newsworthy content legitimately. Global media publications syndicate their content using news feeds …
(Content publishing agencies syndicate their news stories using news feeds)
Most sites actually want you to share their information. Syndicating content not only allows information of great value 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.
Most leading online media publications include an RSS feed section (look for links in their navigation menu that say “RSS” 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 news reporting agencies and major content sites contain an RSS feed section. Image: SMH RSS )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link brings up a list of different RSS feeds …
(RSS feeds list. Image: New York Times)
These feed items give readers access to content from different sections of the site (e.g. technology news, sports news, health news, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain further feed subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: A feed is simply a URL. All you need to do to use feeds is copy the URLs and paste these into software that can translate the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Content Syndication – Benefits
Adding someone else’s content to your site has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s website additional exposure online, it also helps your site by freeing you up from having to create that content …
(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Website And Yours!)
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 syndicate your content.
When other websites and blogs syndicate content using your RSS feed, this gives your business the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive new web traffic …
(Get users to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)
WordPress Feed – About
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing other online users to easily syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on which theme you have installed, there are a number of ways to get your RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to display in a navigation menu, just scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(WordPress Meta section)
2) You can also find built-in links or buttons on certain WordPress themes that let your visitors copy your RSS feed.
In the screenshot below, for example, a visitor can copy the RSS feed URL by right-clicking and copying on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy feed URLs to your clipboard from “subscribe to RSS” buttons)
3) On some sites and again, depending on your WP theme, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Link To Us, Share, or Subscribe toolbar …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Social Share, Subscribe, or Links toolbar section)
4) You can also view your RSS feed by 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 website or blog is located in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up your RSS page …
(Feed entries seen with a Firefox web browser)
Note that your feed items will display differently depending on which browser you use …
(Feed items seen on Google Chrome browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
You can specify how many posts you want to display in your RSS 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 …
(Settings – Reading Settings – Syndication items field)
The feed will show the number of posts as you have specified section …
(The feed page will show as many recent 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 Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display posts as full text, or just a summary …
(Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content displays …
(Post excerpts affect how content in feeds will appear)
To learn more about WordPress Post excerpts, see this tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, to view a feed’s content, you have to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that translates feeds into readable content.
Let’s take a look at how this works.
First, find a website or blog and look for a ’subscribe to feed’ button or link …
(Search for an RSS feed button. Image source: http://www.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 URL of the feed into an online feed reader …
(Paste the URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the content. Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds and convert these into content that is readable by humans.
How To Add An RSS Feed To Your WP Site
Let’s show you how to add content from another website’s RSS feeds to yours.
How To Add An RSS Feed To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is in, you could add to your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by adding content from their RSS feed. You can use RSS feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, social media comments, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar …
(Let’s add an RSS feed to your sidebar)
First, Find a site that publishes content that you would like to display on your site and copy its RSS feed …
(Copy the feed URL)
Next, paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Load your website in your web browser. The content can now be seen on your sidebar …
(RSS Feed Content Added To 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 Feeds To Posts
What if you want to add content from RSS feeds to WordPress posts instead of the sidebar?
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Search on WordPress.org plugin repository for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ screen)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for instructions, or contact us for assistance configuring plugins.
The plugins below can be used to feed content to posts, or “auto blog” (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 RSS/Atom feeds that you select.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize feeds into categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator WordPress Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and autoblogging plugin for WordPress that offers extended functionality with premium extensions (add-ons).
For example, the Feed to Post extension lets you import RSS feeds directly into your posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
The RSS Post Importer plugin lets you curate, syndicate, import, merge and display full text RSS feeds on your WordPress site.
The plugin fetches an RSS feed and publishes 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 – WordPress Plugin)
The POWr RSS Feed plugin combines and displays content from various RSS feeds.
This plugin also lets you display videos, images, and articles, adjust feed priority, use custom colors, backgrounds, fonts, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on all tablets, phones, and computers and supports text in all languages.
The premium edition of this plugin 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 WP 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 loads of functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Twitter/LinkedIn/Facebook, export your posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides versatile syndication for WordPress-generated content.
As stated in the FeedWordPress site …
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 display all of your online activity in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog by WPMUDev)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in your feed URL, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select the blog that you want it to post to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages – WordPress Plugin)
By default, WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed. Install RSS Includes Pages if you want to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WordPress Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of comments posted on your site in addition to giving online users access to feeds of your latest posts.
You can inspect this by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ widget area (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) …
(Comments Feed)
Comments posted on your site by visitors and users can be seen in the Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed content displayed using Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on the browser you are using …
(RSS comments feed content viewed with Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the comments RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste the comments feed URL into a feed reader to view the content. Image Source: 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 site is located in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Individual Post Item Feeds
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 directories, or you may have created a valuable resource that other online users will want to syndicate.
The formula for creating an RSS feed for a specific post is shown below:
(RSS Feed For Specific Post Item)
To create the above feed, copy the post URL, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of your post, WordPress will return the comments left on that post, not actual content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in syndicating content from specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
WordPress allows you to create category feeds.
All you need to do is use the format shown below:
(WordPress post categories feed format)
Select and copy the category link address to your clipboard …
(Select and copy your category link address …)
Add “feed” to the end of it …
(WP category RSS feed format)
The category feed now only displays content posted under that particular category …
(Category-specific 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 – Set Up Your Own Directory Of RSS Feeds
You can create an RSS feeds list that allows your readers to subscribe only to specific categories, just like large websites …
(Provide A Page Of Feeds For Subscribers)
All you need to do is link an image like the one shown below to the URL of your feed and then create a table or a list of all your category feeds on a separate page …
(RSS graphic. Source: public-domain-photos.com)
To learn more about adding tables to WordPress content, go here:
WordPress RSS – Notes
RSS feeds can be customized in several ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows various feed configurations that do not require touching code. Here are some examples of custom feed types you can create …
(Different Custom Feeds You Can Create With WordPress RSS)
Below are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – displays your latest posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – RSS feed that displays the latest comments posted on your blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed containing an individual post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Contains the latest comments made on individual items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/01/17/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – RSS feed displaying latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/11/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/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: Contains latest entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One last thing …
Remember to let visitors know that they can subscribe to your feed. Make sure you place a subscribe buttons somewhere visible …
(Remember to make your RSS feeds visible your feeds!)
Keep in mind that online users will only syndicate your content if you provide useful information that informs, engages, and entertains. In other words, you must provide high-quality information that will add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Add content to your site and get visitors to share your content online 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 🙂
Additional RSS Resources:
- Download RSS Feed Graphics – Visit www.iconspedia.com/search/rss or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS logo download”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable RSS graphics.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization with three primary duties: publishing RSS specifications, providing guidance to developers who create RSS applications and furthering the understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – Learn more about the benefits of using RSS.
- WordPress.org/Feeds – Official WordPress documentation and reference repository. Visit this site for more information about feeds in WordPress.
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 display someone else’s content on your site using RSS feeds.
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 read more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website or blog please see our related posts section.
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