No matter what product or service you provide or what industry your business is in, you need to provide high-value information on your site or blog that better educates, informs, or improves engagement with your visitors. For example, if your business provides insurance services, it’s a good idea to publish information from government departments, such as news and updates on statistical research, insurance tips, etc.
To create and publish this kind of information, however, requires an enormous amount of effort and resources. You have to do a lot of data gathering, researching and organizing, checking the accuracy of your sources, content writing and editing (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 is not only a lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is well beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a simpler way to continually provide your readers with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is one of the simplest ways to provide your users with great information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – What You Need To Know
- RSS stands for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred, Really Simple Syndication. It can also be referred to as a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
- When users subscribe to an RSS feed, they no longer have to physically visit and check the website for updated content. Instead, their browser will continually monitor the feed and automatically keep subscribers updated.
- Feeds are typically used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog posts, news, audios, etc., to which any user can choose to subscribe.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is a structured XML (Extensible Markup Language) document that includes either full or summarized text along with other metadata like date of publishing, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on sites that publish feeds and then view any updates posted on these sites using an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate information automatically.
- Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different feed readers. 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 and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also allow you to combine multiple RSS feeds to display news and updates from multiple sources.
In this comprehensive guide, we explain where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to add someone else’s content to your site via RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful (and legitimate) way to share content online. Feeds provide a simple way for online users to receive the latest information published on different sites.
First, let’s take a look at content syndication.
Online media publications use content syndication to publish stories from other news agencies all around the world.
Syndication allows most digital publishing agencies to deliver readers the latest newsworthy items from around the globe without actually having to send more reporting agencies everywhere in the world …
(Global media publications use content syndication to publish news and stories from other news agencies around the world.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing information with other sites. News agencies syndicate their information using feeds …
(Content syndication is used by news reporting agencies to share newsworthy content with other news publications)
Most websites actually would like you to share their information. Syndicating content not only allows great information to be shared, but it also sends visitors back to the original site responsible for creating and publishing the content being syndicated. This provides websites with additional opportunities to generate new web traffic.
Many content publishers and major 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”, “telegraph rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Major content sites provide links to a feed section. Source: Sydney Morning Herald )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section will bring up a list of different RSS feeds of the site …
(RSS feeds directory. Image: NY Times)
These feed items let readers source information about different sections of the site (e.g. technology news, travel news, health news, etc.)
Feed sections can also include further subcategory feeds …
(Feed sections can also include feed subcategories. Image Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: A feed is just a URL. All you need to do to use feeds is copy the URLs and paste these into an application that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Syndicating Content
Syndicating someone else’s content on your website 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 this content …
(Syndicating Content 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 worth keeping in mind that you also want other sites to use YOUR content.
When other sites syndicate your content, you have the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive new visitors …
(Get other website owners to syndicate your content … it will help to increase your web traffic!)
WordPress RSS – 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 your theme, there are a number of ways to access your RSS feed:
1) If your theme displays the Meta widget in your navigation menu …
(Your feed will show as many recent posts as you have specified in your 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 feeds is whether to display posts in your feed as full text, or just as a summary …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings – Display ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for each article in your RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts can affect how content in your feeds will display)
To learn more about Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, all that’s required to view a feed’s content is to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that reads and translates feeds into readable content.
Let’s see how this works.
First, go to a website or blog and look for a ’subscribe to feed’ button …
(Look for an RSS feed link. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL)
If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feed readers, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds and convert these into content that can be read by your visitors.
Adding A Feed To Your Site
In the example below, we’ll add content from another site’s RSS feeds to your WordPress site.
Adding A Feed To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you operate in, you could display on your site the latest updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing 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 from an RSS feed to your sidebar …
(Add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation area)
First, find a site containing content that you would like to add to your site and copy the RSS feed …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
Next, go to your Widgets area and paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Load your site in your browser. The content from the RSS feed should appear on your sidebar (or wherever the RSS widget has been added) …
(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:
Adding Content From RSS Feeds To Your Posts
Can content from RSS feeds be added to a post instead of a sidebar? It sure can!
You can easily do this using plugins. Search on WordPress.org plugin repository for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ screen)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for configuration instructions, or contact us if you need assistance configuring plugins.
Here are some autoblogging plugins for WordPress that allow you to automatically create new with RSS feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico)
WPeMatico is an autoblogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from multiple RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and arrange feeds according to categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and autoblogging WordPress plugin that offers extended functionality with premium add-ons.
For example, the Feed to Post extension allows you to add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into WP posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer – WordPress Plugin)
RSS Post Importer lets you syndicate, import, curate, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress blog.
The plugin will fetch an RSS feed and publish the entire content of each feed item as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)
With POWr RSS, you can combine and display content from a number of different RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS Feed plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust sizing and spacing of feeds, use custom borders, fonts, colors, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in any language.
The premium plugin edition 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 WordPress Plugin)
WP Pipes is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.
This plugin provides functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook, export posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress WP Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides flexible 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.
You can use this plugin to create aggregator site (sites that bring together posts from many different sources), 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 your feed URL, give the feed a name of your choosing (for admin purposes) and select the blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types Plugin For WordPress)
By default, WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed. Use a plugin like RSS Includes Pages if you would like to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed and not just posts.
For more details, go here:
Using RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to giving online users access to RSS feeds of your latest posts, WordPress also displays RSS feeds of your post comments.
You can inspect these by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ widget area …
(WordPress Comments Feed)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in the Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed entries seen using a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on the web browser you use …
(RSS comments feed items viewed with Google Chrome)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …
(Paste the comments feed URL into a feed reader to view the 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 website or blog has been installed in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Displaying Feeds For Individual Posts
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 accessing an RSS feed for single posts is shown below:
(RSS Feed For Single Post)
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 add “/feed” to the end of the URI of your post, WordPress will return the comments for that post, not the content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in subscribing to content about certain topics. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
If your site publishes content under many categories, WordPress allows you to easily create a separate feed for each different category.
All you have to do is use the format shown below:
(Format for WP post categories feed)
Copy the selected category link address …
(Copy your category URL …)
Add “feed” to the end of it …
(RSS feed format for category)
The category RSS feed will now only include content posted for this category …
(Category 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 Feeds Page
You can create an RSS feeds list that allows your readers to subscribe to content in the categories they are interested in, just like large online publishers …
(Provide Your Own Feeds Directory)
All you need to do is link an icon to each feed URL and then create a table or a list of your feeds on a new page …
(RSS icon. Image: public-domain-photos.com)
To learn more about adding tables to WordPress posts and pages, see this step-by-step tutorial:
WordPress RSS – Additional Notes
You can customize RSS in various different ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows several feed configurations that do not require messing with code. Below are examples of some of the kinds of custom feed types you can use …
(WordPress RSS – Feed Types)
Here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the diagram 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 site
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed that displays single posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Contains the latest comments made on specific items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/05/08/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Includes the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/04/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Feed displaying latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Displays latest posts for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: RSS feed displaying 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 feeds. Make sure you place your ’subscribe to RSS’ buttons somewhere visible …
(Promote your RSS feeds!)
Keep in mind that other website owners will only subscribe to your content if you provide your subscribers with very high-quality content that can add value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Easily add great content from other sites and get others to subscribe to your content with 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 feed 🙂
RSS – Resources:
- Feed Images – Visit an online resource site like Iconspedia.com or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “RSS logo”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download Free RSS images and icons.
- 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 helping to further the understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about the benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex: WordPress Feeds – WordPress documentation repository. Visit this site to learn more about WordPress RSS.
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.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you improve your business online. To read more about using WordPress please see our related posts section.
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