No matter what what industry you are in, it’s vitally important to provide quality information to your site or blog users. For example, if you provide accounting or financial planning services, it’s a good idea to provide users with information from the taxation office, such as news or updates on tax rulings, small business tax deductions, etc.
The problem with creating this kind of information, however, is that it is really time-consuming. You have to do a ton of information sifting, researching and organizing, fact-checking, content writing and editing (or hire someone to do this for you), and then make sure that this information is continually kept up-to-date. As you can imagine, this is not only a huge amount of work but most of the information you are dealing with is entirely beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is an easier way to keep your readers up-to-date with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the simplest way to provide your readers with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS Made Simple
- RSS, which, according to some experts stands for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly referred to now as Really Simple Syndication. It is also often called a “feed” or “news feed”.
- When a user subscribes to an RSS feed, they no longer have to manually visit and check the website for updated content. Instead, their browser will constantly monitor the feed and automatically keep subscribers updated.
- Feeds are often used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as blog post items, news headlines, music playlists, etc., which other users can then subscribe to.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is a structured XML (XML = Extensible Markup Language) document that includes full or summarized text along with other metadata such as date of publishing, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on sites that publish feeds and then view updates posted on these websites using an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate their content automatically.
- Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom feeds and 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 applications also allow you to combine different RSS feeds to receive news and updates from many different sources.
This in-depth guide shows you how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to add content from other websites and blogs to your site via RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful way of sharing web content. RSS Feeds provide online users with a simple and easy way to stay up-to-date with the latest information posted on different websites and blogs.
First, let’s look at the concept of content syndication.
News reporting agencies and highly-visited media publications rely on syndication to publish newsworthy content from news agencies all around the world.
Content syndication allows news reporting agencies to deliver readers up-to-date news and stories of general interest from all over the planet without having to set up more reporting agencies in every location in the world …
(Media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish news and stories from news sources all around the planet.)
Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing newsworthy content. Online newspapers syndicate newsworthy content using feeds …
(News reporting agencies syndicate their newsworthy content using news feeds)
Most sites actually want you to share their information. Syndicating content not only allows information to be shared, but it also sends visitors back to the original site that created and published the content being syndicated. This provides websites with new opportunities to generate significant web visitors.
Many content publishing agencies and leading online media publications contain an RSS feed section (look for navigation links that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “telegraph rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most news publishing agencies and major sites provide links to a feed section. Image: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section brings up a list of different RSS feed sections …
(RSS feeds section. Image Source: nytimes.com)
These RSS feed items give you access to information from different sections of the website (e.g. technology news, entertainment news, health news, etc.)
Feed sections can also include further subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Image: latimes.com)
Note: An RSS feed is just a URL. To use an RSS feed, all you have to do is copy the URL and paste it into software that can process the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
RSS Feeds – Benefits
Syndicating content from someone else’s website on your site has some obvious benefits. It gives additional exposure online to someone else’s site and helps you by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(The Benefits Of Content Syndication)
While adding an RSS 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 websites to syndicate your content.
When other websites syndicate your feed, this gives your business the opportunity to get increased exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Get visitors to syndicate your content … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress Feed – Overview
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on your WP theme, there are a few ways to get your RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget on your sidebar menu …
(Your feed will show as many recent posts as you have specified in the WP Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
The other setting in the Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display articles in the feed as full text, or just as a summary …
(Settings – Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content displays …
(Post excerpts affect how feeds appear)
To learn more about using Post excerpts in WordPress, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, to view a feed’s content, you need to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that reads and translates feeds into readable content.
Let’s take a look at how this works.
First, find a website or blog and search for their RSS feed icon …
(Look for a ‘subscribe’ button. Image source: http://www.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 feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste the URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image: Feedreader.com)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS feeds and convert these into human-readable content.
Adding Feeds To WordPress
Let’s show you how to add content from other websites to yours.
Adding 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 from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by adding content from their feed. You can easily 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 RSS content to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu …
(Let’s add content from an RSS feed to your sidebar)
copy the RSS feed from a site that publishes content that you want to add to your site …
(Copy the feed URL)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(Widgets Area – 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 the sidebar (or wherever the RSS widget has been inserted – e.g. footer, custom menu, etc) …
(RSS Feed 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:
Adding RSS Feeds To Your Posts
Can you add content from an RSS feed to a post? Yes, you can!
You can do this using plugins. Search on the WordPress plugin directory for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ section)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for instructions, or contact us for help with plugin configuration.
Here are a number of auto blogging plugins for WordPress that allow you to automatically add new with feeds and imported content:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico – WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds of your choice.
You can manage all the feeds you import and organize feeds according to categories and campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator WP Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and autoblogging WordPress plugin with extended functionality with premium extensions (add-ons).
For example, the Feed to Post add-on allows you to autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into your WP posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
RSS Post Importer lets you syndicate, import, curate, merge and display full text RSS feeds on your WordPress site.
The plugin fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full content of each item in your feed as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)
With POWr RSS Feed, you can combine and display content from a number of different RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust sizing and spacing of feeds, use custom colors, fonts, borders, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on any phone, tablet, or computer and supports text in every language.
The premium plugin version contains a number of additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes – WordPress 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 many other sources.
This plugin provides functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook, export posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin For WordPress)
FeedWordPress is a versatile Atom/RSS syndication plugin for WordPress 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 site (sites that display content from various different sources), or display all your online activity into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog)
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, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select a blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types WP Plugin)
By default, WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed. Install the RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types plugin to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress makes available RSS feeds of your post comments in addition to giving online users access to feeds of your latest posts.
You can see these comments by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ section of your sidebar (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) …
(WordPress Comments Feed)
Comments posted on your site by visitors and users display in the Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed content displayed with Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on which web browser you use …
(RSS comments feed entries as seen using Google Chrome)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into a feedreader …
(Paste the comments feed URL into a feedreader to view the content. Image: 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 is located in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Displaying RSS Feeds For Individual Posts
Being able to create an RSS feed for single 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 displaying an RSS feed for a specific post item is shown below:
(Feed For Individual Post)
To create the above feed, copy the post address, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post Feed)
Note: By default, if you only add “/feed” to the end of your post, WordPress will return the comments associated with that post, not actual content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Category RSS Feeds
Some your site users may only want to subscribe to content about certain categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
With WordPress, you can easily create category feeds.
Just use the format shown below:
(Use this format for WP post categories RSS feed)
Copy the category URL …
(Select and copy your category link address …)
Append “feed” to the end of it …
(Use this format for WordPress post categories feed)
Your RSS feed now only displays content posted for this particular category …
(Category 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 A Feeds Page
You can set up your own list of RSS feeds that allows readers to subscribe only to specific content, just like the larger websites do …
(Publish Your Own Page Of RSS Feeds)
You can link an icon to a feed and then create a table or a list of all your feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button. Image Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
To learn more about creating tables in WordPress content, see this step-by-step tutorial:
WordPress RSS – Notes
Feeds can be customized in a number of ways, such as adding images and videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows you to configure several feed formats without editing code. Below are examples of some of the kinds of feeds you can display …
(WordPress RSS – Feed Types)
Here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed in the image above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – contains your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Feed containing the latest comments published on your blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed for a specific post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Includes the latest comments made on individual items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – RSS feed that includes the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/04/04/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – RSS feed containing latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/08/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Contains the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: RSS feed that displays latest posts for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Displays the latest post entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One more thing …
Remember to promote your RSS feed. Make sure you place a subscribe button somewhere visible …
(Promote your feeds!)
Finally, keep in mind that other website owners will only want to subscribe to your content if your content is useful, informative, or highly engaging. In other words, focus on providing your subscribers with high-quality information that will add value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Easily add content to your site and get other sites to subscribe to 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 feed 🙂
RSS – Additional Resources:
- Download RSS Feed Icons – Visit www.feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS images”, etc.) for sites that contain downloadable Free RSS graphics.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information about RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – General information about RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex: WordPress Feeds – WordPress software documentation. Go here to learn more about WordPress RSS feeds.
Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to display content from other sites 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 using the WP software please see other posts we have published on this site.
***
"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum