No matter what service or product your business sells, providing high-value information to your site visitors is essential. For example, if your business provides insurance-related services, you may want to provide users with the latest information from government departments, such as news and updates on statistical findings, insurance tips, etc.
The problem with creating this type of information, however, is that it involves an enormous amount of work and expertise. You have to do a lot of information sifting, researching and organizing, checking the accuracy of your sources, content writing and editing (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually ensure that this information is 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 beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is an easier way to keep your site readers up-to-date with the latest information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - The simplest way to provide your site visitors with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – What You Need To Know
- RSS is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred to, Really Simple Syndication. It is often referred to as a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
- After users subscribe to an RSS feed, they no longer have to manually visit and check the source website for content updates. Instead, their browser will constantly monitor the content and automatically keep subscribers up-to-date.
- Feeds are often used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog post items, news, video lists, etc., to which any user can choose to subscribe.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is a structured XML document that includes full or summarized text along with metadata such as published date, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then view updates posted on these websites through an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate their information.
- Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different aggregators. 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 devices and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also allow you to combine multiple RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates from various sources.
This comprehensive article explains where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to add content from other websites to your site via their RSS feed.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful (and legitimate) method used for sharing web content. Feeds provide a simple way for web users to receive the latest information published on different websites.
First, let’s take a look at syndication.
Online newspapers use content syndication to publish news from news sources around the world.
Content syndication allows leading news reporting agencies to deliver readers up-to-the-minute news items and newsworthy content from all around the globe without actually having to employ and post additional news reporting departments to every place around the world …
(Online newspapers rely on syndication to publish content from news sources all around the planet.)
Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing information. News agencies syndicate content using feeds …
(Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing information)
Most sites actually would like you to syndicate their content. Syndicating content not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it also sends visitors back to the site that originally created theoriginally created and published the content being syndicated. This provides websites with additional opportunities to generate new web visitors.
Most online newspapers and major content sites provide links to an RSS feed section (look for links 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 content publishers have an RSS feed section. Image: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section brings up a list of RSS feeds for different content topics on the site …
(RSS feeds directory. Source: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
gives readers access to content from different areas of the website (e.g. technology news, arts news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
An RSS feed list can also include subcategories …
(A feed list can also include feed subcategories. Source: LA Times RSS)
Note: A feed is only a URL. All that’s required to use a feed is to copy the URL and paste it into software 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 helps someone else’s site and adds value to your site without you having to create the content …
(Content Syndication Benefits Someone Else’s Business And Yours!)
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 worth keeping in mind that you also want other sites to syndicate your content.
When other sites syndicate your RSS feed, this gives you the opportunity to gain more exposure online and drive more web traffic …
(Get visitors to syndicate content using your feed … it will help to increase your exposure online!)
WordPress RSS
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing other online users to syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on your WordPress site’s theme, there are a number of ways to access your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget on your navigation menu …
(The feed will show as many recent posts as you have specified in your WordPress Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in your WP Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display your posts as full text, or just a summary …
(WordPress Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed displays …
(Post excerpts affect how your feed content will display)
We have created a detailed tutorial about WordPress Post excerpts 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 to your clipboard and paste it into an application that can read and translate feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s see how this works.
First, find a website whose feed you want to subscribe to and search for a ’subscribe to feed’ link using any of the methods described earlier …
(Look for an RSS feed link. Image source: http://www.yourcoffeeguru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL)
If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into a feed reader …
(Paste the URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image: Feedreader)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS feeds and convert these into human-readable content.
How To Add RSS Feeds To WordPress Sites
Let’s show you how to add content from another website or blog to yours.
Adding An RSS Feed To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is a part of, you could display on your site the latest updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by adding their RSS feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, social media comments, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add content sourced from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar area …
(Let’s add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation area)
copy the RSS feed URL from a site containing content that you would like to display on your site to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL to your clipboard)
Next, paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(Widgets Area – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content from the RSS feed can now be seen on the sidebar (or wherever you have placed the RSS widget – e.g. footer, custom menu, etc) …
(RSS Feed Added To WordPress Sidebar Menu)
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
What if you want to add content from RSS feeds to posts instead of your 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 – RSS plugins for WordPress)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for setup instructions, or contact us for assistance with plugin configuration.
The plugins listed 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 Plugin For WordPress)
WPeMatico is an easy to use auto blogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds of your choice.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange them into campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin with extended functionality with a number of premium add-ons.
For example, the Feed to Post extension for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin allows you to import RSS feeds directly into your WP posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress)
RSS Post Importer allows you to curate, syndicate, import, merge and display full-text feeds on your WordPress website or blog.
The plugin will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full content of each feed item as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin For WordPress)
The POWr RSS Feed plugin allows you to combine content from multiple content using RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust feed priority, use custom colors, borders, fonts, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on all computers, tablets, and phones and supports text in all languages.
The premium version contains a number of additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, manually accept or reject posts in your feed, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes – WordPress Plugin)
WP Pipes is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.
This plugin provides loads of powerful functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Twitter/LinkedIn/Facebook, export WordPress posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress WP Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides simple and flexible Atom/RSS syndication 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 display all of your online activity into a Lifestream.
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, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in the URL of your feed, give your feed a name (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)
By default, WordPress only posts posts in your RSS feed. Install RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed and not just posts.
For more details, go here:
Using RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WordPress Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of your latest post comments in addition to making RSS feeds of your posts available.
You can view this feed by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ widget area of your sidebar (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) …
(Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors and users will appear in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items viewed with Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on which browser you use …
(RSS comments feed items as seen on Google Chrome web browser)
Again, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your comments feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. 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 website is located in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Using Feeds For Single Items
Being able to access an RSS feed for specific post items 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 using an RSS feed for specific posts is shown below:
(Individual Post Feed)
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 add “/feed” to the end of your post URI, WordPress will return the comments left on your post, not the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Post Category Feeds
Some your site visitors may only want to subscribe to content about specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
If your website displays content published under many categories, you can provide a separate RSS feed for each of these categories.
All you need to do is use the format shown below:
(WP RSS feed format for post categories)
Select and copy the category URL …
(Copy your category URL …)
Append “feed” to the end of it …
(Format for WP post categories feed)
Your category feed now only includes content posted for that 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 – Create A Directory Of Feeds On Your Site
You can set up a feeds directory that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in the categories they are interested in, just like large online publishers …
(Provide Your Own Directory Of RSS Feeds For Your Subscribers)
All you need to do is link a button like the one shown below to the URL of your category feed and then create a table or a list of all your feeds on a separate page …
(RSS icon. Image Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
If you need help with creating tables in WordPress posts and pages, go here:
RSS – Notes
You can customize your RSS in a number of ways, such as adding images and videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows you to configure several feed types that do not require code editing skills. Here are some examples of feed types you can use and how to format the feeds …
(Different Feed Formats You Can Create With WordPress RSS)
For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Feed that contains your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – RSS feed that includes the latest comments published on your website or blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed containing an individual post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Includes the latest comments made on an individual post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/08/20/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Feed containing the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/01/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Includes the latest post entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Feed containing the latest items 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 promote your feeds. Place a subscribe button or link somewhere visible …
(Encourage your visitors to subscribe to your feeds!)
Finally, keep in mind that other website owners will only syndicate your content if you provide your subscribers with very high-quality content that can add great value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Add someone else’s content and get others to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds!)
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 Resources:
- Download RSS Buttons – 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 provides useful information and links to resources about RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – Learn more about the benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex – Official WordPress documentation and information. Visit this site to learn more about using RSS 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 content from other websites on your site via RSS.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you grow your 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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