No matter what service or product your business sells, providing quality information on your site or blog is vitally important. For example, if your business provides travel services, you may want to publish the latest information from government and foreign travel-related departments, such as news and updates on travel warnings, tips from consular offices, etc.
To create and publish this kind of information, however, takes a great deal of time and expertise. You have to do a ton of data sifting, researching and organizing, fact-checking, content writing and editing (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually make sure 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 a much easier way to keep your site readers up-to-date with the latest information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is one of the simplest ways to provide your users with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What You Need To Know About RSS
- RSS is short for Rich Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred, Really Simple Syndication. It can also be called a “feed” or “news feed”.
- Once users subscribe to a website’s feed, they no longer have to physically check the source website for content updates. Instead, their web browser will constantly monitor the feed and automatically keep subscribers up-to-date.
- Feeds are often used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as blog posts, news headlines, videos, etc., which other users can choose to subscribe to.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML document that includes full or summarized text along with metadata like date of publishing, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and blogs that publish feeds and then browse any updates posted on these sites using a feedreader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate content.
- Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different feedreaders. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom (also called AtomPub or APP feeds and RDF 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 let you combine many RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from various other websites.
This comprehensive article explains where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to display content from other websites and blogs on your site using RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful and legitimate way of sharing web content. RSS Feeds provide an easy way for online users to receive the latest information posted on websites they are interested in.
First, let’s look at how content syndication is used.
News reporting agencies rely on syndication to publish stories from news agencies around the world.
Content syndication allows digital publishers to deliver readers the latest news items and newsworthy content from all around the globe without having to send more news reporting departments to every place around the world …
(Most online newspapers use syndication to publish content from other news agencies around the globe.)
Syndication is used to share information legitimately. online media publications syndicate newsworthy content using feeds …
(Content syndication is a legitimate method of sharing content)
Most websites actually would like you to share their information. Content syndication not only allows information to be shared, but it also sends visitors back to the original site responsible for creating and publishing the content being syndicated. This creates links that can drive traffic back to their site.
Many online newspapers and major sites have a feed section (look for links that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “huffington post rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Leading news publishers contain an RSS feed section. Image Source: SMH )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section will bring up a list of RSS feeds for different content areas of the site …
(RSS feeds list. Image: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
These RSS feed items give readers access to information from different sections of the site (e.g. business news, arts news, science news, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain feed subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Image Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: A feed is just a URL. To use feeds, all you need to do is to copy the URLs and paste these into software that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Syndicating Content – Benefits
Syndicating content from someone else’s site on your website has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s site additional exposure online and adds value to your site without you having to create that content …
(Content Syndication 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 syndicate your feed, this gives you the opportunity to get increased exposure online and drive more web traffic …
(Get users to syndicate your content … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)
Overview Of The WordPress RSS
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on your WP theme, there are a number of ways to access your RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to display on the sidebar or footer menu, just scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(Access your WordPress RSS feed from the Meta section)
2) You can also find links and buttons on certain themes that let your visitors copy your RSS feed.
In the screenshot below, for example, a visitor can simply copy the feed URL by clicking on on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy RSS URLs to your clipboard from “subscribe to RSS” buttons)
3) On many sites and again, depending on your theme, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Follow, Social Share, or Link To Us floating, slide-out, or fixed toolbar …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Social Share, Links, or Subscribe toolbar)
4) You can also view your feed by simply typing your site’s URL into a browser and adding “/feed” after the URL, e.g.:
- http://www.yourdomain.com/feed
- http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/feed (if your WordPress installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up a page containing your WordPress RSS …
(RSS feed items as seen using a Firefox browser)
Note that your feed page will display differently depending on the browser you are using …
(RSS content viewed with Google Chrome)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
To specify how many entries you would like to show in your RSS Feed section, go to your Reading Settings section and select the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(Reading Settings – Syndication items field)
Your feed page will display the number of items you have specified section …
(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
The other setting in your Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display each article in a feed as full text, or as a summary …
(WordPress Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for posts in a feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts affect how a feed appears)
We have created a detailed tutorial on Post excerpts here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, all that’s required to view the content of a feed is to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that reads and translates feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s take a look at how this works.
First, go to a website whose feed you want to subscribe to and search for an RSS feed icon …
(Search for a ‘subscribe’ button. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
If you want, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feed reader to view the content. Image Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds and convert these into readable content for humans.
Adding RSS Feeds To WordPress
Let’s show you how to add content from other websites or blogs to yours.
How To Add Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you could easily add to your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply adding their RSS feed. You can use RSS feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, Facebook comments, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to your sidebar …
(Let’s add an RSS feed to your sidebar)
First, Find a website containing content that you want to add to your sidebar and copy the RSS feed …
(Copy the URL of your feed to the clipboard)
Next, go to your WordPress Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets and paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Section – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content should appear on the sidebar (or wherever you have placed the RSS widget) …
(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 An RSS Feed To Posts
Can content from RSS feeds be added to a post instead of your sidebar? Yes, it can!
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Just 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 setup instructions, or contact us for help configuring plugins.
Here are some plugins that let you add RSS feeds to your site:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico – WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use auto blogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds that you choose.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize feeds into categories and campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and autoblogging plugin for WordPress that offers a number of premium add-ons for additional functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on lets you 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 Plugin For WordPress)
RSS Post Importer can be used to import, syndicate, curate, merge and display full text 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 standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin)
With POWr RSS, you can combine and display 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 fonts, colors, backgrounds, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in all languages.
The premium plugin version contains many additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes WordPress 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 features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter, export posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to new levels.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress)
FeedWordPress is a simple and flexible Atom/RSS syndication plugin for WordPress-generated 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.
You can use this FeedWordPress to create aggregator site (sites that bring together content from various different sources), or bring together all your online activity (e.g. from your blog, LinkedIn, Flickr, or other online services, 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 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 and Custom Post Types WP Plugin)
The RSS Includes Pages plugin lets you display pages in your WordPress RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to displaying feeds of your latest posts, WordPress also displays RSS feeds of your post comments.
To view these, go to the ‘Meta’ section on your sidebar (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) and click on Comments RSS …
(WordPress Comments Feed)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed entries displayed using a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on which browser you are using …
(RSS comments feed entries seen with a Google Chrome web browser)
Again, you can check what the comments feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste the comments feed URL into a feedreader to view the feed 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 WordPress site installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Specific Item Feeds
Being able to use an RSS feed for individual 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 single post is shown below:
(Single Post RSS Feed)
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 append “/feed” to the end of your post URL, WordPress will return the comments for that post, not the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Post Category Feeds
Some your site users may only want to syndicate content from one or two categories. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
If your website or blog contains content published under various categories, WordPress allows you to easily offer visitors a separate feed for each post category.
All you have to do is use the format below:
(RSS feed format for category)
Copy the selected category URL …
(Copy your category link address …)
And add “feed” to the end of it …
(Use this format for WP post categories feed)
Your RSS feed now only includes content published in this particular 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 – Create An RSS Feeds Directory
You can create your own RSS feeds page that allows readers to subscribe to content in specific categories …
(Set Up Your Own Page Of Feeds For Subscribers)
Link a button icon to each feed URL and then create a table or a list of your individual feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button graphic. 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:
WordPress RSS – Additional Notes
You can customize your feeds in several ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows different RSS feed configurations that do not require editing code. Below are examples of some of the kinds of feeds you can create …
(WordPress RSS – Feed Types)
Below are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – displays your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Contains the latest comments posted on your website
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed for an individual post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Contains the latest comments made on specific items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/07/02/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/04/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Displays the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Contains latest items for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Feed containing latest entries 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. Make sure you place a subscribe buttons in a visible location …
(Remember to make your RSS feeds visible your RSS feeds!)
Keep in mind that online users will only syndicate your content if you provide your visitors with very high-quality information that will add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Add great content to your site and get other users to subscribe to your content 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 🙂
Additional RSS Resources:
- Feed Graphics – Visit iconspedia.com/search/rss or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS buttons”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS images and icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization with three primary duties: publishing the RSS specification, providing guidance to developers who create RSS applications and helping the general public gain a better understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – General information about RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex – Official WordPress documentation and reference repository. Visit this site for more information about using feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know 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 using their RSS feed.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website or blog please see other posts we have published on this site.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)