No matter what product or service you provide, providing quality information to your blog readers is important. For example, if your business provides travel-related services, it’s a good idea to publish useful information from government and foreign travel departments, such as news and updates on travel warnings, tips from consulates, etc.

To create and publish this kind of information, however, is very time-consuming. You have to do a lot of information gathering, researching and organizing, fact-checking, 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 lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is beyond your control.

Thankfully, there is a simpler way to regularly provide your readers with up-to-date information.

It’s called RSS …

(RSS is the easiest way to provide your users with up-to-date information)

The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS

What Is RSS?

• RSS is short for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly known, Really Simple Syndication. It is also often referred to as a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
• RSS lets content publishers automatically syndicate their content to save users time from having to keep revisiting their site to check for updates.
• RSS feeds are also used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog entries, news headlines, audios, etc., which users can choose to subscribe to.
• You can view the content of RSS feeds using a web-based, desktop-based, and even mobile-based software program called a feed reader, or aggregator. Aggregators can be used to access content on all different kinds of topics and syndicate this content (and any updates made to the content) to various online properties.
• Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different feed 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 compatibility with different devices, readers, and programs.
• Many sites and software applications also allow you to combine several RSS feeds to display news and updates from several different sources.

This article shows you where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to display someone else’s content on your site using RSS.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds

Content syndication is a very powerful and legitimate method used for sharing web content. Feeds provide web users with a way to keep up with the latest information published on sites they are interested in.

First, let’s look at how content syndication is used.

Many online newspapers and leading online media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish stories from news agencies all around the world.

Content syndication allows news publishing agencies to deliver readers stories and news from around the planet without actually having to employ and send additional news reporters and content writers to every location around the world …

(News reporting agencies and influential online media publications rely on content syndication to publish newsworthy stories from news sources all around the planet.)

Syndication is used to share content legitimately with other sites. News reporting agencies syndicate information using news feeds …

(News reporting agencies syndicate news stories using feeds)

Most sites actually want you to share their content. Syndicating content not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the site that originally published the content being syndicated. This creates new ways to drive traffic back to their site.

Major sites will contain a feed section (look for links in their navigation section 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 content publishers have an RSS feed section. Source: SMH RSS )

Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section will bring up a list of different RSS feed sections of the site …

(RSS feeds directory. Image Source: nytimes.com RSS feeds)

These feed items give you access to information from different sections of the site (e.g. business news, sports news, editorials, etc.)

Feed sections can also contain further feed subcategories …

(Feed sections can also include subcategories. Image Source: LA Times RSS)

Note: An RSS feed is only a URL. To use RSS feeds, all you have to do is copy the URLs and paste these into an application that can process the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.

The Benefits Of Syndicating Content

Adding someone else’s content to your site has some obvious benefits. It helps someone else’s website and adds value to your site without you having to create the content …

(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Website And Yours!)

While adding RSS feeds 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 and blogs syndicate your feed, you have the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive new visitors …

(Consider trying to get visitors to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help to increase your exposure online!)

WordPress RSS Feed – About

By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.

Depending on the WordPress theme you have installed, there are a few ways to access your RSS feed:

1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget in a standard or custom menu …

(Your feed will show the number of posts as you have specified in your WordPress Reading Settings section)

Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed

The other setting in your WP Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display each article in a feed as full text, or just a summary …

(WP Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for posts in your RSS feed)

Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed displays …

(Post excerpts affect how your feed content will appear)

We have written a detailed tutorial on WordPress Post excerpts here:

• WordPress Post Excerpts An Overview

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 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 content you want to syndicate and search for a ’subscribe to feed’ button 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 the feed URL)

If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of your feed into an online feedreader …

(Paste the URL of your feed into a feed reader to view the content. Image Source: http://feedreader.com/online)

Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds.

How To Add RSS Feeds To WordPress Sites

Let’s show you how to add content from other websites or blogs to yours.

Adding RSS Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar

As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are part of, you could easily add to your site the latest updates 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 updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.

Let’s add RSS content to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu …

(Add an RSS feed to your sidebar)

First, Go to a website or blog that publishes content that you want to display on your sidebar and copy its feed URL to your clipboard …

(Copy the URL of your feed to the clipboard)

Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into a new RSS widget …

(WP RSS Widget)

To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In Your Site

Load your site in your web browser. The content will now show on your sidebar (or wherever the RSS widget has been added – e.g. footer, custom menu, etc) …

(RSS Feed Added To 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 Set Up Webmaster Accounts

How To Add Feeds To Your Posts

Can content from RSS feeds be added to WordPress posts? It sure can!

You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Search on WordPress.org plugin repository for RSS feed, RSS feed to post, etc.

(RSS plugins)

Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for instructions, or contact us for help with plugin configuration.

Here are a few autoblogging tools that allow you to automatically create posts with feeds:

WPeMatico

(WPeMatico Plugin)

WPeMatico is an autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from multiple RSS/Atom feeds.

You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize feeds according to categories.

For more details, go here:

• WPeMatico

WP RSS Aggregator

(WP RSS Aggregator – WordPress Plugin)

WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and autoblogging WordPress plugin that offers additional functionality with premium add-ons.

For example, the Feed to Post extension allows you to import RSS feeds directly into posts.

For more details, go here:

• WP RSS Aggregator

RSS Post Importer

(RSS Post Importer)

RSS Post Importer lets you syndicate, curate, import, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress site.

The plugin will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full content of each feed item as a separate post.

For more details, go here:

• RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress

Powr RSS Feed

(Powr RSS Feed Plugin For WordPress)

With the POWr RSS Feed plugin, you can automatically combine and display content from a number of different RSS feeds.

The POWr RSS Feed plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust feed spacing and size, use custom borders, colors, fonts, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in any language.

The premium plugin edition contains many additional features.

For more details, go here:

• Powr RSS Feed WordPress Plugin

WP Pipes

(WP Pipes)

WP Pipes 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 powerful functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, 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:

• WP Pipes

FeedWordPress

(FeedWordPress Plugin For WordPress)

FeedWordPress provides versatile Atom/RSS syndication options 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.

You can use this FeedWordPress to create aggregator sites, or bring together all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, LinkedIn, Flickr, or other online services, into a Lifestream.

For more details, go here:

• FeedWordPress WordPress Plugin

Autoblog by WPMUDev

(Autoblog – WordPress Plugin)

Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in your feed URL, give your feed a name (for admin purposes) and select the blog to post content to.

For more details, go here:

• Autoblog by WPMUDev

RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types

(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types)

Use a plugin like RSS Includes Pages to include pages in your RSS feed and not just posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).

For more details, go here:

• RSS Includes Pages Plugin For WordPress

Useful Tips

Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds

WordPress makes available RSS feeds of the latest comments posted on your site in addition to displaying RSS feeds of your latest posts.

You can access the comments in your feed by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ section (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) …

(Comments RSS)

All the comments posted on your site by visitors and users will appear in your Comments RSS page …

(RSS comments feed entries displayed with a Firefox web browser)

Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on the web browser you are using …

(RSS comments feed entries seen with Google Chrome)

Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feed reader …

(Paste the comments feed URL into a feedreader to view the content. Source: Feedreader)

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 subdomain, e.g. “blog”)

Tip #2 – Specific Post Feeds

Being able to use an RSS feed for specific posts 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 displaying an RSS feed for a specific post is shown below:

(Single 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 append “/feed” to the end of your post URL, WordPress will return the comments left on that post, not the content of the post itself.

Tip #3 – Displaying Post Category RSS Feeds

Some your site users may only be interested in subscribing to content from one or two post 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, you can offer readers a separate feed for each post category.

All you have to do is use the format shown below:

(Use this format for WP category feed)

Select and copy the category link address …

(Copy the selected category link address …)

Now, add the word “feed” to the end of it …

(WP post categories RSS feed format)

The RSS feed now only displays content posted under this particular category …

(Category-specific 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 – Create A Feeds Page

You can publish a page of RSS feeds that allows readers to subscribe to specific categories, just like large websites …

(Publish A Directory Of Feeds For Your Site Visitors)

You can link an icon like the one shown below to the URL of your feed and then create a table or a list of all individual feeds on a separate page …

(RSS button. Image Source: public-domain-photos.com)

We have created a detailed tutorial on inserting tables into WordPress pages and posts here:

• Creating And Adding Tables In WordPress Pages And Posts

RSS – Additional Notes

Feeds can be customized in several ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.

WordPress allows a number of RSS feed configurations that do not require messing with code. Here are some examples of feeds you can display on your site and how to format the feeds …

(WordPress RSS – Feed Types)

For your convenience, here are the different 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 – Contains the latest comments posted on your website or blog
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/

• Feed Type: Individual Posts
• Description: Feed that includes a post
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/

• Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
• Description: Displays the latest comments made on a post entry
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Day – Includes latest items in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/09/29/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Month – Includes latest posts in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/11/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Year – Displays the latest post entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/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: Displays latest post 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 let visitors know that they can subscribe to your feed. Place your subscribe buttons somewhere visible …

(Encourage visitors to subscribe to your feeds!)

Keep in mind that online users will only want to syndicate your content if your content is useful, informative, or highly engaging. In other words, focus on providing your subscribers with high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their users.

(Easily add someone else’s content and get other users to syndicate your content with 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:

• RSS Graphics – Visit sites like www.feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “rss images”, etc.) for sites that contain downloadable RSS images and icons.
• RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here to learn more about RSS.
• Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about the benefits of using RSS feeds.
• WordPress Codex: Feeds – WordPress software documentation and reference site. Visit this site to learn more about using 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.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To read more about using WordPress please see other posts on this site.

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