No matter what service or product you sell, it’s vitally important to provide high-quality information on your site or blog. For example, if you provide insurance-related services, you may want to include 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 a lot of work and resources. You have to do a ton of data sorting, 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 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 well beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is an easier way to keep your site visitors up-to-date with the latest information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - One of the simplest ways to provide your blog subscribers with great information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What You Need To Know About RSS
- RSS is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred to, Really Simple Syndication. It can also be referred to as a “feed” or “web feed”.
- RSS lets content publishers automatically syndicate their content so that users can read it without having to keep revisiting their site to check for updates.
- RSS feeds are also used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog entries, news, videos, etc., which users can then subscribe to.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML (XML = Extensible Markup Language) document that includes either full or summarized text along with other metadata such as date of publishing, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on sites that publish feeds and then browse updates posted on these sites through a feedreader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate their content automatically.
- There are different feed formats and these can be 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 and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also allow you to combine many RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from many different websites.
In this guide, we explain where your RSS feed is located, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to add content from other sites to your site via RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful and legitimate method used to share web content. Feeds provide an easy way for online users to receive the latest information published on different sites.
First, let’s take a look at how content syndication is used.
Global media and online newspapers use syndication to publish stories from other news agencies around the world.
Syndication allows most online newspapers to deliver readers interesting stories and the most recent news items from all over the globe without having to hire and set up more reporters in every location in the world …
(Most online newspapers and many highly-visited media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish newsworthy content from news sources all around the world.)
Syndication is used to share newsworthy content legitimately. Digital publishing agencies syndicate their newsworthy content using feeds …
(Content syndication is used by global media publications to share information with other news publications)
Most websites actually want you to syndicate their information. Content syndication not only allows high-quality information to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the original site responsible for publishing the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Many online newspapers and major content sites provide links to a feed section (look for menu links that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “courier rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many online newspapers and major sites will include an RSS feed section. Image: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section brings up a directory of different RSS feeds of the site …
(RSS feeds directory. Image Source: NY Times)
These feeds let you source information from different areas of the website (e.g. technology news, travel news, science news, etc.)
Feed sections can also include feed subdirectories …
(RSS Feed section. Image: latimes.com feeds)
Note: An RSS feed is just a URL. To use a feed, all that’s required is to copy the URL and paste it into a program that can process the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Content Syndication – Benefits
Adding someone else’s content to your site has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s business additional exposure online and adds value to your site without you having to create the content …
(Content Syndication - Benefits)
While adding RSS 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 your business the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive more web traffic …
(Look for ways to get visitors to syndicate your content … it will help to increase your web traffic!)
Your WordPress RSS
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on the theme you have installed, there are a few ways to access the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to display in your navigation menu, you can scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(Access your WordPress RSS feed in the Meta section)
2) You can also find built-in links or buttons on certain WordPress themes that let your visitors copy your RSS feed.
In the screenshot below, for example, a visitor can copy the RSS feed URL by clicking on on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy feed links to your clipboard from “subscribe” buttons)
3) On many websites and again, depending on the theme you have installed, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Share, Follow, or Links floating, slide-out, or fixed toolbar …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Follow Us, Link To Us, or Social Share slide-out, floating, or fixed toolbar)
4) You can also view your WordPress RSS feed by 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 subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up your RSS feed page …
(RSS entries viewed using a Firefox browser)
Note that your feed page will display differently depending on which browser you are using …
(RSS feed entries seen using Google Chrome)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
You can specify how many posts you want displayed in your RSS Feed section, by going to your Reading Settings section and selecting the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(Reading Settings – Syndication feeds)
The feed will display as many recent posts as you have specified section …
(The feed will show the number of items you have specified in the Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in the Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display each article in a feed as full text, or just as a summary …
(Settings – Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’: ‘Full text’ or ‘Summary’)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts can affect how a feed will appear)
To learn more about using WordPress Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, to view the content of a feed, you need to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that can translate 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’ icon or link using any of the methods described earlier …
(Search 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 what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your feed into a feed reader to view the content. Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds.
Adding Feeds To Your WP Site
In the example below, we’ll add RSS content from another site to yours.
Adding Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are part of, you could easily display on your site the latest updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing their RSS 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 RSS content to your sidebar …
(Add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar area)
copy the RSS feed URL from a website or blog that publishes content that you want to display on your sidebar to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed to your clipboard)
Next, go to your WordPress Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets and paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Panel – RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Load your site in your web browser. The content from the RSS feed will now appear in the sidebar …
(RSS Feed Added To WP 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 Content From RSS Feeds To Your WordPress Posts
Can you add content from RSS feeds to a post? You sure can!
You can easily do this using plugins. Just search inside the Plugins admin screen (Plugins > Add New) for RSS feed, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ section – RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us for help configuring plugins.
The plugins listed below are useful if you would like to add feed content to posts, or “auto blog” (An auto blog is a blog with content that is automatically gathered and compiled from RSS feeds):
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico)
WPeMatico is an easy to use plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from multiple RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize them into categories and campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin with extended functionality with premium extensions (add-ons).
For example, the Feed to Post add-on for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin lets you add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into your WordPress posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress)
RSS Post Importer can be used to syndicate, curate, import, merge and display full text RSS feeds on your WordPress site.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full article content of each item in the feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin)
The POWr RSS Feed plugin combines and displays content from multiple RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust the priority of different feeds, use custom borders, fonts, colors, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on all computers, tablets, and phones 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 WP Plugin)
The WP Pipes plugin 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, auto blogging, auto post to Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, export your posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to a new level.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin For WordPress)
FeedWordPress provides versatile syndication options for WordPress.
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.
FeedWordPress can be used to create aggregator site (sites that combine and display content from multiple sources), or display all your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Facebook, YouTube, or other online services, in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog by WPMUDev Plugin)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in your feed URL, give the feed a name (for admin purposes) and select the blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages 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 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress makes available RSS feeds of your post comments in addition to making RSS feeds of your latest posts available.
To see this feed, locate the ‘Meta’ section on your sidebar (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) and click on Comments RSS …
(Comments Feed)
Comments posted on your site by visitors and users can be seen in the Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items as seen using Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on the browser you are using …
(RSS comments feed content viewed with a Google Chrome web browser)
Again, you can check what the comments feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feed reader …
(Paste the URL of your comments feed into a feedreader to view the feed 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 site is located in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Creating RSS Feeds For Individual Post Items
Being able to select an RSS feed for a single post item 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 single post item is shown below:
(Feed For Specific Post)
To create the above feed, copy the URL of your post, and add “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only add “/feed” to the end of a post address, WordPress will return the comments made on that post, not the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Using Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only want to syndicate content about certain categories. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
With WordPress, you can create individual category feeds.
All you have to do is use the format below:
(Format for WordPress category feed)
Select and copy the category link address …
(Select and copy your category link address …)
Add “feed” to the end of it …
(RSS feed format for category)
Your category RSS feed now only includes content posted under that particular category …
(Category RSS 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 Your Own Page Of Feeds
You can set up a feeds directory that allows readers to subscribe to content in specific categories …
(Publish An RSS Feeds Directory)
All you need to do is link a button like the one shown below to category feeds and then create a table or a list of all individual feeds on a new page …
(RSS graphic. Image: public-domain-photos.com)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about adding tables to WordPress content, go here:
RSS – Notes
RSS feeds can be customized in several different ways, such as adding videos and images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows you to configure a number of feed types without editing code. For example, here are just some of the kinds of custom feeds you can create …
(WordPress RSS – Feed Types)
Below are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – contains your latest posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Feed that contains the latest comments left on your blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed that includes an individual post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Includes the latest comments made on a single post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/03/04/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Includes the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/11/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – RSS feed that displays latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Includes the latest entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Contains latest 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 your ’subscribe to RSS’ button somewhere visible …
(Encourage your visitors to syndicate your RSS feeds!)
Keep in mind that online users will only subscribe to your content if you provide your visitors with very high-quality information that will add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add great content to your site and get online users to syndicate your content 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 🙂
RSS – Additional Resources:
- Feed Icons – Visit FeedIcons.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss logo”, etc.) for sites that contain downloadable RSS icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization responsible for publishing the RSS specification, providing guidance to developers who create RSS applications and helping to further the understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – General information about using RSS feeds.
- WordPress.org/RSS Feeds – WordPress software documentation and information. Visit this site for additional information about RSS feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to display someone else’s content on your site via their RSS feed.
Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you expand your business online. To read more about using WordPress for a business web site please click on links to visit other great content on this site.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum