No matter what what industry you are a part of, it’s vitally important to provide high-quality information to your site or blog users. For example, if your business provides insurance services, it’s not a bad idea to publish information from government departments, such as news and updates on statistical findings, insurance advice, etc.
The problem with creating this type of information, however, is that it involves an enormous amount of work and expertise. You have to filter through, research, and organize a ton of data, check your sources for accuracy, write and edit content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually make sure that this information is up-to-date. As you can imagine, this not only involves a lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is a much easier way to continually provide your users with up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is one of the easiest ways to provide your users with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Is RSS?
- RSS is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, or, as is more commonly known, Really Simple Syndication. It is also often called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- RSS lets content publishers automatically syndicate their content to save readers time from having to keep revisiting sites to check for updates.
- RSS feeds are also used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog posts, news headlines, videos, etc., to which users can choose to subscribe.
- RSS feed content can be read using a software-based program called a feed reader, or aggregator. Feed readers are used to access content on all different kinds of topics and distribute this content online.
- There are different kinds of feeds, read by different feedreaders. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom (also called AtomPub or APP feeds and 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 tools also allow you to combine many RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from a number of other websites.
This article explains 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 sites on your site via their RSS feed.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful and legitimate way to share content online. Feeds provide web users with a way to receive the latest information published on different sites.
First, let’s look at the concept of content syndication.
Many online newspapers rely heavily on syndication to publish stories from content sources all around the world.
Syndication allows news reporting agencies to deliver readers up-to-the-minute newsworthy items and stories of interest from all over the globe without having to hire and send more news reporters and content writers to every location in the world …
(Most news reporting agencies use content syndication to publish newsworthy stories from other news agencies around the world.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing content. Global media publications syndicate content using news feeds …
(Content syndication is used by news reporting agencies to share information with other news publications)
Most websites actually want you to syndicate their information. 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 links that can drive traffic back to their site.
Most news reporting agencies and major content sites provide links to an RSS feed section (look for links in their navigation section that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “chicago tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many online newspapers and major sites include a feed section. Image: Sydney Morning Herald RSS )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section will bring up a directory of different RSS feed sections of the site …
(RSS feeds section. Image Source: New York Times)
gives you access to content from different areas of the site (e.g. technology news, arts news, jobs, etc.)
Feed sections can also include subcategory feeds …
(RSS Feed section. Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: A feed is only a URL. To use an RSS feed, all that’s required is to copy the URL and paste it into software that can translate the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Syndicating Content – Benefits
Adding someone else’s content to your site has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s site additional exposure online, it also helps you by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(The Benefits Of Using Feeds)
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 your business the opportunity to get increased exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Get visitors to syndicate content using your RSS feed … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)
WordPress RSS Feed – About
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing other online users to syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on your theme, there are a number of ways to access the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to display in a navigation menu, scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(WordPress Meta section – Entries RSS)
2) You can also find links or buttons on certain WordPress themes that let your visitors copy your RSS feed.
For example, in the screenshot below, a visitor can simply copy the feed URL by right-clicking and copying on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy feed URLs to your clipboard from “subscribe to RSS” buttons)
3) On some websites and again, depending on which theme you have installed, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Share, Links, or Stay In Touch section …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Links, Subscribe, or Share toolbar section)
4) You can also view your WordPress 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 website has been installed in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up your RSS page …
(Feed entries displayed with a Firefox web browser)
Note that your feed page will display differently depending on the browser you are using …
(RSS feed content seen using Google Chrome)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
To specify how many entries you would like to display in your RSS section, go to your Reading Settings section and select the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(WP Settings – Reading Settings – Syndication feeds)
The feed page will display the number of posts as you have specified in your WordPress Reading Settings section …
(Your feed will display the number of posts as you have specified in your WP Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
The other setting in the WordPress Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display each article as full text, or just as a summary …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for articles in a RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts affect how your feed content appears)
For a detailed tutorial on WordPress Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, all that’s required to view the content of an RSS feed is to copy the feed’s URL 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 or blog and search for a ’subscribe to feed’ button or link using any of the methods described earlier …
(Look for a ‘subscribe’ link. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL to your clipboard)
If you want, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the URL of your feed into a feedreader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feedreader to view the content. Image: Feedreader.com)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds and convert these into content that is readable by humans.
How To Add RSS Feeds To Your WP Site
In the example below, we’ll add content from other sites to yours.
How To Add Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is a part of, you could display on your site the latest content from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply importing content from their 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 content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar …
(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 …
(Copy the feed URL)
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 website in your web browser. The content should display in your sidebar …
(RSS Feed Content 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:
Adding Content From RSS Feeds To Posts
What if you want to add content from an RSS feed to posts instead of a sidebar?
You can easily do this using plugins. Search inside your ’Add Plugins’ section for RSS feed, 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 help configuring plugins.
Here are a number of WordPress plugins that allow you to curate and add content from RSS feeds to your pages and posts:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico – WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use 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 feeds into categories and campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin that offers a number of premium add-ons for additional functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin is an advanced, feature-rich importer that lets you add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into your posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
The RSS Post Importer plugin can be used to syndicate, import, curate, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress site.
RSS Post Importer fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full article content of each feed item as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)
The POWr RSS Feed plugin allows you to combine content from various RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display videos, images, and articles, adjust feed size and spacing, use custom backgrounds, fonts, colors, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in all languages.
The premium version contains a number of additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin For WordPress)
The WP Pipes plugin is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.
This plugin provides features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter, export WordPress posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a flexible Atom/RSS syndication plugin 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 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, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in your feed URL, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select a blog that you want it to post to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages Plugin For WordPress)
By default, WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed. Use the RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types plugin if you want to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed and not just posts.
For more details, go here:
Using WordPress RSS – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of the latest comments posted on your site in addition to giving online users access to RSS feeds of your latest posts.
You can access these by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ widget area of your sidebar …
(Comments Feed)
Comments posted on your site by visitors display in your Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed content as seen using a Firefox web browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on which web browser you use …
(RSS comments feed entries seen on Google Chrome web browser)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into a feedreader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image: 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 site has been installed in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Creating Individual Item RSS Feeds
Being able to access an RSS feed for an individual post can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific items 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 item is shown below:
(Single Post Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the URL 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 the post, WordPress will return the comments made on that post, not the content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Displaying Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site users may only want to syndicate content from one or two post categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
If your site publishes content under multiple categories, WordPress allows you to provide a separate RSS feed for each post category.
Just use the format below:
(WP post categories RSS feed format)
Copy the category URL …
(Copy the selected category link address …)
Append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(WordPress RSS feed format for category)
Your category RSS feed will now only display content published in that category …
(Category 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 – Publish Your Own List Of Feeds On Your Site
You can provide an RSS feeds list that allows readers to subscribe to content in specific categories …
(Create Your Own Feeds Directory)
Link a button icon like the one shown below to category feed URLs and then create a table or a list of all feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button image. Image Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
We have written a detailed tutorial about inserting tables into WordPress posts here:
WordPress RSS – Additional Notes
You can customize RSS in several different ways, such as adding images and videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows different RSS feed configurations that do not require messing with code. Here are some examples of feed formats you can display …
(Different Feed Formats You Can Create With WordPress RSS)
Below are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the image 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 site
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed that contains a specific post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Displays the latest comments made on single posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Feed displaying the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/04/17/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Includes latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/03/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Displays latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Includes 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 let your visitors know that they can subscribe to your RSS feed. Place your ’subscribe to RSS’ button or link in a visible location …
(Remember to promote your RSS feeds!)
Keep in mind that online users will only want to subscribe to your content if you publish useful content that educates, engages, and entertains. In other words, you need to provide high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add great content to your site and get others to subscribe to your content online with RSS feeds!)
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 🙂
RSS Resources:
- RSS Feed Graphics – Visit online resource sites like Iconspedia.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss buttons”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download Free RSS graphics.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information and resources about RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about the history and benefits of using RSS.
- WordPress.org – Official WordPress documentation and information. Visit this site to learn more about using WordPress RSS feeds.
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 add someone else’s content to your site using their RSS feed.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you expand your business online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website or blog please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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