No matter what what industry you are in, you need to provide high-quality information to your site readers. For example, if your business provides travel services, it’s a good idea to publish the latest information from government and foreign travel departments, such as news and updates on travel warnings, tips from consular offices, etc.
The problem with providing this kind of information, however, is that it takes a lot of work and expertise. You have to sift through, gather, and organize a ton of information, check your facts, 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 is not only a lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a much simpler way to regularly provide your site readers with expert, up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - The easiest way to provide your blog subscribers with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Does RSS Stand For?
- RSS, which, according to some is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly known now as Really Simple Syndication. It it is also called a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
- After a user subscribes to a website’s feed, they no longer have to manually visit and check the website for content updates. Instead, their browser will constantly monitor the content and automatically keep subscribers updated.
- RSS feeds are often used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog posts, news, videos, etc., which any user can then subscribe to.
- You can read RSS feeds with a program called a feedreader, or feed aggregator. Aggregators can be used to access new content published on websites and distribute this content (and any updates made to the content) to various online properties.
- Feeds can be made available in different formats and read by different feed readers. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom Publishing Protocol) feeds and 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 tools also let you combine multiple RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from a number of sites.
This in-depth article explains how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, and how to add someone else’s content to your site using their RSS feed.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful method used for sharing content online. Feeds provide web users with an easy way to receive the latest information published on sites they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at syndication.
Online media publications rely on content syndication to publish news and stories from content sources around the world.
Syndication allows news publishing agencies and many popular online publications to deliver readers stories on all kinds of topics and up-to-the-minute news from all around the planet without actually having to hire and set up additional news reporting departments in every location around the world …
(Media publications rely on syndication to publish newsworthy stories from news sources around the world.)
Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing content with other sites. Digital content agencies syndicate stories using news feeds …
(Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing information)
Most sites actually would like you to syndicate their information. Syndicating content not only allows high-quality information 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 significant web visitors.
Many digital news publishing agencies and major online media publications contain an RSS feed section (look for links in the navigation menu 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.) …
(Most online newspapers and major sites include a feed section. Image Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link will bring up a list of different RSS feed sections …
(RSS directory. Image Source: nytimes.com)
Each of these feeds allows readers to access information from different sections of the website (e.g. business news, arts news, editorials, etc.)
An RSS feed directory can also contain feed subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Image Source: LA Times)
Note: An RSS feed is just a URL. To use the feed, all you need to do is copy the URL and paste it into software that can translate the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
RSS Feeds – Benefits
Adding someone else’s content to your website has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s content additional exposure online and adds value to your site without you having to create that content …
(Content Syndication Benefits Someone Else’s Business 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 your business the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive new web traffic …
(Get users to syndicate your content … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress RSS Feed
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on which theme you have installed, there are a few ways to access your RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to be displayed on the sidebar menu, scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(WordPress Meta widget)
2) You can also find links or buttons on certain themes that allow your visitors to copy your RSS feed.
For example, in the screenshot below, a visitor can copy the RSS feed URL by right-clicking and copying on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy feed links 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 toolbar …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Links, Social Share, or Stay In Touch toolbar section)
4) You can also view your WordPress site’s RSS feed by typing your site’s URL into a web browser and adding “/feed” after the URL, e.g.:
- http://www.yourdomain.com/feed
- http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/feed (if your WP site installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up your site’s feed page …
(RSS items displayed on Firefox)
Note that your feed page will display differently depending on which browser you use …
(RSS feed entries seen on Chrome browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
Specify how many posts you would like displayed in your Feeds page in the Reading Settings section. Select the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(Settings – Reading Settings – Syndication items setting)
Your feed page will display as many recent items you have specified section …
(The feed page will show as many recent items you have specified in your Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
The other setting in the Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display each article as full text, or a summary …
(Settings – Reading Settings – Display ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for articles in a feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts can affect how content in your feeds will display)
To learn more about WordPress Post excerpts, see this step-by-step tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, all you have to do 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 reads and translates feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s see how this works.
First, go to a website whose feed you want to subscribe to and look for a ’subscribe to feed’ button or link …
(Search for an RSS feed section. Image source: 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 feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste your URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds.
How To Add An RSS Feed 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 operate in, you could easily add to your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing 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 …
(Let’s add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar area)
First, Go to a site that publishes content that you would like to display on your site and copy its RSS 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 …
(Widgets Panel – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:
Load your site in your web browser. The content from the RSS feed will now show in the sidebar …
(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 Add An RSS Feed To WordPress Posts
Can content from an RSS feed be added to posts? It sure can!
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. 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 configuration instructions, or contact us for help with plugin configuration.
The plugins below are useful if you want to add feed content to posts, or “autoblog” (An autoblog is a blog with content that is automatically gathered and compiled from RSS feeds):
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico)
WPeMatico is an autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from specific RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize feeds according to campaigns and categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator WP Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and autoblogging plugin for WordPress that offers a number of premium add-ons for extended functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension lets you add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into WP posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer)
The RSS Post Importer plugin allows you to syndicate, curate, import, merge and display full-text feeds on your WordPress site.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full content of each item in the feed as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin)
POWr RSS Feed combines and displays content from various content using RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust feed priority, use custom colors, fonts, backgrounds, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in any language.
The premium version contains a number of additional features.
For more details, go here:
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 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 versatile Atom/RSS 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.
You can use this FeedWordPress to create aggregator sites, or display all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, LinkedIn, YouTube, or other online services, in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog by WPMUDev)
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 it a name of your choosing (for admin purposes) and select the 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)
Use RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed in addition to posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of comments posted on your site in addition to making RSS feeds of your posts available to online users.
To see this feed, go to the ‘Meta’ section on your sidebar menu (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 your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items seen on a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on the web browser you use …
(Comments feed items viewed using a Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feed reader to view the 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 installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Using Feeds For Specific Post Items
Being able to select an RSS feed for an individual post 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 displaying an RSS feed for an individual post is shown below:
(RSS Feed For Specific Post)
To create the above feed, copy the URL of your post, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of the URI of your post, WordPress will return the comments left on your post, not the content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Category RSS Feeds
Some your site users may only be interested in syndicating content from specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
WordPress allows you to create category feeds.
All you need to do is use the format below:
(WP RSS feed format for post categories)
Copy the category URL …
(Copy your category link address …)
Add “feed” to the end of it …
(Feed format for category)
Your category feed now only displays content published in this 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 – Provide Your Own Page Of RSS Feeds For Your Visitors
You can publish your own feeds page that allows readers to subscribe only to content in the categories that interest them …
(Provide Your Own RSS Feeds List)
You can link an image like the one shown below to the URL of your category feed and then create a table or a list of all individual feeds on a new page …
(RSS 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 content, go here:
RSS – Notes
Feeds can be customized in a number of ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows you to configure different feed formats that do not require editing code. Below are examples of some of the kinds of feeds you can display on your site and how to format the feeds …
(WordPress RSS – Custom Feeds)
For your convenience, here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed 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 left on your blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed that includes single post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Displays the latest comments made on a single post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/05/09/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/07/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/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 the latest items for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One last thing …
Remember to let your site users know that they can subscribe to your RSS feeds. Make sure you place your ’subscribe to RSS’ button somewhere visible …
(Promote your feeds!)
Keep in mind that online users will only want to subscribe to your content if you publish useful content. In other words, you need to provide high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Easily add someone else’s content and get other users to share 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 feed 🙂
RSS – Resources:
- RSS Images – Visit Feedicons or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss logo”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS graphics.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to gain a better understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about RSS.
- WordPress.org – WordPress software documentation and reference site. Go here to learn more about WordPress RSS feeds.
Congratulations! Now you know how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to add someone else’s content to your site using RSS feeds.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business web site please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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