No matter what service or product your business sells, it’s important to provide quality information to your site visitors. For example, if you provide taxation services, it’s a good idea to include the latest information from the taxation office, such as news or updates on tax rulings, small business tax tips, etc.
The problem with creating this kind of information, however, is that it involves a great deal of work and resources. You have to sift through, research, and organize a lot of information, check your sources for accuracy, write and edit content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then ensure that this information is continually up-to-date. As you can imagine, this not only involves a huge amount of work but most of the information you are dealing with is completely beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a simpler way to continually provide your users with expert, up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - The simplest way to provide your subscribers with great information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – What Does It Mean?
- RSS, which, according to some is short for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly referred to now as Really Simple Syndication. It it is also referred to as a “feed” or “news feed”.
- Once users subscribe to a website’s feed, they no longer have to physically visit and check the source website for updated content. Instead, their browser will continually monitor the site and automatically keep subscribers up-to-date.
- RSS feeds are typically used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as new blog posts, news, videos, etc., to which other users can then subscribe.
- RSS feeds can be read with a web-based, desktop-based, and even mobile-based software-based tool called a feedreader, or feed aggregator. Feedreaders can be used to access content on all kinds of topics and syndicate this content (and any updates made to this content) online.
- There are different feed formats and these can be read by different aggregators. 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 applications also let you combine multiple RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from various sites.
In this guide, you are going to learn where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, and how to display content from other websites on your site via RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful (and legitimate) method used for sharing content online. RSS Feeds provide web users with a way to receive the latest information posted on different sites.
First, let’s take a look at the concept of content syndication.
Global media publications rely heavily on syndication to publish content from news agencies around the world.
Syndication allows online newspapers to deliver readers the latest stories and headlines from all around the planet without actually having to set up additional news staff everywhere around the world …
(Media publications use content syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies around the world.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing content with other sites. Global media publications syndicate their news stories using feeds …
(News reporting agencies syndicate newsworthy content using feeds)
Most sites actually want you to syndicate their information. Syndicating content not only allows information to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the site that originally published the content being syndicated. This provides websites with new opportunities to generate significant web visitors.
Most leading online media publications contain an RSS 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”, “texas tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many digital publishing agencies include an RSS feed section. Image: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link will bring up a directory of RSS feeds for different content topics on the site …
(RSS feeds directory. Image: New York Times)
gives you access to information from different areas of the site (e.g. technology news, sports news, science news, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain further subcategory feeds …
(Feed sections can also contain subcategory feeds. Image Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: A feed is only a URL. To use RSS feeds, all you have to do is to copy the URLs and paste these into software that can translate the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Syndicating Content – Benefits
Syndicating someone else’s content on your website has some obvious benefits. It not only helps someone else’s business, it also adds value to your site without you having to create this content …
(Content Syndication - Benefits)
While adding a feed from another site is a great way to add content to your site without having to create it, it’s worth keeping in mind that you also want other websites to use YOUR content.
When other websites and blogs syndicate your RSS feed, this gives your business the opportunity to gain more exposure online and drive new web traffic …
(Try to get visitors to syndicate your feed … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)
Overview Of The WordPress RSS
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your 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 get your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to be displayed in your navigation menu, you can scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(Meta section – Entries RSS)
2) You can also find built-in links and/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 RSS feed URL by right-clicking and copying on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy RSS URLs to your clipboard from “subscribe” buttons)
3) On some sites and again, depending on your WP theme, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Social Share, Link To Us, or Follow toolbar …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Social Share, Follow Us, or Links toolbar)
4) You can also view your RSS 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 site installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up your WordPress RSS feed page …
(RSS content as seen using a Firefox web browser)
Note that your feed page will display differently depending on the browser you use …
(Feed items displayed with a Chrome browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
To specify how many posts you want to show in your RSS section, go to your Reading Settings section and enter the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(WordPress Reading Settings – Syndication feed items)
Your feed section will display the number of posts as you have specified in the WP Reading Settings section …
(Your feed will display as many recent items you have specified in the 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 posts as full text, or as a summary …
(Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’: ‘Full text’ or ‘Summary’)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content displays …
(Post excerpts can affect how a feed appears)
To learn more about WordPress Post excerpts, refer to this tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, to view a feed’s content, you need to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into an application that translates feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, find a website whose feed you want to syndicate and look for a ‘subscribe’ button or link using any of the methods described earlier …
(Look for a ’subscribe to feed’ button. Image source: http://www.yourcoffeeguru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …
(Paste your URL of your feed into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image Source: Feedreader)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds.
Adding RSS Feeds To WordPress
In the example below, we’ll add content from other sites to yours.
How To Add 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 by simply adding content from their RSS feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, Facebook comments, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to the WordPress sidebar area …
(Let’s add an RSS feed to your sidebar)
First, find a website that publishes content that you want to display on your site and copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
Next, go to your Widgets area and paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(WordPress RSS Widget)
To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:
Load your site in your web browser. The content from the RSS feed should appear on the sidebar (or wherever the RSS widget has been placed – e.g. custom menu, footer, etc) …
(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 A Feed To WordPress Posts
Can content from RSS feeds be added to WordPress posts? Yes, it can!
You can do this using WordPress plugins. Just search inside your Plugins screen for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ screen)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for instructions, or contact us for assistance with plugin configuration.
The plugins listed below can be used to feed content to posts, or “autoblog” (An auto blog 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 RSS/Atom feeds that you specify.
You can manage all the feeds you import 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 an RSS feed importer and autoblogging plugin for WordPress with additional functionality with a number of premium add-ons.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin allows you to import RSS feeds directly into posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer WordPress Plugin)
RSS Post Importer can be used to import, curate, syndicate, merge and display full text feeds on your WordPress site.
The plugin fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full content of each item in your feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin For WordPress)
POWr RSS Feed automatically combines and displays content from multiple RSS feeds.
This plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust the priority of different feeds, use custom borders, fonts, colors, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in any language.
The premium edition of POWr contains a number of additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, accept or reject posts, and more.
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 create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.
This plugin provides loads of powerful features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook, export WordPress posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin For WordPress)
FeedWordPress is a simple and flexible Atom/RSS syndication plugin for WordPress content.
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 sites, or bring together all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Facebook, Flickr, 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 in minutes, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in your feed URL, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select a blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages Plugin For WordPress)
The RSS Includes Pages plugin lets you display pages in your RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to giving online users access to feeds of your latest posts, WordPress also displays RSS feeds of your latest post comments.
You can see this by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ widget area of your sidebar menu (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) …
(Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors display in the Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items viewed with a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on the browser you use …
(RSS comments feed entries seen on Google Chrome web browser)
Again, you can check what the comments feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feed reader …
(Paste your 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 website has been installed in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Accessing RSS Feeds For Single Items
Being able to access an RSS feed for single 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 specific posts is shown below:
(RSS Feed For Specific Post Item)
To create the above feed, copy the web address of your post, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only add “/feed” to the end of a post URI, WordPress will return the comments associated with your post, not actual content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Post Category Feeds
Some your site users may only want to subscribe to content from specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
If you publish content under multiple categories, you can easily create a separate RSS feed for each category.
All you have to do is use the format shown below:
(Feed format for post categories)
Select and copy the category URL …
(Copy the category URL …)
Now, append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(WP category feed format)
Your RSS feed now only contains content specific to this 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 – Provide Your Own List Of Feeds
You can provide your own directory of RSS feeds that allows your readers to subscribe to content in specific categories …
(Create A List Of RSS Feeds)
All you need to do is link an RSS button image to your category (or single post) feed URLs and then create a table or a list of all your category feeds on a new page …
(RSS button image. Image: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
To learn more about creating tables in WordPress posts and pages, see this tutorial:
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 editing code.
WordPress allows you to configure various feed types that do not require messing with code. Here are some examples of feed formats you can display …
(WordPress RSS – Custom Feeds)
Below are the 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 posted on your website or blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed containing specific items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Feed that contains the latest comments made on a single post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Displays the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/04/04/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/02/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Displays latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Contains the latest post entries 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 …
It’s a good idea to let your users know that they can subscribe to your feed. Place a ’subscribe to RSS’ button somewhere visible …
(Encourage your site users to subscribe to your feeds!)
Keep in mind that other sites will only syndicate your content if you provide your subscribers with very high-quality information that will add value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add someone else’s content and get other sites to subscribe to 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 feed 🙂
Resources:
- RSS Feed Icons – Visit Feedicons or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss logo download”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS graphics.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information and resources about RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – General information about RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex – WordPress documentation and reference. Go here for additional information about feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to add content from other websites and blogs to your site via RSS.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you grow your business online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WordPress CMS platform please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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