No matter what service or product you sell or what industry your business is in, it’s vitally important to provide quality information on your site or blog. For example, if your business provides medical services, it’s not a bad idea to provide users with information from the health department, such as news and updates on medical research, health and fitness advice, etc.
The problem with creating this kind of information, however, is that it is very time-consuming. You have to do a ton of information sorting, researching and organizing, fact-checking, writing and editing content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually make sure that this information is kept 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 a simpler way to provide your readers with up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is one of the easiest ways to provide your subscribers with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – An Overview
- RSS is short for Rich Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred to, Really Simple Syndication. It is often referred to as a “feed” or “news feed”.
- 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 information that is frequently updated, such as new blog entries, news, audio playlists, etc., to which other users can then subscribe.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is a structured XML (XML = Extensible Markup Language) document that includes full or summarized text along with metadata such as date of publishing, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then view any updates posted on these sites through an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate information.
- Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom feeds and RDF feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure that feeds are compatible with different devices, feedreaders, and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also allow you to combine multiple RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates from many different sources.
In this in-depth guide, you are going to learn how to find your WordPress RSS feed, 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.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful way of sharing web content. RSS Feeds provide a way for online users to stay up-to-date with the latest information posted on different websites.
First, let’s look at content syndication.
News reporting agencies and popular online publications rely heavily on syndication to publish stories from news sources all around the world.
Syndication allows leading news reporting agencies to deliver readers the latest news items and stories of interest from all over the globe without having to employ more reporting agencies all around the world …
(Most online newspapers use syndication to publish news and stories from other news agencies all around the globe.)
Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing information with other sites. Online newspapers syndicate their news stories using feeds …
(Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing content)
Most sites actually would like you to share their information. Syndicating content not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it also drives visitors back to the site that originally created theoriginally created and published the content being syndicated. This creates new ways to drive traffic back to their site.
Most news reporting agencies and major sites provide links to an RSS feed section (look for menu links that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “courier mail rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Major content sites provide links to a feed section. Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link brings up a list of RSS feeds for different areas of the site …
(RSS feeds section. Source: New York Times)
Each of these RSS feed items allows readers to access information from different areas of the website (e.g. technology news, sports news, editorials, etc.)
An RSS feed directory can also contain further feed subdirectories …
(An RSS directory can also include subcategories. Image: latimes.com)
Note: A feed is only a URL. All that’s required to use the feed is copy the URL and paste it into an application that can translate the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Using Feeds – Benefits
Adding someone else’s content to your site has some obvious benefits. It gives additional exposure online to someone else’s website and helps your site by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(The Benefits Of Syndicating Content)
While adding a feed from another site is a great way to add content to your site that you don’t have to create, it’s worth keeping in mind that you also want other websites to use your content.
When other websites syndicate your feed, you have the opportunity to gain more exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Get other sites to syndicate your content … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress RSS – About
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing other online users to easily syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on your WordPress theme, there are a few ways to access your RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget on the sidebar or footer menu …
(Your feed will display the number of posts as you have specified in the WP Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in your WordPress Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display posts in the feed as full text, or a summary …
(WP Settings – 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 affect how your feed content will appear)
If you need help using Post excerpts in WordPress, see this tutorial:
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 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 subscribe to and search for a ’subscribe to feed’ link using any of the methods described earlier …
(Search for an RSS feed link. Image source: 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 a feed reader …
(Paste your URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Source: Feedreader)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds and convert these into readable content for humans.
Adding A Feed To Your WordPress Site
Let’s show you how to add content from another website or blog to your site.
How To Add Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is a part of, you could add to your site the latest updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing content from their feed. You can use feeds to 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 sourced from an RSS feed to your sidebar …
(Add an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar area)
First, go to a website that publishes content that you want to display on your site and copy its RSS feed to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed to your clipboard)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(RSS Widget)
To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:
Refresh your web browser. The content from the RSS feed will now appear on the sidebar …
(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:
How To Add Content From RSS Feeds To Posts
Can you add content from RSS feeds to a post instead of the sidebar? Yes, you can!
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Just search on the WordPress plugin directory for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.
(WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us for help with plugin configuration.
The plugins listed below are useful for adding feed content to posts, or “autoblog” (An autoblog is a blog with content that is automatically gathered and compiled from RSS feeds):
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin)
WPeMatico is an auto blogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from specific RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange them into categories and campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin that offers extended functionality with premium extensions (add-ons).
For example, the Feed to Post add-on is an advanced importer that lets you add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into your WP posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer WP Plugin)
RSS Post Importer allows you to import, curate, syndicate, merge and display full text feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) on your WordPress website or blog.
RSS Post Importer fetches an RSS feed and publishes the entire content of every item in the feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin)
With POWr RSS Feed, you can automatically combine and display content from a number of different RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust the priority of different feeds, use custom colors, borders, fonts, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in every language.
The premium version contains many additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin For WordPress)
The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress 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 features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter, export your posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to new levels.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress WP Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a simple and flexible Atom/RSS syndication plugin 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 plugin to create aggregator site (sites that combine and display posts from various different sources), or display all your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Twitter, YouTube, or other online services, in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog by WPMUDev – WordPress 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 the URL of your feed, give the feed a name of your choosing (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 – WordPress Plugin)
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types modifies your default WordPress RSS feed to include pages in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Using WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to giving online users access to RSS feeds of your posts, WordPress also displays RSS feeds of comments posted on your site.
To see the comments in your feed, locate the ‘Meta’ section on your sidebar (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) and click on Comments RSS …
(WordPress Comments Feed)
Comments posted on your site by visitors and users display in the Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed entries as seen with Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on which web browser you are using …
(RSS comments feed content viewed using a Google Chrome web browser)
Again, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feed reader …
(Paste your feed URL 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 is located in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Accessing RSS Feeds For Single Items
Being able to select an RSS feed for a specific post 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 making an RSS feed for specific posts is shown below:
(Individual Post RSS Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the post address, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only add “/feed” to the end of the URI of your post, WordPress will return the comments associated with that post, not the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Using Post Category Feeds
Some your site users may only be interested in subscribing to content from a specific post category. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
With WordPress, you can easily create separate category feeds.
Just use the format shown below:
(WordPress post categories feed format)
Copy the selected category link address …
(Select and copy your category URL …)
Append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(WordPress post categories RSS feed format)
Your category feed will now only include content posted in this particular category …
(Category-specific RSS 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 – Publish An RSS Feeds List
You can create a directory of RSS feeds that allows readers to subscribe to specific content …
(Create Your Own RSS Feeds Page)
You can also link an icon to the URL of your feed and then create a table or a list of all category feeds on a new page …
(RSS button. Image Source: public-domain-photos.com)
We have created a detailed tutorial on inserting tables into WordPress here:
RSS – Additional Notes
You can customize RSS in several ways, such as adding images and videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows you to configure different feed types that do not require code editing skills. Here are some examples of custom feed formats you can use and how to create the feeds …
(Different Feed Formats You Can Create With WordPress RSS)
For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – contains 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 for individual items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: RSS Feed that includes the latest comments made on a single post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Displays latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/10/21/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/09/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Feed containing latest post entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Includes latest entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One last thing …
Remember to let users know that they can subscribe to your feed. Make sure you place your ’subscribe to RSS’ button or link somewhere visible …
(Encourage your visitors to subscribe to your RSS feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that other sites will only want to subscribe to your content if you provide your visitors with high-quality content that can add value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add someone else’s content and get online users to share your content with WordPress and 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 🙂
Additional RSS Resources:
- Download RSS Images – Visit Iconspedia.com or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “RSS buttons”, etc.) for sites that contain downloadable Free RSS images.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization responsible for publishing the RSS specification, guiding developers who create RSS applications and helping to further the understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – General information about the benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress.org/RSS Feeds – Official WordPress documentation site. Go here for more information about WordPress RSS feeds.
Congratulations! Now you know how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to add content from other websites to your site via RSS.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you grow your business online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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