No matter what service or product you sell or what industry your business is in, you need to provide high-quality information to your site visitors. For example, if your business provides taxation services, you may want to provide users with useful information from the taxation office, such as news and updates on tax rulings, small business tax deductions, etc.
To create and publish this type of information, however, is really 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 make sure that this information is continually 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 entirely beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a simpler way to provide your site readers with up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - The simplest way to provide your site visitors with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
Some Basic Information About RSS
- RSS, which, according to some definitions is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly referred to as Really Simple Syndication. It it is also 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 sites to check for updates.
- RSS feeds are typically used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as blog posts, news headlines, audio lists, etc., to which other users can then subscribe.
- You can read RSS feeds using a software program called a feedreader, or feed aggregator. Aggregators are used to find content on all different kinds of topics and distribute this content (and updates made to this content) to other online properties.
- Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different feed 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 compatibility with different machines and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also let you combine different RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from various different websites.
This guide shows you how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to add content from other websites to your site using RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a very powerful and legitimate way to share content online. Feeds provide online users with an easy way to keep up with the latest information published on sites and blogs they are interested in.
First, let’s look at syndication.
Many digital news agencies and many influential media publications rely heavily on syndication to publish stories from news agencies all around the world.
Content syndication allows online newspapers to deliver readers stories and news items from all over the globe without actually having to hire more reporters in every location in the world …
(Media publications rely on syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies all around the planet.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing content with other sites. Global media publications syndicate news stories using feeds …
(Content agencies syndicate their content using news feeds)
Most websites actually want you to syndicate their content. Content syndication not only allows information to be shared, but it also sends visitors back to the original site responsible for publishing the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Most news reporting agencies and leading online media publications contain a feed section (look for navigation links that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “nz herald rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Major content sites have an RSS feed section. Image: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section brings up a list of different RSS feed sections …
(RSS feeds section. Image: NY Times)
gives readers access to different areas of the website (e.g. business news, sports news, jobs, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain subcategory feeds …
(An RSS directory can also contain subcategory feeds. Image: latimes.com)
Note: A feed is just a URL. To use feeds, all you have to do is to copy the URLs and paste these 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 website has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s website additional exposure online, it also adds value to your site without you having to create the content …
(The Benefits Of Content Syndication)
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 sites syndicate your RSS feed, you have the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Try to get visitors to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress RSS – Overview
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on your WordPress site’s theme, there are a number of ways to get your RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to display on your navigation menu, just scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(You can access your WordPress RSS feed in the Entries RSS menu)
2) You can also find built-in links or buttons on certain WordPress themes that allow your visitors to copy your feed.
For example, in the screenshot below, a visitor can simply 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 sites and again, depending on your WordPress site’s theme, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Share, Subscribe, or Link To Us toolbar …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Links, Keep In Touch, or Social Share section)
4) You can also view your WordPress site’s feed by simply 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 installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up a page containing your RSS feed …
(Feed items displayed using a Firefox web browser)
Note that your feed items will display differently depending on which web browser you are using …
(Feed items displayed on Chrome browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
To specify how many items you would like displayed in your RSS Feed page, 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 will show as many recent posts as you have specified in your WP Reading Settings section …
(The feed page will show as many recent posts as you have specified in the WordPress 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 as full text, or just as a summary …
(WordPress Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts affect how feeds appear)
For a detailed tutorial about Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, to view a feed’s content, you have to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that translates feeds into readable content.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, go to a website whose feed you want to subscribe to and look for a ’subscribe to feed’ link using any of the methods described earlier …
(Search for an RSS feed button. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed to your clipboard)
If you want, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the URL of your feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feed readers, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS feeds.
Adding An RSS Feed To WordPress Sites
In the example below, we are going to add content from other websites to yours.
How To Add A Feed To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you could add to your site the latest news 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, social media comments, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add content sourced from an RSS feed to your sidebar …
(Let’s add an RSS feed to your sidebar)
copy the RSS feed URL from a website or blog that publishes content that you would like to display on your site …
(Copy the URL of your feed to your clipboard)
Next, paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(Widgets Screen – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Load your site in your web browser. The content can now be seen in the sidebar (or wherever the RSS widget has been placed – e.g. footer) …
(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 An RSS Feed To WordPress Posts
Can you add content from RSS feeds to posts? You sure can!
You can do this using plugins. Search on WordPress.org plugin directory for RSS Post, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ section – WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for complete instructions, or contact us for assistance with plugin configuration.
Here are a few autoblogging tools that allow you to automatically create posts using feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin)
WPeMatico is an auto blogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from selected RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all the feeds you import and organize feeds according to categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator WordPress Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and autoblogging plugin for WordPress that offers premium add-ons for extended functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on is an advanced importer that lets you import RSS feeds directly into your WP posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
RSS Post Importer lets you curate, syndicate, import, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress site.
The plugin will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full content of each feed item as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed WordPress Plugin)
With POWr RSS Feed, you can combine and display content from a number of different content using RSS feeds.
This plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust the priority of different feeds, use custom colors, fonts, backgrounds, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in every language.
The premium version of this plugin contains a number of additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, manually accept or reject posts, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin)
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 loads of functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Twitter/LinkedIn/Facebook, export your posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress – WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a simple and flexible 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 site (sites that combine posts from different sources), or bring together all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Facebook, YouTube, or other online services, in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in the URL of your feed, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select a blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types Plugin)
You can use a plugin like RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types if you would like to include pages in your RSS feed and not just 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 the latest comments posted on your site in addition to giving online users access to RSS feeds of your posts.
You can access these comments by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ section of your sidebar menu (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) …
(WordPress Comments RSS)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors and users display in your Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed entries seen with Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on which browser you are using …
(Comments feed items displayed using Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into a feed reader …
(Paste the URL of your comments feed into a feed reader to view the 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 subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Creating RSS Feeds For Single Posts
Being able to use an RSS feed for a single post can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific items 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 single posts is shown below:
(RSS Feed For Specific Post Item)
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 append “/feed” to the end of a post URI, WordPress will return the comments made on your post, not actual post content itself.
Tip #3 – Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in subscribing to content from one or two categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
If your site displays content published under many categories, you can offer visitors a separate RSS feed for each post category.
Just use the format below:
(WP RSS feed format for post categories)
Select and copy the category URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the selected category URL …)
Add the word “feed” to the end of it …
(Format for WordPress category feed)
The category RSS feed will now only contain content posted under that category …
(Category-specific 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 – Set Up Your Own Feeds List
You can set up a feeds page that allows readers to subscribe to content in specific categories, just like large authoritative sites …
(Publish Your Own Directory Of Feeds)
Link an image to category feeds and then create a table or a list of all your category feeds on a new page …
(RSS image. Source: public-domain-photos.com)
To learn more about creating tables in WordPress posts and pages, go here:
RSS – Additional Notes
Feeds can be customized in various different ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows different RSS feed configurations that do not require touching code. For example, here are just some of the kinds of feeds you can use on your site and how to structure these feeds …
(Different Custom Feeds You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
Below are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed in the table above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Includes your latest posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Contains the latest comments published on your blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed that contains individual posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Includes the latest comments made on specific posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Contains latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/06/23/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/01/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – RSS feed displaying latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Contains latest items for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Feed displaying the latest items for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One more thing …
Remember to let your site visitors know that they can subscribe to your feed. Place a subscribe link or button in a visible location …
(Remember to promote your feeds!)
Keep in mind that online users will only want to syndicate your content if you provide your visitors with high-quality information that will add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add content from other sites and get visitors to share your content online 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 RSS feed 🙂
Resources:
- Download RSS Buttons – Visit a site like iconspedia.com/search/rss or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “rss logo download”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download Free RSS icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization with three primary duties: publishing RSS specifications, guiding developers who create RSS applications and helping to further the understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about RSS feeds.
- WordPress.org – WordPress documentation and information site. Go here for additional information about WordPress 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 display content from other websites and blogs on 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 grow your business online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website please click on links to visit other great articles and tutorials on this site.
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