No matter what product or service you provide or what industry your business is a part of, you need to provide high-quality information to your site or blog visitors. For example, if your business provides insurance-related services, it’s not a bad idea to include information from government departments, such as news or updates on statistical findings, insurance advice, etc.
The problem with providing this kind of information, however, is that it takes an enormous amount of effort and expertise. You have to sort through, gather, 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 continually make sure that this information is kept 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 entirely beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is a simpler way to provide your site readers with expert, up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the simplest way to provide your users with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Does RSS Stand For?
- RSS, which, according to some stands for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly referred to now as Really Simple Syndication. It can also be referred to as 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 updated content. Instead, their browser will continually monitor the site and automatically keep subscribers up-to-date.
- Feeds are often used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog posts, news headlines, audios, etc., which other users can choose to subscribe to.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is a structured XML document that includes either full or summarized text along with other metadata like published date, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then browse updates posted on these sites through a feedreader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate web content automatically.
- 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 allow you to combine different RSS feeds to display news and updates from various sources.
This article explains where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to display someone else’s content on your site via RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful (and legitimate) method used for sharing web content. RSS Feeds provide online users with a way to stay up-to-date with the latest information posted on different websites and blogs.
First, let’s look at syndication.
Global media publications rely heavily on syndication to publish newsworthy content from news sources all around the world.
Syndication allows leading online newspapers to deliver readers the most recent news items and fresh stories from around the globe without actually having to employ and set up more writers everywhere around the world …
(Most digital content publishing agencies and highly-visited online media publications use syndication to publish content from news sources all around the planet.)
Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing information with other sites. online media publications syndicate newsworthy content using news feeds …
(Online newspapers syndicate their information using news feeds)
Most sites actually would like you to syndicate their content. Syndicating content not only allows great information to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the original site that created and published the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Most news reporting agencies and major content sites provide links to a 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”, “salt lake tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many news reporting agencies and major content sites will have an RSS feed section. Image: SMH RSS )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section will bring up a directory of different RSS feeds …
(RSS feeds list. Source: nytimes.com)
These RSS feeds give readers access to content about different sections of the website (e.g. technology news, entertainment news, jobs, etc.)
Feed sections can also include feed subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Image Source: latimes.com)
Note: A feed is only a URL. All you have to do to use a feed is copy the URL and paste it into a program that can process the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Using Feeds
Syndicating content from someone else’s site on your site has some obvious benefits. It gives additional exposure online to someone else’s content and adds value to your site without you having to create the content …
(Content Syndication Benefits Someone Else’s Website And Yours!)
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 a great idea to try and get other websites to syndicate your content.
When other sites syndicate your feed, you have the opportunity to gain more exposure online and drive new visitors …
(Consider trying to get users to syndicate your feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
Your WordPress RSS Feed
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing other online users to easily syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on the WP theme you have installed, there are a number of ways to access the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to be displayed in a navigation menu, just scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(WordPress Meta section)
2) You can also find built-in links and buttons on certain WordPress themes that allow your visitors to copy your feed.
In the screenshot below, for example, a visitor can copy the site’s 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 many sites and again, depending on the WordPress theme you have installed, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Link To Us, Follow, or Share section …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Social Share, Link To Us, or Follow Us toolbar section)
4) You can also view your WordPress RSS 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 …
(RSS items as seen using Firefox)
Note that your feed items will display differently depending on the browser you use …
(RSS feed entries seen using a Google Chrome web browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
Specify how many entries you want to show in your Feeds page in the Reading Settings section. Type the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(Reading Settings – Number of syndication feed items)
Your feed section will display the number of posts as you have specified section …
(The feed page will show 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 WP Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display posts as full text, or a summary …
(Settings – Reading Settings – Display ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for each article in your feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …
(Post excerpts affect how content in feeds will display)
To learn more about using Post excerpts in WordPress, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, all you need to do to view a feed’s content is 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 take a look at how this works.
First, go to a website whose feed you want to subscribe to and search for an RSS feed section using any of the methods described earlier …
(Look for an RSS feed button. 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 URL of the feed into an online feed reader …
(Paste the URL of your feed into a feed reader to view the feed content. Source: Feedreader)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS feeds.
Adding Feeds To Your Site
In the example below, we are going to add content from another website’s RSS feeds to your WordPress site.
How To Add Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business operates in, you can easily display on your site the latest content from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by adding content from their RSS feed. You can use RSS feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site like 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 …
(Let’s add content from an RSS feed to your sidebar)
copy the feed URL from a website or blog that publishes content that you would like to add to your sidebar …
(Copy your feed URL to your clipboard)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Section – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:
Load your website in your browser. The content can now be seen in 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 Feeds To Your Posts
Can you add content from an RSS feed to a post? You sure can!
You can do this using WordPress plugins. Search on the WordPress plugin repository for RSS Post, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ section – RSS plugins)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for configuration instructions, or contact us for help configuring plugins.
Here are a few autoblogging tools that allow you to automatically create posts using RSS feeds and imported content:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico)
WPeMatico is an easy to use auto blogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from multiple RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange feeds according to categories and campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator WordPress Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and autoblogging WordPress plugin that offers extended functionality with a number of premium extensions (add-ons).
For example, the Feed to Post add-on lets you add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into your WordPress posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress)
The RSS Post Importer plugin lets you curate, syndicate, import, merge and display full text feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) on your WordPress blog.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the entire content of each item in your feed as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin For WordPress)
With POWr RSS, you can automatically combine and display content from a number of different RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display videos, images, and articles, adjust feed spacing and size, use custom fonts, colors, borders, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in all languages.
The premium plugin edition contains a number of additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes)
The WP Pipes plugin is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.
This plugin provides loads of powerful features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to Twitter/LinkedIn/Facebook, export WordPress posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to a new level.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin For WordPress)
FeedWordPress is a flexible syndication plugin for WordPress-generated content.
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 FeedWordPress to create aggregator sites, or display all of your online activity in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog – WordPress Plugin)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in your feed URL, give the feed 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
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types)
By default, WordPress only posts posts in your RSS feed. Use the RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types plugin to include pages in your RSS feed and not just posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to giving online users access to feeds of your latest posts, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of comments posted on your site.
To access the comments in your feed, go to the ‘Meta’ widget area on your sidebar menu (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) and click on Comments RSS …
(WordPress Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors and users will appear in your Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed content seen with a Firefox web browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on the browser you use …
(Comments feed items as seen on a Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your comments feed into a feed reader to view the content. Image: Feedreader)
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 subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Displaying Individual Item Feeds
Being able to select an RSS feed for individual posts 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 accessing an RSS feed for a specific post item is shown below:
(Individual Post Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the URI 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 web address of your post, WordPress will return the comments made on that post, not actual content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Using 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.
With WordPress, you can create separate category feeds.
Just use the format below:
(Format for WordPress post categories RSS feed)
Copy the category link address …
(Copy the category link address to your clipboard …)
Add “feed” to the end of it …
(WordPress category feed format)
The category feed now only contains content assigned to that particular 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 – Publish A List Of RSS Feeds For Visitors
You can set up your own list of feeds that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in specific categories …
(Create Your Own List Of RSS Feeds For Your Site Visitors)
All you need to do is link an image to category (or single post) feeds and then create a table or a list of all your category feeds on a new page …
(RSS graphic. 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:
RSS Feeds – Notes
Feeds can be customized in a number of ways, such as adding videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows you to configure various feed types that do not require touching code. Here are some examples of custom feeds you can use …
(WordPress RSS – Feed Types)
Here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – RSS feed that contains your latest posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – RSS feed displaying the latest comments left on your website
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed containing individual post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Includes the latest comments made on a post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Contains latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/03/12/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/08/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/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: RSS feed displaying the latest entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One more thing …
It’s a good idea to let your users know that they can subscribe to your RSS feeds. Place a subscribe button or link somewhere visible …
(Remember to make your RSS feeds visible your feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that online users will only syndicate your content if the information that you provide on your site is useful, informative, or highly entertaining. In other words, provide high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add someone else’s content and get other users to share your content online with 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 – Additional Resources:
- RSS Feed Images – Visit feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS logo”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable RSS graphics.
- 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 the public gain a better understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – Learn more about the benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex: Feeds – WordPress software documentation and information. Go here for more information about using RSS feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know where 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 feeds.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)