No matter what product or service you sell or what industry your business is a part of, you need to provide high-quality information on your site or blog that better educates, informs, and engages your visitors. For example, if your business provides taxation services, you may want to include useful information from the taxation office, such as news or updates on tax rulings, small business tax tips, etc.
The problem with providing this type of information, however, is that it is really time-consuming. You have to sift through, gather, and organize a ton of information, check your sources for accuracy, write and edit content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then make sure that this information is continually kept 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 entirely beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is an easier way to keep your site readers up-to-date with your information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - One of the easiest ways to provide your site readers with great information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Is RSS?
- RSS, which, according to some definitions is short for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly known as Really Simple Syndication. It is also often called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- RSS allows content publishers to automatically syndicate their content so that subscribers can read it without having to keep revisiting sites to check for updates.
- Feeds are also used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as new blog posts, news headlines, video lists, etc., to which any user can choose to subscribe.
- RSS feeds can be read using software programs called feedreaders, or aggregators. Feedreaders can be used to access new content published on websites and syndicate this content to many online properties.
- Feeds can be made available in different formats and read by different feed aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom (also called AtomPub or APP feeds and RDF feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure that feeds are compatible with different machines and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also let you combine several RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates sourced from a number of websites.
This guide explains where your RSS feed is located, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to add content from other sites to your site using RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful and legitimate method used to share web content. RSS Feeds provide a way for online users to stay up-to-date with the latest information published on different websites and blogs.
First, let’s take a look at syndication.
Online media publications use content syndication to publish news from other news agencies around the world.
Syndication allows leading news publishing agencies to deliver readers stories from all around the planet without having to hire more reporting agencies all around the world …
(Media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish newsworthy stories from other news agencies around the planet.)
Syndication is used to share content legitimately with other sites. Global media publications syndicate newsworthy content using feeds …
(News reporting agencies syndicate news stories using feeds)
Most sites actually would like you to share their information. Syndicating content not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the original site responsible for publishing the content being syndicated. This provides websites with new opportunities to generate significant web traffic.
Most news reporting agencies and major content sites will include a 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”, “courier rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many digital news publishing agencies and major content sites will have an RSS feed section. Image: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link brings up a directory of different RSS feeds of the site …
(A site’s list of feeds. Source: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
These feed items let readers source information from different areas of the website (e.g. business news, travel news, science news, etc.)
Feed sections can also include feed subdirectories …
(RSS Feed section. Source: latimes.com)
Note: An RSS feed is just a URL. To use feeds, all you have to do is copy the URLs and paste these into a program that can process the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
RSS Feeds – Benefits
Syndicating content from someone else’s website on your site has some obvious benefits. It helps someone else’s content and adds value to your site without you having to create the content …
(Syndicating Content Has Many Benefits!)
While adding an RSS 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 syndicate your content, this gives your business the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Get visitors to syndicate your feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress RSS – Overview
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on your WP theme, there are a few ways to get your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget on your sidebar …
(The feed page will show as many recent items you have specified in the WordPress 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 RSS feed is whether to display posts in your feed as full text, or just a summary …
(Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for posts in a RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed displays …
(Post excerpts can affect how content in your feeds will appear)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using WordPress Post excerpts here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, to view the content of an RSDS feed, you have to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into an application that translates feeds into readable content.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, find a website whose content you want to syndicate and search for a ‘subscribe’ icon or 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 your feed URL)
If you want, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into a feedreader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feedreader to view the content. Image Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS feeds and convert these into content that is readable by humans.
Adding RSS Feeds To WordPress
Let’s show you how to add content from other sites to your WordPress site.
Adding Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are part of, you could add to your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply importing content from their RSS feed. You can use RSS feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, social media comments, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar …
(Add an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation area)
copy the RSS feed URL from a website containing content that you would like to add to your sidebar to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(WP RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content from the RSS feed should now appear 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 Feed Content To Posts
What if you want to add content from an RSS feed to WordPress posts instead of the sidebar?
You can easily do this using plugins. Search inside your Plugins section (Plugins > Add New) for RSS Post, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ screen – RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for setup instructions, or contact us if you need assistance with plugin configuration.
Here are some autoblogging plugins for WordPress that let you automatically create posts with RSS feeds and imported content:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use auto blogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds of your choice.
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 RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and autoblogging WordPress plugin that offers premium add-ons for additional functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension is a popular, feature-rich importer that lets you autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer)
RSS Post Importer lets you syndicate, curate, 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 full content of each item in your feed as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)
The POWr RSS Feed plugin lets you automatically combine and display content from a number of different content using RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust the priority of different feeds, use custom backgrounds, colors, fonts, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in any language.
The premium plugin version contains many 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 loads of functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter, export posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin For WordPress)
FeedWordPress provides simple and flexible syndication options for WordPress site 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.
FeedWordPress can be used to create aggregator sites, or bring together all 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 very quickly, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in the URL of your feed, give the feed a name of your choosing (for admin purposes) and select the blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types Plugin For WordPress)
Install RSS Includes Pages to include pages in your 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
In addition to displaying RSS feeds of your posts, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of your post comments.
You can access this feed by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ widget area of your sidebar menu …
(WordPress Comments Feed)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors and users will appear in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items viewed using Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on which browser you are using …
(RSS comments feed items viewed on Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …
(Paste your URL of your comments feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. 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 or blog is located in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Accessing RSS Feeds For Specific Post Items
Being able to access an RSS feed for an individual post item 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 individual posts is shown below:
(Feed For Single Post)
To create the above feed, copy the web address of your post, and add “/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 the content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Displaying Category Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in syndicating content from specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
WordPress allows you to create category feeds.
All you have to do is use the format shown below:
(Use this format for WP post categories RSS feed)
Select and copy the category link address …
(Copy the category link address …)
And add “feed” to the end of it …
(WordPress post categories feed format)
The RSS feed will now only include content published in that particular category …
(Category-specific 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 A Directory Of Feeds On Your Site
You can provide your own directory of RSS feeds that allows readers to subscribe to content in specific categories, just like the larger websites do …
(Provide Your Own List Of Feeds)
Link an image to category feeds and then create a table or a list of your feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button image. Source: public-domain-photos.com)
If you need help with inserting tables into WordPress posts and pages, go here:
WordPress RSS – Notes
You can customize RSS in various different ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows you to configure various feed types without messing with code. Below are examples of some of the kinds of custom feeds you can use on your site and how to structure your feeds …
(WordPress RSS – Feed Formats)
For your convenience, here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed in the table above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – contains your latest post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Feed containing the latest comments posted on your website
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed containing specific 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/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/12/06/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Includes latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/11/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Contains latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Displays latest entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Includes latest posts for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One last thing …
Remember to promote your RSS feeds. Make sure you place your subscribe links in a visible location …
(Encourage your site users to syndicate your feeds!)
Keep in mind that other website owners will only want to subscribe to your content if you provide useful content that educates, engages, and entertains. In other words, focus on providing your visitors with high-quality information that can add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Add someone else’s content and get other users to syndicate your content with RSS feeds!)
If you need help coming up with 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 Buttons – Visit an online resource site like FeedIcons.com 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 Go here if you want to gain a better understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – Learn more about the history and benefits of using RSS.
- WordPress Codex – WordPress software documentation and information. Visit this site to learn more about WordPress RSS 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 someone else’s content on your site using their RSS feed.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To learn more about using WordPress please click on links to visit other posts on this site.
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