No matter what what industry you are a part of, providing quality information to your blog visitors is important. For example, if you provide travel-related services, it’s a good idea to publish useful information from government departments and foreign travel offices, such as news and updates on travel warnings, tips from embassies, etc.
To create and publish this kind of information, however, is really time-consuming. You have to sort through, research, and organize a lot of data, check your facts, write and edit 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 not only involves a lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is well beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is an easier way to keep your site visitors up-to-date with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - One of the easiest ways to provide your readers with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – What You Need To Know
- RSS is an acronym 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”.
- Once users subscribe to an RSS feed, they no longer have to manually visit and check the source website for updated content. Instead, their web browser constantly monitors the content and keeps feed subscribers up-to-date.
- RSS feeds are also used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as new blog post items, news, video lists, etc., which users can choose to subscribe to.
- RSS feeds can be viewed with web-based, desktop-based, and even mobile-based software-based programs called feedreaders, or aggregators. Aggregators are used to find new content published on websites and distribute this content (and any updates made to the content) online.
- Feeds can be made available in different formats and read by different feedreaders. 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 compatibility with different machines, feedreaders, and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also let you combine multiple RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from a number of websites.
This guide shows you 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 sites to your site using their RSS feed.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a very powerful (and legitimate) method used to share content online. Feeds provide a simple and easy way for web users to keep up with the latest information published on websites and blogs they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at how content syndication is used.
Most news reporting agencies rely heavily on syndication to publish stories from news agencies around the world.
Content syndication allows digital news publishers to deliver readers up-to-date newsworthy items and content of interest from around the globe without having to employ and send additional news staff and news writers everywhere in the world …
(Content publishing agencies and many popular media publications use content syndication to publish news and stories from news sources around the world.)
Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing information. online media publications syndicate their content using news feeds …
(Digital publishers syndicate news stories using feeds)
Most sites actually want you to share their information. Syndicating content not only allows information to be shared, but it can also drive visitors back to the original site that created and published the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Many news reporting agencies and major online media publications have an RSS feed section (look for links in their navigation section that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “belfast telegraph rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many news reporting agencies and major online media publications will have a feed section. Image: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link brings up a directory of different RSS feed sections of the site …
(RSS Feeds. Image: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
These RSS feeds give you access to content about different sections of the website (e.g. technology news, arts news, editorials, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain subcategories …
(Feed sections can also contain subcategory feeds. Image Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: An RSS feed is only a URL. To use feeds, all you have to do is to copy the URLs and paste these into an application that can process the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Content Syndication
Adding content from someone else’s website on your site has some obvious benefits. It helps someone else’s content and helps you by freeing you up from having to create that content …
(Syndicating Content - Benefits)
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 content, this gives your business the opportunity to gain more exposure online and drive new visitors …
(It’s worth trying to get users to syndicate your content … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)
WordPress Feed – About
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on your WP theme, there are a few ways to get your RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget in a standard or custom menu …
(The feed page will display the number of items you have specified in your Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in your Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display articles in the feed as full text, or a summary …
(Settings – Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …
(Post excerpts can affect how feeds will display)
To learn more about Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, all that’s required to view the content of a feed is to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that can read and translate feeds into readable content.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, go to a website whose content you want to subscribe to and search for their RSS feed button using any of the methods described earlier …
(Search for an RSS feed section. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
If you want, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image Source: Feedreader)
Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds.
How To Add RSS Feeds To WordPress Sites
Let’s show you how to add content from other site’s RSS feeds to your site.
How To Add Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is in, you could add to your site the latest news and updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply adding content from their feed. You can use RSS feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, social media updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar …
(Let’s add content from an RSS feed to your sidebar)
copy the RSS feed from a website containing content that you would like to add to your sidebar to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL to your clipboard)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Screen – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Refresh your web browser. The content from the RSS feed will now show on your sidebar (or wherever you have placed the RSS widget) …
(RSS Feed Content Added To WP Sidebar)
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 Your Posts
Can you add content from an RSS feed to a post? Yes, you can!
You can do this using plugins. Search on the WordPress plugin directory for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ section)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for configuration instructions, or contact us for help with plugin configuration.
Here are some auto blogging tools that allow you to create posts using feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin For WordPress)
WPeMatico is an easy to use auto blogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds that you specify.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and arrange them according to categories and campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and autoblogging WordPress plugin that offers extended functionality with a number of premium add-ons.
For example, the Feed to Post extension is a feature-rich importer that lets you import RSS feeds directly into your posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
RSS Post Importer allows you to syndicate, curate, import, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress blog.
The plugin will fetch an RSS feed and publish the entire content of each item in the feed as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed)
With POWr RSS Feed, you can combine and display content from multiple sources using RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust feed spacing and size, use custom borders, colors, fonts, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on all computers, tablets, and phones and supports text in every language.
The premium version contains many additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin)
The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.
This plugin provides loads of powerful functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn, export your 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 WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides versatile syndication options for WordPress-generated 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 your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Facebook, YouTube, or other online services, into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog by WPMUDev WP Plugin)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, with no coding required and no 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 to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types WordPress Plugin)
By default, WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed. Install the RSS Includes Pages plugin if you want to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress makes available RSS feeds of the latest comments posted on your site in addition to giving online users access to RSS feeds of your posts.
To access your comments feed, go to the ‘Meta’ section on your sidebar menu (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) and click on Comments RSS …
(Comments Feed)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors and users display in your Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed entries viewed on Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on the browser you use …
(Comments feed entries as seen on Google Chrome)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feed reader …
(Paste the comments feed URL into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image Source: Feedreader.com)
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 WordPress installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Accessing RSS Feeds For Single Items
Being able to use an RSS feed for an individual 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 using an RSS feed for specific posts is shown below:
(Single Post RSS Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the post URI, and add “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only add “/feed” to the end of your post URL, WordPress will return the comments for your post, not the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Displaying Category RSS Feeds
Some your site users may only be interested in subscribing to content from a specific category. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
If you publish content under multiple categories, you can provide a separate feed for each different category.
All you need to do is use the format shown below:
(WP category feed format)
Copy the selected category URL …
(Copy the category URL …)
Now, append “feed” to the end of it …
(WP post categories RSS feed format)
Your feed now only contains content specific to that category …
(Category 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 – Provide Your Own List Of RSS Feeds
You can create a list of RSS feeds that allows your readers to subscribe to specific categories, just like large authoritative sites …
(Set Up A List Of Feeds)
Link a button like the one shown below to category (or single post) feed URLs and then create a table or a list of all your individual feeds on a new page …
(RSS button 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 on adding tables to WordPress pages and posts here:
RSS Feeds – Notes
RSS feeds can be customized in various different ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows various RSS feed configurations without touching code. Here are some examples of feeds you can use and how to structure the feeds …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create With WordPress RSS)
For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – contains your latest posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Feed displaying the latest comments published on your blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed containing individual posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Contains the latest comments made on a single 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/2014/09/05/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/09/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Feed containing the latest post entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Feed containing 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 promote your feeds. Place your ’subscribe to RSS’ button image in a visible location …
(Remember to make your feeds visible your RSS feeds!)
Keep in mind that other sites will only syndicate your content if you provide your subscribers with very high-quality content that will add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add great content from other sites and get visitors to share your content 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 🙂
Resources:
- RSS Images – Visit 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 provides useful information about RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about RSS feeds.
- WordPress.org – WordPress documentation repository. Go here for more information about WordPress RSS feeds.
Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to display someone else’s content on your site using RSS feeds.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you expand your business online. To learn more about using WordPress please see other great content we have published on this site.
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