No matter what product or service you provide or what industry your business belongs to, you need to provide quality information on your site or blog. For example, if you provide travel services, it’s not a bad idea to include the latest information from government departments and foreign travel offices, such as news or updates on travel warnings, tips from consular offices, etc.
To create and publish this type of information, however, is really time-consuming. You have to sift through, research, and organize a ton of data, check your sources for accuracy, write and edit content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then ensure that this information is continually 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 well beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a simpler way to regularly provide your site readers with expert, up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the easiest way to provide your readers with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – Simple Overview
- RSS, which, according to some experts stands for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly known now as Really Simple Syndication. It is also often called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- RSS allows content publishers to automatically syndicate their content to save readers time from having to keep revisiting sites to check for updates.
- Feeds are also used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog post items, news headlines, audios, etc., which other users can choose to subscribe to.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML document that includes either full or summarized text along with metadata such as date of publishing, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and blogs that publish feeds and then browse updates posted on these sites using an RSS feed reader. 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 feeds and RDF (RDF = Resource Description Framework) feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure compatibility with different devices and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also let you combine several RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates from multiple sources.
In this article, we explain where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, and how to display content from other sites on your site via RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a very powerful and legitimate method used for sharing content online. Feeds provide a way for web users to receive the latest information published on different sites.
First, let’s look at syndication.
Global media publications use syndication to publish content from news agencies around the world.
Syndication allows online newspapers and popular online publications to deliver readers stories from around the planet without having to employ and set up additional news reporters and writers in every location in the world …
(Content publishing agencies rely on content syndication to publish news and stories from news sources all around the world.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing newsworthy content. online media publications syndicate stories using news feeds …
(News reporting agencies syndicate content using news feeds)
Most websites actually would like you to syndicate their information. Syndicating content not only allows great information to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the original site responsible for creating and publishing the content being syndicated. This provides websites with additional opportunities to generate significant web visitors.
Most digital news agencies and major online media publications will contain an RSS 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”, “star tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many news agencies and major sites contain an RSS feed section. Image Source: SMH RSS )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section brings up a list of RSS feeds for different areas of the site …
(A site’s list of feeds. Source: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
Each of these feeds allows readers to access information from different sections of the website (e.g. technology news, arts news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain subcategory feeds …
(RSS Feed section. Image: latimes.com)
Note: An RSS feed is only a URL. All you need to do to use feeds is to copy the URLs and paste these into an application that can translate the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Content Syndication – Benefits
Adding content from someone else’s website or blog on your site has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s site additional exposure online, it also adds value to your site without you having to create this content …
(The Benefits Of Syndicating Content)
While adding RSS feeds 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 sites to use your content.
When other websites and blogs syndicate content using your RSS feed, you have the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive new web traffic …
(Consider trying to get other online users to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress RSS – Overview
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing other online users 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 allows the Meta widget to display in a standard or custom menu, just scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(Access your WordPress RSS feed from the Meta section)
2) You can also find built-in links and buttons on certain WordPress themes that let your visitors 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 to RSS” buttons)
3) On some websites and again, depending on the theme you have installed, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Links, Stay In Touch, or Share toolbar section …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Links, Share, or Follow toolbar section)
4) You can also view your feed by typing your site’s URL into a browser and adding “/feed” after the URL, e.g.:
- http://www.yourdomain.com/feed
- http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/feed (if your site is located in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up your RSS page …
(RSS entries seen on a Firefox web browser)
Note that your feed items will display differently depending on which web browser you use …
(RSS entries viewed using a Chrome web browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
You can specify how many items you would like to display in your RSS page in the Reading Settings section. Type the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(Settings – Reading Settings – Syndication feeds)
Your feed will display as many recent items you have specified in the Reading Settings section …
(The feed page will show as many recent 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 the Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display each article as full text, or just a summary …
(Reading Settings – Display ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for posts in a RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed displays …
(Post excerpts affect how your feed content displays)
To learn more about WordPress Post excerpts, see this tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, all you have to do to view the content of an RSS feed is to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that translates feeds into readable content.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, find a website or blog and look for a ‘subscribe’ icon or link …
(Search for a ’subscribe to feed’ link. Image source: http://www.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 the feed content by pasting the feed URL into an online feed reader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image: Feedreader.com)
Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds.
How To Add RSS Feeds To Your Site
Let’s show you how to add RSS content from another website to your site.
How To Add RSS Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is in, you could easily add to your site the latest content from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply importing their 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 the WordPress sidebar navigation area …
(Let’s add an RSS feed to your sidebar)
First, Find a site that publishes content that you want to add to your sidebar and copy the RSS feed to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL to your clipboard)
Next, paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Section – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content from the RSS feed should now display on your 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:
Adding Feeds To Your Posts
Can content from RSS feeds be added to a post? Yes, it can!
You can do this using WordPress plugins. Just search inside the Plugins admin screen for RSS feed, RSS feed to post, etc.
(RSS plugins for WordPress)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for configuration instructions, or contact us if you need assistance configuring plugins.
Here are a number of WordPress plugins that allow you to curate and add content from RSS feeds to your posts and pages:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds that you specify.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize them into campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator)
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 for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin lets you add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into your WP posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer WP Plugin)
RSS Post Importer can be used to import, curate, syndicate, merge and display full text RSS feeds on your WordPress website or blog.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full content of every item in your feed as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed)
POWr RSS Feed automatically combines and displays content from various content using RSS feeds.
This plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust feed priority, use custom colors, fonts, borders, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in any 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 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, autoblogging, auto post to Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, export your posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress – WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a flexible Atom/RSS syndication plugin for WordPress site-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.
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 Plugin For WordPress)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in the URL of your feed, give it 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)
RSS Includes Pages modifies your default WordPress RSS feed to include pages in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to displaying RSS feeds of your posts, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of the latest comments posted on your site.
You can inspect your comments feed by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ section …
(WordPress Comments Feed)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors and users can be seen in your Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed content displayed with Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on the browser you use …
(Comments feed entries as seen with a Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feed reader …
(Paste your URL of your comments feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image: 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 site is located in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Using RSS Feeds For Individual Items
Being able to access an RSS feed for specific post items can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific items to RSS directories, or you may have created a valuable resource that other online users will want to syndicate.
The formula for displaying an RSS feed for individual posts is shown below:
(Feed For Single Post)
To create the above feed, copy the post address, and add “/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 your post, not the content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Post Category Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in subscribing to content about certain categories. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
If your site contains content published under a number of categories, you can offer visitors a separate RSS feed for each different category.
Just use the format below:
(Feed format for category)
Select and copy the category URL …
(Copy the category URL …)
Add the word “feed” to the end of it …
(Format for WP post categories feed)
The RSS feed will now only display content assigned to that particular 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 – Provide A Directory Of Feeds On Your Site
You can create a feeds list that allows readers to subscribe to content in the categories that interest them …
(Provide Your Own RSS Feeds Page)
You can link an icon to the URL of your feed and then create a table or a list of all feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button graphic. Source: public-domain-photos.com)
For a detailed tutorial about inserting tables into WordPress posts and pages, go here:
RSS – Additional Notes
You can customize feeds in several ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows various feed configurations without messing with code. Below are examples of some of the kinds of custom feed formats you can use …
(Different Custom Feeds You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
Below 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: Feed containing a single post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Feed that contains the latest comments made on single post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/03/09/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/04/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Displays latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Feed containing latest entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Includes latest post entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One more thing …
Remember to let users know that they can subscribe to your RSS feed. Place your ’subscribe to RSS’ button in a visible location …
(Remember to promote your feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that other sites will only subscribe to your content if you provide your subscribers with high-quality content that will add great value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Easily add content to your site and get others to share your content using WordPress and RSS!)
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 RSS feed 🙂
RSS Resources:
- RSS Graphics – Visit sites like Feedicons or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “RSS buttons”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download Free RSS images and icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information about RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – Learn more about RSS.
- WordPress Codex – WordPress documentation and reference repository. Visit this site for more information about using WordPress RSS.
Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, and how to add someone else’s content to your site using RSS.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you improve your business online. To learn more about using the WP platform please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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