No matter what your business sells or what industry you are in, you need to provide quality information on your site or blog. For example, if your business provides health-related services, it’s a good idea to publish information from the health department, such as news or updates on medical research, health and fitness advice, etc.
To create and publish this type of information, however, requires a lot of work and expertise. You have to sort through, gather, 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 make sure that this information is continually kept up-to-date. As you can imagine, this is not only a huge amount of work but most of the information you are dealing with is completely beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is a much easier way to continually provide your readers with expert, up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - One of the easiest ways to provide your blog subscribers with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Does RSS Mean?
- RSS is an acronym for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly known, Really Simple Syndication. It it is also called a “feed” or “news feed”.
- RSS allows content publishers to automatically syndicate their content to save users time from having to keep revisiting their site to check for updates.
- Feeds are typically used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog post items, news, videos, etc., to which any user can then subscribe.
- RSS feeds can be viewed with a software program called a feedreader, or feed aggregator. Feedreaders are used to access content on all kinds of topics and syndicate this content (and any updates made to this content) to other sites.
- Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom (also called AtomPub or APP 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 machines and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also let you combine many RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates sourced from many sites.
This comprehensive article shows you 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 via their RSS feed.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful (and legitimate) method used for sharing web content. RSS Feeds provide a way for online users to keep up with the latest information posted on websites and blogs they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at content syndication.
Online media publications rely on content syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies around the world.
Content syndication allows online newspapers to deliver readers the latest news and stories from all around the globe without having to send more reporting agencies all around the world …
(Many digital news publishing agencies rely heavily on syndication to publish newsworthy items from other news agencies around the globe.)
Syndication is used to share content legitimately. Content publishing agencies syndicate their stories using news feeds …
(Content syndication is a legitimate method of sharing information)
Most sites actually want you to syndicate their information. Content syndication not only allows information to be shared, but it also sends visitors back to the site that originally published the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Many news reporting agencies and major content sites contain a feed section (look for navigation links that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “chicago tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many news reporting agencies and leading online media publications include an RSS feed section. Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section brings up a directory of different RSS feeds …
(RSS feeds section. Image Source: NY Times)
gives readers access to content from different sections of the website (e.g. business news, travel news, jobs, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain further feed subdirectories …
(Feed sections can also include feed subdirectories. Image Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: A feed is only a URL. All you need to do to use the feed is to copy the URL and paste it into an application that can translate the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Syndicating Content – Benefits
Syndicating someone else’s content on your website has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s content additional exposure online, it also helps your site by freeing you up from having to create this content …
(Content Syndication - Benefits)
While adding a feed 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 websites to use your content.
When other sites syndicate your RSS feed, this gives your business the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Get other online users to syndicate content using your feed … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)
WordPress RSS
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on which theme you have installed, there are a number of ways to access the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget on the sidebar menu …
(The feed page will show the number of items you have specified in the WP Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
The other setting in your WordPress Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display each article in a feed as full text, or just as a summary …
(Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for posts in a feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content displays …
(Post excerpts can affect how your feeds appear)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using WordPress Post excerpts here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, all that’s required to view the content of an RSS feed is to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that translates feeds into readable content.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, go to a website or blog and look for a ’subscribe to feed’ link …
(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 your feed into an online feed reader …
(Paste the URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS feeds and convert these into content that can be read by your subscribers.
How To Add Feeds To WordPress
In the example below, we’ll add content sourced from another website to yours.
Adding Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is a part of, you could easily display on your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply importing their RSS feed. You can use RSS feeds to 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 RSS content to the WordPress sidebar navigation area …
(Let’s add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu)
copy the feed URL from a site containing content that you want to add to your sidebar to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL to the clipboard)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content from the RSS feed can now be seen on your sidebar (or wherever the RSS widget has been added – e.g. custom menu) …
(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 RSS Feed Content To Your Posts
What if you want to add content from RSS feeds to posts instead of a sidebar?
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Just search on the WordPress plugin directory for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ search results – RSS plugins for WordPress)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for configuration instructions, or contact us if you need assistance with plugin configuration.
Here are some plugins that you can use to curate and add content from RSS feeds to your posts:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico)
WPeMatico is an easy to use auto blogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds of your choice.
You can manage all the feeds you import and organize feeds into categories and campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin that offers premium add-ons for extended functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension is an advanced importer that allows you to autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into your posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress)
The RSS Post Importer plugin lets you curate, import, syndicate, merge and display full text RSS feeds on your WordPress site.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full content of each item in your feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin For WordPress)
With the POWr RSS Feed plugin, you can combine and display content from various RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS Feed plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust feed spacing and size, use custom colors, fonts, borders, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on any tablet, phone, or computer and supports text in every language.
The premium version contains many additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, accept or reject posts in your feed, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes)
The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to 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 podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides flexible Atom/RSS syndication options 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.
FeedWordPress can be used to create aggregator sites, or display all of your online activity into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog – WordPress 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 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)
Use RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types 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:
WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to making RSS feeds of your latest posts available to online users, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of comments posted on your site.
To inspect this feed, locate the ‘Meta’ section on your sidebar (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 will appear in the Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed entries displayed on Firefox web browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on the browser you are using …
(RSS comments feed items viewed using Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the comments RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feedreader …
(Paste the comments feed URL into a feedreader 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 WordPress installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Displaying RSS Feeds For Specific Posts
Being able to select an RSS feed for a single post item 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 an individual post item is shown below:
(RSS Feed For Single Post)
To create the above feed, copy the post URI, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only add “/feed” to the end of your post URI, WordPress will return the comments associated with your post, not the content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Category Feeds
Some your site users may only want to subscribe to content about specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
With WordPress, you can create separate category feeds.
All you need to do is use the format shown below:
(WordPress category RSS feed format)
Select and copy the category link address …
(Copy the selected category link address …)
And add the word “feed” to the end of it …
(Format for WordPress post categories RSS feed)
Your category RSS feed will now only contain content posted under this 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 – Set Up A Feeds Directory
You can publish your own directory of RSS feeds on your site that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in the categories they are interested in …
(Create Your Own Page Of RSS Feeds)
You can link an image to your category (or specific post) feed URLs and then create a table or a list of all your individual feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button image. Source: public-domain-photos.com)
To learn more about inserting tables into WordPress content, see this step-by-step tutorial:
RSS Feeds – Additional Notes
You can customize RSS in a number of ways, such as adding videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows you to configure different feed types that do not require code editing skills. Below are examples of some of the kinds of feeds you can display …
(Different Custom Feeds You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the diagram 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 – Contains the latest comments published on your site
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed for individual posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Feed that contains the latest comments made on a post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Contains the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/02/25/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Includes the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/12/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Includes latest post entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Displays the latest entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One more thing …
Remember to promote your RSS feed. Make sure you place a ’subscribe to RSS’ links somewhere visible …
(Encourage visitors to subscribe to your feeds!)
Keep in mind that other website owners will only syndicate your content if you provide great information that educates, engages, and entertains. In other words, you need to provide high-quality information that will add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Easily add great content to your site and get other users to syndicate your content with 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 feed 🙂
RSS Resources:
- RSS Graphics – Visit online resource sites like www.feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS images”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable RSS graphic elements.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization responsible for publishing RSS specifications, guiding developers who create RSS applications and broadening the public understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – Learn more about the history and benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex: WordPress Feeds – Official WordPress documentation repository. Visit this site to learn more about 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 someone else’s content to your site via RSS.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business web site please see other great articles and tutorials we have published on this site.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)