No matter what what industry you belong to, providing high-value information to your blog readers is important. For example, if you provide health-related services, you may want to provide users with 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 resources. You have to sift through, gather, and organize a lot of data, check your facts, 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 is not only a lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is entirely beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is an easier way to provide your users with up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is one of the easiest ways to provide your readers with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – What Is It?
- RSS, which, according to some experts is short for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly known as Really Simple Syndication. It is often referred to as a “feed” or “news feed”.
- After a user subscribes to an RSS feed, they no longer have to physically check the source website for content updates. Instead, their browser will constantly monitor the site and keep subscribers up-to-date.
- RSS feeds are also used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as blog post items, news headlines, videos, etc., which users can then subscribe to.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML document that includes either full or summarized text along with metadata such as published date, feed 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 automatically syndicate information.
- Feeds can be made available in different formats and read by different feed readers. 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, readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also allow you to combine many RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from a number of websites.
In this in-depth article, you are going to learn how 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.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful and legitimate way of sharing web content. Feeds provide a simple way for web users to stay up-to-date with the latest information posted on websites and blogs they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at how content syndication is used.
Global media and news reporting agencies rely on content syndication to publish news from other news agencies all around the world.
Content syndication allows news reporting agencies to deliver readers the latest headlines from all around the globe without actually having to send more staff to every place around the world …
(Media publications use syndication to publish newsworthy items from news sources all around the world.)
Syndication is used to share content legitimately with other sites. Global media publications syndicate content using news feeds …
(Content syndication is used by global media publications to share information with other publications)
Most websites actually would like you to share their information. Content syndication not only allows information to be shared, but it also drives visitors back to the site that originally published the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Leading online newspapers will have a feed section (look for menu links that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “la times rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most news reporting agencies and major sites include a feed section. Image Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section will bring up a directory of RSS feeds for different areas of the site …
(RSS feeds section. Source: NY Times RSS)
Each of these RSS feeds allows readers to access content about different sections of the site (e.g. business news, sports news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
Feed sections can also include further feed subdirectories …
(RSS Feed section. Source: LA Times RSS)
Note: A feed is just a URL. To use RSS feeds, all you have to do is copy the URLs and paste these into software that can translate the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Syndicating Content – Benefits
Adding content from someone else’s site on your website has some obvious benefits. It helps someone else’s site and adds value to your site without you having to create that content …
(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Website And Yours!)
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 worth keeping in mind that there are benefits in getting other sites to use YOUR content.
When other websites and blogs syndicate your feed, you have the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive new visitors …
(Get users to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
About Your WordPress Feed
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on the WP theme you have installed, there are a few ways to access your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to be displayed on the sidebar, scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(Meta section)
2) You can also find links and buttons on certain WordPress themes that let your visitors copy your feed.
In the screenshot below, for example, a visitor can simply copy the site’s RSS feed URL by clicking on on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy RSS URLs to your clipboard from “subscribe to RSS” buttons)
3) On some sites and again, depending on which theme you have installed, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Share, Link To Us, or Follow Us section …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Follow, Link To Us, or Share toolbar section)
4) You can also view your 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 website is located in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up your RSS feed page …
(RSS feed items viewed using a Firefox browser)
Note that your feed content will display differently depending on which browser you are using …
(RSS items seen using Google Chrome)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
You can specify how many posts you want to display in your Feeds section, by going to your Reading Settings section and entering the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings – Syndication items setting)
Your feed section will display the number of items you have specified section …
(The feed page will display the number of items you have specified in the Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in your WordPress Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display your posts as full text, or as a summary …
(WP Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content displays …
(Post excerpts affect how your feed content will display)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using WordPress Post excerpts here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, to view a feed’s content, you need to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into an application that can translate feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s take a look at how this works.
First, go to a website whose content you want to subscribe to and look for a ‘subscribe’ link or button …
(Search for an RSS feed section. Image source: http://www.yourcoffeeguru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL to your clipboard)
If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of your feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feed reader to view the content. Image Source: Feedreader)
Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process RSS feeds.
How To Add An RSS Feed To Your WP Site
In the example below, we’ll add content from another website or blog’s RSS feeds to yours.
Adding A Feed To Your 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 simply by adding their RSS feed. You can use feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, Facebook comments, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to your sidebar …
(Let’s add an RSS feed to your sidebar)
copy the feed URL from a site that publishes content that you would like to display on your site to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed to the clipboard)
Next, go to your Widgets section and paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Screen – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:
Refresh your web browser. The content from the RSS feed should display on your sidebar …
(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 A Feed To WordPress Posts
What if you want to add content from RSS feeds to a post instead of your sidebar?
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Just search inside your Plugins admin section (Plugins > Add New) for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.
(WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for complete instructions, or contact us if you need help configuring plugins.
Here are some auto blogging plugins that allow you to automatically add new with RSS feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds of your choice.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize them into campaigns and categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin with additional functionality with premium extensions (add-ons).
For example, the Feed to Post add-on allows you to import RSS feeds directly into your WP posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
The RSS Post Importer plugin allows you to syndicate, import, curate, merge and display full-text feeds on your WordPress blog.
The plugin 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)
With POWr RSS Feed, you can automatically combine and display content from various content using RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS Feed plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust feed priority, use custom backgrounds, fonts, colors, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in all languages.
The premium version of this plugin contains a number of additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, manually accept or reject posts in your feed, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes – WordPress Plugin)
The WP Pipes plugin is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.
This plugin provides features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook, export your posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a simple and flexible syndication plugin for WordPress.
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 display all of your online activity into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog by WPMUDev Plugin For WordPress)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in the URL of your feed, name your feed (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 Plugin For WordPress)
Use RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types if you would like to include pages in your RSS feed and not just posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).
For more details, go here:
Using RSS – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of comments posted on your site in addition to giving online users access to RSS feeds of your posts.
To see these comments, 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)
Comments posted on your site by visitors and users will appear in the Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items viewed with a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on which browser you use …
(RSS comments feed entries displayed on Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the comments RSS feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feed reader …
(Paste the URL of your comments feed into a feed reader to view the content. Image Source: 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 WordPress installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Accessing RSS Feeds For Specific Items
Being able to use an RSS feed for individual post items 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 creating an RSS feed for individual post items is shown below:
(Feed For Specific Post Item)
To create the above feed, copy the post URI, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of your post URI, WordPress will return the comments left on your post, not the content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Displaying Category Feeds
Some your site visitors may only want to subscribe to content from a specific post category. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
WordPress allows you to create individual category feeds.
All you need to do is use the format below:
(WordPress category feed format)
Copy the category URL …
(Copy the category URL …)
And add the word “feed” to the end of it …
(WP category feed format)
The category RSS feed will now only contain content published under that category …
(Category-specific 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 – Create Your Own Directory Of RSS Feeds
You can publish your own RSS feeds list that allows your readers to subscribe to content in specific categories …
(Provide A Page Of RSS Feeds)
Link an image to the URL of your feed and then create a table or a list of all your category feeds on a new page …
(RSS button. Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
If you need help with creating tables in WordPress pages and posts, go here:
RSS Feeds – Additional Notes
You can customize RSS in a number of ways, such as adding videos and images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows you to configure a number of feed formats that do not require code editing skills. Below are examples of some of the kinds of custom feed formats you can display …
(WordPress RSS – Feed Formats)
Here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – RSS feed that displays your latest posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Includes the latest comments posted on your website
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed containing an individual post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Includes the latest comments made on a single post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/06/31/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/02/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Contains latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: RSS feed that contains the latest entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Displays latest post 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 to RSS’ link in a visible location …
(Remember to make your feeds visible your RSS feeds!)
Keep in mind that online users will only subscribe to your content if you provide your subscribers with high-quality information that will add value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Easily 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 RSS feed 🙂
RSS – Resources:
- Download RSS Feed Images – Visit Iconspedia.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss logos”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download Free RSS icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here to learn more about RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about the history and benefits of using RSS.
- WordPress.org – WordPress documentation and reference site. Go here for additional information about WordPress RSS.
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 display someone else’s content on your site via RSS feeds.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To read more about using WordPress for a business website or blog please see our related posts section.
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