No matter what service or product your business provides, it’s important to provide quality information on your site or blog. For example, if your business provides insurance services, it’s a good idea to publish information from government departments, such as news and updates on statistical research, insurance tips, etc.
The problem with providing this type of information, however, is that it is very time-consuming. You have to sift through, gather, and organize a lot of data, check your sources for accuracy, write and edit content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually make sure that this information is 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.
Fortunately, there is a much simpler way to keep your site visitors up-to-date with your information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - One of the simplest ways to provide your readers with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – Useful Information
- RSS stands for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly known, Really Simple Syndication. It is also often called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- When users subscribe to a website’s feed, they no longer have to physically visit and check the website for content updates. Instead, their web browser constantly monitors the site and keeps feed subscribers updated.
- Feeds are typically used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog posts, news, audio lists, etc., which any user can then subscribe to.
- RSS feeds can be read using software programs called RSS readers, or feed aggregators. Aggregators are used to find content on all different kinds of topics and distribute this content to various online properties.
- There are different kinds of feeds, read by different 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 compatibility with different devices and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also let you combine different RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from multiple sites.
This in-depth guide shows you 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 via their RSS feed.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful (and legitimate) way to share web content. RSS Feeds provide online users with a way to stay up-to-date with the latest information published on sites they are interested in.
First, let’s look at syndication.
News reporting agencies and global online media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish newsworthy content from news sources around the world.
Syndication allows most digital agencies and leading online media publications to deliver readers the latest news and interesting stories from all over the globe without actually having to set up additional staff in every location around the world …
(Online newspapers and popular online media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish newsworthy items from news sources all around the planet.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing content. Global media publications syndicate content using feeds …
(Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing information)
Most websites actually want you to share their content. Content syndication not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it also sends 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 online newspapers and major online media publications have a feed section (look for menu links that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “telegraph rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many digital content agencies and major content sites have a feed section. Image Source: SMH RSS )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section will bring up a directory of different RSS feeds …
(RSS feeds section. Image Source: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
gives readers access to different sections of the site (e.g. business news, sports news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
An RSS list can also include subcategory feeds …
(RSS Feed section. Image: latimes.com)
Note: A feed is simply a URL. To use the feed, all you have to do is copy the URL and paste it into software that can process the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Content Syndication
Syndicating content from someone else’s site on your site has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s business additional exposure online, it also helps your site by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(Content Syndication Benefits Someone Else’s Website And Yours!)
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 sites to use your content.
When other websites syndicate your RSS feed, this gives your business the opportunity to gain more exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Get users to syndicate content using your feed … it will help to increase your web traffic!)
Overview Of The WordPress Feed
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 which theme you have installed, there are a number of ways to get your RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to display in a navigation menu, just scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(WordPress Meta section)
2) You can also find built-in links or buttons on certain WordPress themes that allow your visitors to copy your RSS feed.
For example, in the screenshot below, a visitor can simply copy the RSS feed URL by right-clicking and copying on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy feed URLs to your clipboard from “subscribe to RSS” buttons)
3) On some sites and again, depending on your WP theme, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Link To Us, Follow Us, or Social Share section …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Link To Us, Follow Us, or Social Share section)
4) You can also view your WordPress RSS feed by simply 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 website or blog is located in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up your RSS feed page …
(Feed items viewed on a Firefox browser)
Note that your feed items will display differently depending on which web browser you use …
(Feed entries displayed on Chrome browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
You can specify how many items you would like to show in your RSS page, by going to your Reading Settings section and typing the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(WordPress Reading Settings – Syndication feeds)
Your feed will show as many recent items you have specified in the Reading Settings section …
(The feed will show as many recent posts as you have specified in your WP Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in your WP Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display each article as full text, or just a summary …
(Settings – Reading Settings – Display ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for posts in your feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed displays …
(Post excerpts can affect how a feed will display)
If you need help Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, to view a feed’s content, you need to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that reads and translates feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s see how this works.
First, go to a website whose content you want to syndicate and look for a ‘subscribe’ button using any of the methods described earlier …
(Search for a ’subscribe to feed’ button. Image source: http://www.yourcoffeeguru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL)
If you want, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste the 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 and convert these into readable content for humans.
How To Add RSS Feeds To Your WP Site
In the example below, we are going to add content from other sites to yours.
How To Add A Feed To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is a 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 feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, Facebook updates, 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)
First, Go to a site that publishes content that you want to add to your site and copy the RSS feed …
(Copy the feed URL)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(Widgets Screen – RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Refresh your web browser. The content from the RSS feed should now appear on 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:
Adding RSS Feeds To Posts
What if you want to add content from an RSS feed to WordPress posts instead of the sidebar?
You can do this using plugins. Just search inside the Plugins section (Plugins > Add New) for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ search results)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for instructions, or contact us if you need help with plugin configuration.
The plugins listed below can be used to feed content to posts, or “autoblog” (An autoblog is a blog with content that is automatically gathered and compiled from RSS feeds):
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds of your choice.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and arrange them according to 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 autoblogging WordPress plugin that offers additional functionality with premium add-ons.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on allows you to add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into your posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer – WordPress Plugin)
The RSS Post Importer plugin can be used to import, syndicate, curate, merge and display full text RSS feeds on your WordPress website or blog.
The plugin fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full content of every item in your feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)
The POWr RSS Feed plugin combines and displays content from multiple sources using RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust feed size and spacing, use custom fonts, colors, backgrounds, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in any language.
The premium version of this plugin contains many additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes – WordPress Plugin)
The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.
This plugin provides loads of powerful features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter, export WordPress posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to a new level.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a simple and flexible Atom/RSS 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.
You can use this FeedWordPress to create aggregator sites, or display all your online activity into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog by WPMUDev Plugin)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, 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 to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages Plugin For WordPress)
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types modifies the default WordPress RSS feed to include pages and not just posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – 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.
You can see this feed by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ section of your sidebar menu …
(WordPress Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items displayed on Firefox web browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on which browser you are using …
(RSS comments feed items seen with a Google Chrome web browser)
Again, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into a feed reader …
(Paste your comments feed URL into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image: 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 subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Using RSS Feeds For Single Post Items
Being able to access an RSS feed for a single post item can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific posts to RSS directories, or you may have created a valuable resource that other online users will want to syndicate.
The formula for accessing an RSS feed for a single post item is shown below:
(RSS Feed For Individual Post)
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 append “/feed” to the end of the URI of your post, WordPress will return the comments left on that post, not actual post content itself.
Tip #3 – Using Post Category Feeds
Some your site visitors may only want to subscribe to content from one or two categories. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
WordPress allows you to create category feeds.
All you have to do is use the format below:
(WordPress post categories RSS feed format)
Select and copy the category URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your category URL …)
Append “feed” to the end of it …
(Use this format for WordPress post categories feed)
The category RSS feed now only contains content published under this 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 – Publish Your Own Directory Of RSS Feeds
You can provide a directory of feeds on your site that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in specific categories, just like the larger authoritative sites do …
(Set Up An RSS Feeds List)
All you need to do is link an image to your category (or single post) feeds and then create a table or a list of your individual feeds on a new page …
(RSS image. Source: public-domain-photos.com)
To learn more about inserting tables into WordPress posts and pages, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
WordPress RSS – Additional Notes
RSS feeds can be customized in several different ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows you to configure a number of different feed types that do not require code editing skills. Below are examples of some of the kinds of feed formats you can use …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
Here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Includes your latest posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Displays the latest comments published on your site
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed that contains an individual post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Contains the latest comments made on a single post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/04/09/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/03/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Contains the latest post entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Contains the latest 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 promote your RSS feeds. Make sure you place your subscribe button in a visible location …
(Encourage your site users to subscribe to your feeds!)
Keep in mind that other website owners will only want to syndicate your content if you provide your visitors with very high-quality content that can add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Easily add content to your site and get visitors to syndicate your content online 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 🙂
Additional Resources:
- RSS Feed Buttons – Visit Iconspedia.com or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “rss buttons”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS images.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization responsible for publishing RSS specifications, providing guidance to developers who create RSS applications and helping to further the understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about RSS feeds.
- WordPress.org – Official WordPress documentation and information repository. Visit this site for more information about using WordPress feeds.
Congratulations! Now you know where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, 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 the benefits of using the WP CMS software please see our related posts section.
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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)