No matter what your business provides or what industry you belong to, providing high-value information to your site readers is vitally important. For example, if your business provides medical services, it’s not a bad idea to include the latest information from the health department, such as news or updates on medical research, health and fitness tips, etc.
The problem with creating this type of information, however, is that it involves a lot of effort and resources. You have to sort 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 continually ensure 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 beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is a much easier way to keep your readers up-to-date with the latest information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - One of the simplest ways to provide your subscribers with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – Basic Definition
- RSS is an acronym for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred to, Really Simple Syndication. It can also be called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- When users subscribe to a website’s feed, they no longer have to manually visit and check the source website for content updates. Instead, their browser will continually monitor the content and automatically keep subscribers up-to-date.
- RSS feeds are often used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as new blog entries, news headlines, audio playlists, etc., to which users can choose to subscribe.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML (XML = Extensible Markup Language) document that includes full or summarized text along with metadata such as published date, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on sites or blogs that publish feeds and then view updates posted on these websites through a feedreader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate content.
- Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom Publishing Protocol) 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 allow you to combine multiple RSS feeds to receive news and updates from various sources.
This guide shows you how 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 using RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a very powerful method used for sharing content online. Feeds provide a simple way for web users to stay up-to-date with the latest information published on websites they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at how syndication is used.
Media publications use content syndication to publish newsworthy content from news agencies all around the world.
Content syndication allows news publishers to deliver readers stories from all around the globe without actually having to post more news writers to every place around the world …
(Most news reporting agencies rely heavily on content syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies around the planet.)
Syndication is used to share content legitimately. Global media publications syndicate their stories using news feeds …
(Content syndication is a legitimate method of sharing newsworthy content)
Most sites actually want you to syndicate their content. Syndicating content not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it also drives visitors back to the original site that published the content being syndicated. This provides websites with new opportunities to generate additional web visitors.
Most online newspapers and leading online media publications contain an RSS feed section (look for navigation links that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “texas tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many news reporting agencies and major content sites include a feed section. Image Source: Sydney Morning Herald )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section brings up a list of different RSS feeds …
(RSS Feeds. Source: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
These feed items allow readers to access different areas of the website (e.g. technology news, sports news, jobs, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain further feed subdirectories …
(An RSS directory can also contain subcategories. Image Source: LA Times)
Note: An RSS feed is simply a URL. All you need to do to use RSS feeds is to copy the URLs and paste these into a program that can process the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Content Syndication – Benefits
Adding someone else’s content to your site has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s content additional exposure online, it also adds value to your site without you having to create the content …
(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Business 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 you also want other websites to use YOUR content.
When other websites and blogs syndicate content using your feed, this gives you the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive new web traffic …
(Get users to syndicate your content … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress RSS – About
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing other online users to syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on your WordPress 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, scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(WordPress Meta section – Accessing your RSS feed)
2) You can also find built-in links and buttons on certain WordPress themes that let your visitors copy your feed.
In the screenshot below, for example, a visitor can copy the 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 your theme, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Social Share, Follow, or Links floating, slide-out, or fixed toolbar …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Social Share, Keep In Touch, or Links toolbar section)
4) You can also view your 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 WordPress RSS feed page …
(Feed items seen on a Firefox browser)
Note that your feed content will display differently depending on which web browser you are using …
(RSS content seen on a Chrome web browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
You can specify how many posts you want to show in your Feeds 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 …
(WP Settings – Reading Settings – Syndication feed items field)
The feed will show as many recent items you have specified section …
(Your 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
The other setting in your Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display articles in your feed as full text, or as a summary …
(Reading Settings – Display ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for articles in a RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …
(Post excerpts affect how feeds will display)
To learn more about using excerpts in WordPress Posts, refer to this tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, all that’s required to view the content of a feed is to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into an application that can read and translate feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s take a look at how this works.
First, go to a website whose feed you want to subscribe to and look for an RSS feed icon …
(Search for an RSS feed link. Image source: http://www.yourcoffeeguru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL)
If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feed reader to view the content. Image: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feed readers, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds.
Adding Feeds To WordPress
Let’s show you how to add RSS content from another website to your site.
Adding An RSS Feed To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you can display on your site the latest news 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, Facebook updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu …
(Let’s add an RSS feed to your sidebar)
First, Find a site containing content that you want to display on your site and copy the RSS feed to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL to the clipboard)
Next, go to your Widgets area and paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(RSS Widget)
To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:
Load your site in your web browser. The content can now be seen on the sidebar …
(RSS Feed Added To 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:
Adding Feeds To Posts
Can you add content from RSS feeds to WordPress posts? Yes, you can!
You can easily do this using plugins. Just search on the WordPress plugin repository for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.
(WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for setup instructions, or contact us if you need assistance with plugin configuration.
Here are some auto blogging plugins that let you automatically add new with feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin)
WPeMatico is an 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 Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging plugin for WordPress that offers extended functionality with a number of premium extensions (add-ons).
For example, the Feed to Post extension for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin lets you import RSS feeds directly into your posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress)
RSS Post Importer allows you to import, curate, syndicate, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress site.
The plugin fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full article content of every item in the feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed WP Plugin)
POWr RSS Feed allows you to combine content from a number of different RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust the priority of different feeds, use custom backgrounds, colors, fonts, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on all phones, tablets, and computers and supports text in every language.
The premium edition of this plugin contains a number of additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes – WordPress Plugin)
WP Pipes is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.
This plugin provides functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter, export WordPress 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 WP Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides simple and flexible Atom/RSS syndication options for WordPress.
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.
You can use this FeedWordPress to create aggregator site (sites that bring together posts from various different sources), or display all of your online activity in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog by WPMUDev WordPress Plugin)
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, 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 – WordPress Plugin)
By default, WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed. Use RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types if you would like to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed and not just posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress makes available RSS feeds of comments posted on your site in addition to making RSS feeds of your latest posts available to online users.
To view this 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 …
(WordPress Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors display in the Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed items as seen with Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on the browser you are using …
(RSS comments feed content viewed using Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste your URL of your comments feed into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image: 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 WP installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Accessing Single Item RSS Feeds
Being able to select an RSS feed for single post items 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 using an RSS feed for single posts is shown below:
(Single Post RSS Feed)
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 URI of your post, WordPress will return the comments made on your post, not the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Using Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in subscribing to content from one or two categories. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
If your site publishes content under several categories, WordPress allows you to provide a separate RSS feed for each post category.
All you need to do is use the format below:
(WP post categories feed format)
Select and copy the category URL …
(Copy the category link address …)
Add “feed” to the end of it …
(Format for WP post categories RSS feed)
The feed will now only include content assigned 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 RSS Feeds List
You can provide an RSS feeds list that allows readers to subscribe only to content in specific categories …
(Provide Your Own RSS Feeds List)
Link a button image like the one shown below to the URL of your feed and then create a table or a list of all individual 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)
We have created a detailed tutorial on inserting tables into WordPress posts here:
RSS Feeds – Additional Notes
You can customize feeds in several different ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows a number of RSS feed configurations without code editing skills. Below are examples of some of the kinds of feed types you can use and how to create these feeds …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
For your convenience, here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – RSS feed that includes your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Displays the latest comments published on your website or blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed for an individual post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Includes the latest comments made on individual items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Feed that includes the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/05/25/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Includes latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/06/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Contains the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Displays latest post entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Includes the latest items for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One last thing …
Remember to promote your RSS feeds. Make sure you place your subscribe button image in a visible location …
(Promote your feeds!)
Finally, keep in mind that other website owners will only subscribe to your content if you provide your visitors with high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add content to your site and get other sites to share your content online using 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 feed 🙂
Additional Resources:
- Download RSS Images – Visit sites like www.feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “RSS images”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable Free RSS graphic elements.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to gain a better understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about the benefits of using RSS.
- WordPress Codex – WordPress software documentation and reference. Visit this site to learn more about using WordPress RSS feeds.
Congratulations! Now you know how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to add someone else’s content to your site using their RSS feed.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website or blog please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum