No matter what your business sells or what industry you are a part of, providing high-quality information to your site users is essential. For example, if your business provides accounting or financial planning services, you may want to include useful information from the taxation office, such as news and updates on tax rulings, small business tax deductions, etc.
The problem with creating this type of information, however, is that it requires a huge amount of effort and expertise. You have to do a ton of information sifting, researching and organizing, checking the accuracy of your sources, content writing and editing (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 not only involves a lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is well beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is an easier way to continually provide your site readers with expert, up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - One of the easiest ways to provide your subscribers with great information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – What Is It?
- RSS is an acronym for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly known, Really Simple Syndication. It is often called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- RSS lets content publishers automatically syndicate their content to save readers time from having to keep revisiting their site to check for updates.
- Feeds are typically used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog entries, news, video lists, etc., to which any user can choose to subscribe.
- RSS feeds can be viewed with web-based, desktop-based, and even mobile-based software-based tools called feed readers, or aggregators. Aggregators are used to find new content published on websites and syndicate this content (and any updates made to the content) online.
- There are different kinds of feeds, read by different feedreaders. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom feeds and RDF feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure compatibility with different machines, readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also allow you to combine different RSS feeds to receive news and updates from multiple sources.
In this comprehensive guide, we will explain 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 websites to your site via RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful (and legitimate) way to share web content. RSS Feeds provide a way for online users to keep up with the latest information published on different sites.
First, let’s look at syndication.
News reporting agencies rely heavily on content syndication to publish stories from content sources all around the world.
Content syndication allows online newspapers to deliver readers global stories and up-to-the-minute newsworthy content from all over the globe without actually having to post more staff and news writers to every location in the world …
(Media publications rely on syndication to publish stories from news sources around the globe.)
Syndication is used to share information legitimately with other sites. Global media publications syndicate news stories using news feeds …
(Online newspapers syndicate newsworthy content using news feeds)
Most websites actually would like you to share 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 creates new ways to drive traffic back to their site.
Most digital publishers and major online media publications contain a 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”, “times of india rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many news agencies and major online media publications have a feed section. Image Source: Sydney Morning Herald RSS )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section brings up a list of different RSS feeds …
(RSS feeds section. Image: nytimes.com)
These feed items give readers access to content about different areas of the website (e.g. business news, entertainment news, editorials, etc.)
Feed sections can also include further feed subdirectories …
(RSS Feed section. Image: latimes.com)
Note: A feed is only a URL. All you need to do to use a feed is copy the URL and paste it into an application that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Content Syndication
Adding someone else’s content to your website has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s website additional exposure online and adds value to your site without you having to create this content …
(The Benefits Of Content Syndication)
While adding a feed from another site is a great way to add content to your site without having to create it, it’s worth keeping in mind that you also want other websites to syndicate your content.
When other sites syndicate your RSS feed, you have the opportunity to gain more exposure online and drive more web traffic …
(It’s worth trying to get users to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress RSS
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing other online users to easily syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on your WordPress site’s theme, there are a number of ways to get your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget on the sidebar …
(Your feed page will display as many recent posts as you have specified in your WordPress Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in the WP Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display each article as full text, or just as a summary …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’: ‘Full text’ or ‘Summary’)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed displays …
(Post excerpts affect how your feed content will display)
We have written a detailed tutorial on Post excerpts 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 an application that translates feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s take a look at how this works.
First, find a website or blog and look for their RSS feed button …
(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)
If you want, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your feed into a feed reader to view the feed content. Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feed readers, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds.
How To Add Feeds To WordPress Sites
In the example below, we’ll add content from other websites or blogs to yours.
How To Add A Feed To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are part of, you could display on your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by adding content from their feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, Facebook comments, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar …
(Add an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu)
copy the RSS feed URL from a site containing content that you would like to add to your sidebar …
(Copy the feed URL)
Next, paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content from the RSS feed will now appear in the sidebar …
(RSS Feed Content Added To WP Sidebar Menu)
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 Content From RSS Feeds To WordPress Posts
Can content from an RSS feed be added to WordPress posts? It sure can!
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Just search on WordPress.org plugin directory for RSS feed, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ search results – WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for configuration instructions, or contact us for assistance with plugin configuration.
The plugins 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)
WPeMatico is an autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds that you choose.
You can manage all the feeds you import and organize feeds into campaigns and categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging plugin for WordPress with extended functionality with a number of premium extensions (add-ons).
For example, the Feed to Post extension for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin is a feature-filled importer that 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 WordPress Plugin)
RSS Post Importer allows you to import, curate, syndicate, merge and display full-text feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) on your WordPress site.
The plugin fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full article content of every item in your feed as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed)
With POWr RSS, you can combine and display content from a number of different RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust feed priority, use custom fonts, borders, colors, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on any phone, tablet, or computer and supports text in all languages.
The premium version of POWr contains many additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes)
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 features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter, export your posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin For WordPress)
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.
FeedWordPress can be used to create aggregator site (sites that combine and display content from many different sources), or display all of your online activity in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog by WPMUDev 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, 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 – WordPress Plugin)
By default, WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed. Use a plugin like the RSS Includes Pages plugin to include pages in your RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Using RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress makes available RSS feeds of comments posted on your site in addition to giving online users access to RSS feeds of your latest posts.
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 RSS)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors and users will appear in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items as seen with Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on which browser you use …
(Comments feed items viewed with a Google Chrome web browser)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste your URL of your comments feed into a feed reader to view the feed 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 Feeds For Individual Items
Being able to display an RSS feed for specific post items can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific items to RSS aggregator sites, or you may have created a valuable resource that other online users will want to syndicate.
The formula for making an RSS feed for specific posts is shown below:
(RSS Feed For Individual Post Item)
To create the above feed, copy the URL of your post, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only add “/feed” to the end of the post URI, WordPress will return the comments associated with your post, not the content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Displaying Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site users may only want to syndicate 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 need to do is use the format shown below:
(Feed format for post categories)
Copy the category URL …
(Copy your category URL …)
And append “feed” to the end of it …
(Format for WordPress category feed)
The RSS feed will now only include content published in that 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 – Create A Directory Of RSS Feeds
You can create an RSS feeds page that allows readers to subscribe to specific categories …
(Provide Your Own Page Of Feeds On Your Site)
Link an image to the URL of your category feed and then create a table or a list of your individual feeds on a new page …
(RSS graphic. Image Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
We have created a detailed tutorial about inserting tables into WordPress content here:
WordPress RSS – Additional Notes
RSS feeds can be customized 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 several feed types that do not require editing code. Here are some examples of feed types you can use …
(WordPress RSS – Feed Formats)
For your convenience, here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed in the table above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – RSS feed that contains your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – RSS feed that displays the latest comments left on your site
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed containing a single post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Contains the latest comments made on individual post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/05/06/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/09/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Feed containing latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Displays the latest post entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Displays the latest post entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One last thing …
Remember to promote your feed. Make sure you place a subscribe button image somewhere visible …
(Remember to promote your feeds!)
Keep in mind that online users will only want to syndicate your content if you provide useful content that informs, engages, and entertains. In other words, provide high-quality information that will add great value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Add someone else’s content and get others to syndicate your content with WordPress and 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 🙂
Additional RSS Resources:
- RSS Graphics – Visit Iconspedia.com or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “RSS logos”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS graphic elements.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to learn more about RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – Learn more about RSS.
- WordPress Codex – Official WordPress documentation and reference. Visit this site for additional information about using WordPress RSS.
Congratulations! Now you know 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.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To read more about using WordPress for a business website or blog please click on links to visit other posts 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)