No matter what what industry you are a part of, providing quality information to your blog visitors is essential. For example, if you provide taxation services, it’s not a bad idea to provide users with the latest information from the taxation office, such as news and updates on tax rulings, small business tax deductions, etc.
To create and publish this type of information, however, involves a lot of time and expertise. You have to do a ton of information gathering, researching and organizing, fact-checking, writing and editing content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then make sure that this information is continually 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 well beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a simpler way to keep your users up-to-date with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the easiest way to provide your blog subscribers with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – What You Need To Know
- RSS, which, according to some definitions stands for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly referred to as Really Simple Syndication. It can also be referred to as a “feed” or “news feed”.
- When a user subscribes to a website’s feed, they no longer have to physically visit and check the source website for updated content. Instead, their web browser will constantly monitor the site and automatically keep subscribers up-to-date.
- Feeds are also used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog post items, news, audio lists, etc., to which users can then subscribe.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is a structured XML document that includes either full or summarized text along with metadata like published date, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on sites and blogs that publish feeds and then browse updates posted on these sites using an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate their web content automatically.
- 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 that feeds are compatible with different devices, feed readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also let you combine different RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from various sites.
In this guide, we explain where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, 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 and legitimate method used for sharing content online. Feeds provide a simple and easy way for online users to stay up-to-date with the latest information posted on different websites and blogs.
First, let’s look at syndication.
Global media publications rely on content syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies all around the world.
Syndication allows leading news reporting agencies to deliver readers interesting stories and up-to-the-minute news from all over the globe without actually having to hire and send additional reporting agencies to every location around the world …
(Most online newspapers and highly-visited online media publications use syndication to publish stories from other news agencies around the planet.)
Syndication is used to share newsworthy content legitimately with other sites. online media publications syndicate their content using news feeds …
(Content syndication is used by online newspapers to share newsworthy content with other news publications)
Most sites actually would like you to syndicate their information. Syndicating content not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it can also drive visitors back to the original site that published the content being syndicated. This creates new ways to drive traffic back to their site.
Major sites have an RSS feed section (look for links in their navigation section that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “huffington post rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most online newspapers and leading online media publications contain an RSS feed section. Image Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section brings up a directory of different RSS feeds …
(A website’s list of RSS feeds. Image Source: NY Times RSS)
Each of these feeds lets you access different areas of the website (e.g. business news, entertainment news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
A feed directory can also include further feed subcategories …
(Feed sections can also contain subcategories. Image Source: latimes.com)
Note: A feed is only a URL. All you need to do to use feeds is copy the URLs and paste these into an application that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Syndicating Content – Benefits
Adding content from someone else’s website on your site has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s content additional exposure online, it also helps you by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(Content Syndication Benefits Someone Else’s Business And Yours!)
While adding an RSS feed from another site is a great way to add content to your site that you don’t have to create, it’s a great idea to try and get other websites to use your content.
When other websites syndicate your content, you have the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive more web traffic …
(Consider trying to get users to syndicate your content … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress RSS Feed – About
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on your theme, there are a few ways to get your RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget in your navigation menu …
(The feed page will display as many recent items you have specified in the 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 articles as full text, or a summary …
(Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts affect how content in feeds will display)
If you need help using excerpts in WordPress Posts, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, to view a feed’s content, you have to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that can read and translate feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s see how this works.
First, find a website or blog and search for a ’subscribe to 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 the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into a feedreader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feed reader to view the content. Image Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS feeds.
Adding An RSS Feed To Your Site
Let’s show you how to add content from another site’s RSS feeds to your site.
How To Add An RSS Feed To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is in, you can easily add to your site the latest content from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing their RSS feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, Facebook updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to the WordPress sidebar area …
(Add content from an RSS feed to your sidebar)
First, find a site that publishes content that you want to display on your sidebar and copy its RSS feed …
(Copy the feed URL)
Next, paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(Widgets Section – RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Load your site in your web browser. The content should appear in 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:
How To Add Content From RSS Feeds To WordPress Posts
Can you add content from an RSS feed to posts instead of your sidebar? Yes, you can!
You can do this using plugins. Just search on WordPress.org plugin repository for RSS feed, RSS feed to post, etc.
(WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for configuration instructions, or contact us for assistance configuring plugins.
The plugins listed below are useful if you want to add feed content to posts, or “autoblog” (An autoblog is a blog with content that is automatically gathered and compiled from RSS feeds):
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds of your choice.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize them into categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator WP Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and auto blogging plugin for WordPress that offers premium add-ons for additional functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension allows you to add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into WordPress posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
RSS Post Importer allows you to curate, import, syndicate, merge and display full text feeds on your WordPress blog.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the entire content of every item in the feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed)
With POWr RSS, you can combine and display content from multiple content using RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust feed spacing and size, use custom colors, fonts, borders, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in every language.
The premium version of POWr contains many additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes – WordPress Plugin)
The WP Pipes plugin is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to 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 Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn, export your posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to a new level.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress)
FeedWordPress is a versatile syndication plugin 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 plugin to create aggregator site (sites that display content from different sources), or bring together all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Facebook, Flickr, or other online services, into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog Plugin)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in the URL of your feed, give the feed a name of your choosing (for admin purposes) and select the blog that you want it to post to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages Plugin)
By default, WordPress only posts posts in your RSS feed. Use the RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types plugin to include pages in your RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of your latest post comments in addition to displaying RSS feeds of your latest posts.
You can see your comments feed by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ section …
(Comments Feed)
Comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in the Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed content as seen using a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on the browser you use …
(RSS comments feed content viewed on a Google Chrome web browser)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into a feedreader …
(Paste your comments feed URL into a feed reader to view the 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 website or blog is located in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Using RSS Feeds For Single Items
Being able to create an RSS feed for a specific post can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific items 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 is shown below:
(Feed For Individual Post)
To create the above feed, copy the web address of your post, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of the web address of your post, WordPress will return the comments left on that post, not the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Displaying Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in syndicating content from a specific category. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
If your website publishes content under various categories, WordPress allows you to offer subscribers a separate feed for each of your categories.
Just use the format below:
(Format for WordPress post categories feed)
Select and copy the category URL …
(Select and copy your category link address …)
Now, append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(Use this format for WP category RSS feed)
The category feed now only contains content published in 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 – Publish A List Of Feeds
You can create your own RSS feeds page that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in the categories that interest them …
(Create An RSS Feeds Page)
You can also link an icon to each feed and then create a table or a list of your individual feeds on a new page …
(RSS button graphic. Image Source: public-domain-photos.com)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about adding tables to WordPress, go here:
RSS – Notes
Feeds can be customized in various different ways, such as adding videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows you to configure different feed types that do not require messing with code. Here are some examples of custom feed types you can use …
(WordPress RSS – Feed Types)
For your convenience, here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – displays your latest posts
- 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: RSS feed for a post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: RSS Feed containing the latest comments made on an individual post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Feed containing latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/02/04/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Includes latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/10/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Displays the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Displays the latest posts for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Displays the latest posts 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 your ’subscribe to RSS’ button somewhere visible …
(Encourage your visitors to syndicate your RSS feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that online users will only subscribe to your content if you provide your visitors with high-quality content that will add value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add someone else’s content and get visitors to subscribe to your content online 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 feed 🙂
RSS Resources:
- RSS Graphics – Visit a site like Feedicons or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “rss logo download”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable RSS graphics.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information and resources about RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – General information about the history and benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex – WordPress software documentation and information site. Visit this site for additional information about using RSS feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to add content from other websites to your site using RSS feeds.
Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website or blog please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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