No matter what service or product your business sells, providing high-quality information to your blog visitors is vitally important. For example, if you provide travel-related services, it’s a good idea to publish the latest information from government and foreign travel-related departments, such as news and updates on travel warnings, advice from embassies, etc.
The problem with creating this type of information, however, is that it is very time-consuming. You have to sift through, research, and organize a ton 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 is not only a lot 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 site visitors up-to-date with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the easiest way to provide your readers with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – What Is It?
- RSS, which, according to some definitions is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly referred to now as Really Simple Syndication. It is often referred to as 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 updated content. Instead, their web browser will continually monitor the content and automatically keep subscribers up-to-date.
- Feeds are often used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as blog entries, news, audio playlists, etc., to which other users can choose to subscribe.
- RSS feeds can be read with web-based, desktop-based, and even mobile-based programs called feed readers, or feed aggregators. Aggregators are used to access new content published on websites and syndicate this content online.
- There are different kinds of feeds, 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, feedreaders, and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also let you combine many RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from various different sites.
In this in-depth guide, we show you where 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 using RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful method used for sharing content online. Feeds provide web users with a simple way to keep up with the latest information published on different websites and blogs.
First, let’s take a look at the uses of content syndication.
Most digital news publishers use syndication to publish stories from other news agencies all around the world.
Syndication allows most news reporting agencies and many highly-visited online publications to deliver readers the latest news headlines and newsworthy content from all over the planet without having to employ more writers in every place around the world …
(Global media publications rely on content syndication to publish newsworthy stories from news sources around the world.)
Syndication is used to share content legitimately. Global media publications syndicate their newsworthy content using news feeds …
(News agencies syndicate newsworthy content using news feeds)
Most sites actually would like you to syndicate their content. Content syndication not only allows information to be shared, but it can also drive visitors back to the site that originally published the content being syndicated. This provides websites with new opportunities to generate additional web traffic.
Major content sites include an RSS 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”, “miami herald rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most news reporting agencies and major sites include a feed section. Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section will bring up a directory of different RSS feeds …
(RSS feeds list. Source: NY Times RSS)
These feed items give you access to content from different sections of the website (e.g. technology news, travel news, jobs, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain feed subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Source: LA Times)
Note: A feed is just a URL. To use a feed, all you have to do is copy the URL and paste it into software that can translate the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Using Feeds
Adding content from someone else’s website on your website has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s website additional exposure online, it also adds value to your site without you having to create the content …
(Using RSS Feeds)
While adding an RSS 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 sites to use YOUR content.
When other websites and blogs syndicate your feed, you have the opportunity to gain more exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Try to get visitors to syndicate content using your RSS feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress RSS Feed – Overview
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on your theme, there are a number of ways to access your RSS feed:
1) If your theme displays the Meta widget in a navigation menu …
(The feed page will show the number of posts as you have specified in your WP 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 posts as full text, or just as a summary …
(WP Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed displays …
(Post excerpts affect how your feeds display)
To learn more about WordPress Post excerpts, refer to this tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, to view the content of a feed, you have to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into an application that translates feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, go to a website or blog and search for a ’subscribe to feed’ button using any of the methods described earlier …
(Look for a ‘subscribe’ icon or 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 feed URL into an online feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the content. Source: Feedreader)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS feeds and convert these into readable content for humans.
Adding Feeds To WordPress Sites
Let’s show you how to add content from other website’s RSS feeds to yours.
How To Add A Feed To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business operates in, you could easily add to your site the latest news and updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply importing content from their feed. You can use RSS 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 …
(Add an RSS feed to your sidebar)
copy the feed URL from a website or blog containing content that you want to display on your sidebar …
(Copy your feed URL to your clipboard)
Next, go to your WordPress Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets and paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(RSS Widget)
To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:
Load your site in your browser. The content from the RSS feed should now display on the sidebar (or wherever you have placed the RSS widget – e.g. footer, custom menu, etc) …
(RSS Feed Content Added To WordPress 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 RSS Feeds To WordPress Posts
Can content from an RSS feed be added to a post instead of the sidebar? Yes, it can!
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Just search on WordPress.org plugin directory for RSS feed, RSS feed to post, etc.
(RSS plugins for WordPress)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for complete instructions, or contact us for assistance with plugin configuration.
Here are some plugins that allow you to curate and add content from RSS feeds to your pages and posts:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin)
WPeMatico is an auto blogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from multiple RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and arrange feeds into categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and autoblogging plugin for WordPress that offers extended functionality with premium add-ons.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on is a feature-rich importer that allows you to autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress)
RSS Post Importer lets you curate, import, syndicate, merge and display full text feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) on your WordPress website or blog.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full content of every item in your feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin)
With POWr RSS, you can automatically combine and display content from various content using RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust sizing and spacing of feeds, use custom colors, fonts, backgrounds, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on any phone, tablet, or computer and supports text in every language.
The premium version contains a number of additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, accept or reject posts, 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 loads of powerful features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn, export posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to new levels.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress – WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a simple and flexible syndication plugin for WordPress-generated content.
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 site (sites that combine and display posts from multiple sources), or bring together all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Twitter, Flickr, or other online services, into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog by WPMUDev – WordPress Plugin)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in your feed URL, 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)
RSS Includes Pages lets you display pages in your WordPress RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Using WordPress RSS – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WordPress Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of your post comments in addition to making RSS feeds of your posts available to online users.
To access these comments, locate the ‘Meta’ widget 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 can be seen in the Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items displayed on Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on which web browser you use …
(Comments feed items displayed using Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your comments feed into a feedreader to view the 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 website is located in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Specific Post RSS Feeds
Being able to access an RSS feed for a specific post item 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 making an RSS feed for a specific post item is shown below:
(Individual Post Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the URL of your post, 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 post URI, WordPress will return the comments for that post, not actual post content itself.
Tip #3 – Displaying Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in syndicating content from a particular post category. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
If your website publishes content under multiple categories, WordPress allows you to provide a separate RSS feed for each post category.
Just use the format below:
(Use this format for WP post categories feed)
Select and copy the category URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the category link address …)
Now, add “feed” to the end of it …
(WP post categories feed format)
Your category feed will now only contain content published in this particular category …
(Category-specific RSS 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 – Set Up Your Own Page Of RSS Feeds
You can provide your own RSS feeds directory that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in specific categories …
(Create A Feeds List)
All you need to do is link a button like the one shown below to the URL of your category feed and then create a table or a list of your feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button. Image Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on creating tables in WordPress content, go here:
WordPress RSS – Additional Notes
You can customize your feeds in several ways, such as adding videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows various RSS feed configurations that do not require messing with code. Here are some examples of feed types you can use on your site and how to structure the feeds …
(Different Custom Feeds You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown 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 – Feed that includes 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
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Feed that contains the latest comments made on specific items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – RSS feed displaying latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/06/08/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/08/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Feed that displays latest items for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: RSS feed that contains latest posts for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One last thing …
Remember to promote your RSS feed. Place a ’subscribe to RSS’ button somewhere visible …
(Encourage your visitors to subscribe to your RSS feeds!)
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 users.
(Easily add great content from other sites and get visitors to syndicate your content using 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 Resources:
- Download RSS Icons – Visit www.feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss logo download”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to gain a better understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – General information about using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex: RSS Feeds – Official WordPress documentation and information. Visit this site to learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know 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 using RSS feeds.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site 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 other great content on this site.
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