No matter what what industry you are a part of, it’s important to provide high-quality information on your site or blog. For example, if you provide health-related services, it’s a good idea to provide users with information from the health department, such as news or updates on medical research, health and fitness advice, etc.
To create and publish this type of information, however, is really time-consuming. You have to do a ton of data 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 completely beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a much easier way to keep your users up-to-date with the latest information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is one of the easiest ways to provide your readers with great information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Does RSS Mean?
- RSS, which, according to some definitions is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly known now as Really Simple Syndication. It is often referred to as a “feed” or “web feed”.
- RSS allows content publishers to automatically syndicate their content to save readers time from having to keep revisiting sites to check for updates.
- Feeds are often used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog entries, news headlines, video lists, etc., to which other users can choose to subscribe.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML document that includes full or summarized text along with metadata like date of publishing, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then browse any updates posted on these websites using a feedreader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate their web content.
- Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different feed aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom (also called AtomPub or APP feeds and RDF (Resource Description Framework) feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure compatibility with different machines, feed readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also allow you to combine many RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates sourced from many websites.
In this article, we explain where your RSS feed is located, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to display content from other sites on your site via their RSS feed.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful (and legitimate) way of sharing content online. RSS Feeds provide online users with a simple way to keep up with the latest information published on different websites.
First, let’s look at content syndication.
Media publications rely on syndication to publish newsworthy content from news sources around the world.
Content syndication allows digital news publishers to deliver readers the latest news items from around the globe without having to set up additional staff in every place around the world …
(Most news reporting agencies rely on syndication to publish news and stories from news sources all around the globe.)
Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing content with other sites. online media publications syndicate newsworthy content using feeds …
(Content syndication is used by global media publications to share content with other news publications)
Most websites actually want you to share their information. Content syndication not only allows information to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the site that originally created theoriginally created and published the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Many news reporting agencies and leading online media publications have 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”, “salt lake tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Major sites have an RSS feed section. Image: Sydney Morning Herald )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section brings up a directory of different RSS feeds …
(A site’s directory of different feeds. Source: nytimes.com)
Each of these feed items lets you access content from different areas of the website (e.g. business news, sports news, editorials, etc.)
A feed list can also contain further subcategories …
(Feed sections can also contain subcategory feeds. Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: A feed is just a URL. All you have to do to use the feed is copy the URL and paste it into software that can process the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Using RSS Feeds
Syndicating someone else’s content on your website has some obvious benefits. It helps someone else’s content and adds value to your site without you having to create that content …
(Syndicating Content Has Many Benefits!)
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 there are benefits in getting other sites to syndicate your content.
When other sites syndicate content using your feed, this gives you the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive more web traffic …
(It’s worth trying to get other website owners to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help to increase traffic!)
WordPress RSS – About
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing other online users to easily syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on the theme you have installed, there are a few ways to access your RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget on your sidebar or footer …
(Your feed will display the number of posts as you have specified in the WP Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
The other setting in the Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display articles in the feed as full text, or a summary …
(Settings – Reading Settings – Display ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for articles in your RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content displays …
(Post excerpts can affect how feeds will display)
For a detailed tutorial about using Post excerpts in WordPress, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, all that’s required to view a feed’s content is to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that can translate feeds into readable content.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, go to a website whose content you want to subscribe to and search for a ‘subscribe’ icon or link using any of the methods described earlier …
(Look for a ’subscribe to feed’ button. Image source: 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 URL of the feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds.
Adding RSS Feeds To Your WordPress Site
Let’s show you how to add RSS content from another website to your WordPress site.
Adding Feeds 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 importing their feed. You can use RSS feeds to 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 RSS content to your sidebar …
(Add an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation area)
copy the RSS feed URL from a website or blog that publishes content that you would like to add to your site to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Section – 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 (or wherever you have added the RSS widget) …
(RSS Feed Content Added To 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 Feeds To WordPress Posts
Can you add content from an RSS feed to posts? Yes, you can!
You can do this using plugins. Search inside your ’Add Plugins’ section for RSS, 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 configuring plugins.
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 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 the feeds you import and organize them according to campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and autoblogging WordPress plugin that offers premium add-ons for extended functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on lets you import RSS feeds directly into posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer)
RSS Post Importer lets you curate, syndicate, import, merge and display full-text feeds on your WordPress site.
The plugin fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full content of each item in your feed as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin)
With the POWr RSS Feed plugin, you can combine and display content from multiple RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display videos, images, and articles, adjust feed spacing and size, use custom backgrounds, fonts, colors, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in all languages.
The premium version of this plugin contains many additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, manually accept or reject posts, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes – WordPress Plugin)
WP Pipes 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/LinkedIn/Facebook, export WordPress posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress – WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides simple and flexible syndication for WordPress-generated content.
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 sites, or display all your online activity into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog by WPMUDev Plugin)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, without coding skills or 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 and Custom Post Types Plugin For WordPress)
Install RSS Includes Pages to include pages in your RSS feed and not just posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to making RSS feeds of your posts available to online users, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of comments posted on your site.
You can view this by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ widget of your sidebar menu …
(WordPress Comments RSS)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors and users display in the Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed entries viewed with Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on the web browser you use …
(RSS comments feed items seen on a Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check what the comments RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image: Feedreader.com)
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 site is located in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Using Specific Item Feeds
Being able to create an RSS feed for a single post 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 displaying an RSS feed for individual post items is shown below:
(Single Post RSS Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the URI of your post, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of a post URL, WordPress will return the comments left on your post, not actual post content itself.
Tip #3 – Using Category Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in subscribing to content about certain categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
If your website or blog displays content published under various categories, WordPress allows you to easily offer visitors a separate RSS feed for each of your categories.
All you need to do is use the format below:
(Use this format for WP post categories feed)
Select and copy the category link address …
(Copy the selected category link address …)
Now, add the word “feed” to the end of it …
(Use this format for WP category feed)
Your category RSS feed now only includes content published under that particular 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 – Set Up Your Own Directory Of Feeds On Your Site
You can set up your own RSS feeds page that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in the categories that interest them …
(Create Your Own Directory Of Feeds For Your Site Visitors)
You can also link an RSS icon to the URL of your feed and then create a table or a list of your feeds on a new page …
(RSS button. Image: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
If you need help with inserting tables into WordPress, see this step-by-step tutorial:
RSS – Notes
RSS feeds can be customized in a number of ways, such as adding images and videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows several RSS feed configurations without touching code. Here are some examples of feed types you can display …
(WordPress RSS – Custom Feeds)
For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed in the table above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – contains your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Contains the latest comments left on your website or blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed that contains a post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: RSS Feed that displays the latest comments made on specific post entries
- 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/2015/04/14/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/12/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Contains the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Contains latest posts for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Displays 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 feeds. Make sure you place your ’subscribe to RSS’ link in a visible location …
(Promote your RSS feeds!)
Finally, keep in mind that other website owners will only syndicate your content if your content is useful, informative, or highly entertaining. In other words, provide high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add someone else’s content and get other users to share your content online with RSS feeds!)
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 🙂
Resources:
- Download RSS Images – Visit Iconspedia.com or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “RSS logos”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable RSS graphics.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to learn more about RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex: WordPress Feeds – Official WordPress documentation site. Visit this site for more information about RSS feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know 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.
Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you improve your business online. To read more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website or blog please see other great content on this site.
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