No matter what what industry you belong to, it’s important to provide high-value information to your site or blog users. For example, if you provide travel services, it’s not a bad idea to provide users with information from government and foreign travel-related departments, such as news or updates on travel warnings, tips from embassies, etc.
To create and publish this kind of information, however, takes a lot of work and resources. You have to do a lot of data sorting, researching and organizing, checking the accuracy of your facts, content writing and editing (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually make sure that this information is kept 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 entirely beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is an easier way to keep your site readers up-to-date with the latest information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the simplest way to provide your subscribers 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 RDF Site Summary, is more commonly referred to now as Really Simple Syndication. It is also often referred to as a “feed” or “news 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 new blog entries, news, audio lists, etc., which other users can then subscribe to.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is a structured 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 browse updates posted on these sites using an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate their web content.
- 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 devices, feed readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also let you combine several RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from multiple sites.
This in-depth article explains how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to display content from other websites and blogs on your site using RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful way of sharing content online. RSS Feeds provide a way for web users to keep up with the latest information published on websites they are interested in.
First, let’s look at how syndication is used.
Global media and online newspapers rely heavily on syndication to publish stories from other news agencies around the world.
Content syndication allows news reporting agencies and popular online publications to deliver readers stories on all kinds of topics and up-to-the-minute headlines from all over the planet without actually having to send additional news staff to every location in the world …
(Digital news publishing agencies and many highly-visited media publications use syndication to publish newsworthy content from news sources all around the planet.)
Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing content. online media publications syndicate their content using news feeds …
(Content syndication is used by online newspapers to share newsworthy content with other publications)
Most sites actually would like you to share their content. Content syndication not only allows high-quality information to be shared, but it also drives visitors back to the original site responsible for creating and publishing the content being syndicated. This creates new ways to drive traffic back to their site.
Many news reporting agencies and leading online media publications provide links to an RSS feed section (look for links in the navigation menu that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “belfast telegraph rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Major content sites include an RSS feed section. Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section will bring up a directory of different RSS feeds …
(RSS feeds section. Image: New York Times)
These RSS feeds give readers access to different sections of the website (e.g. business news, travel news, editorials, etc.)
Feed sections can also include subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Image: latimes.com)
Note: A feed is simply a URL. All that’s required to use the feed is to copy the URL and paste it into software that can process the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Content Syndication – Benefits
Adding content from someone else’s website or blog on your site has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s business additional exposure online and helps your site by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(Using RSS Feeds)
While adding a feed from another site is a great way to add content to your site without having to create it, it’s a great idea to try and get other websites to use your content.
When other sites syndicate content using your feed, this gives you the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive new web traffic …
(Get users to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help to increase traffic!)
WordPress Feed
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing other online users to syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on your WP theme, there are a number of ways to get your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to be displayed on your sidebar, just scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(You can access your WordPress RSS feed from the Meta section)
2) You can also find links and/or buttons on certain themes that allow your visitors to copy your feed.
In the screenshot below, for example, a visitor can copy the RSS feed URL by right-clicking and copying on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy RSS links to your clipboard from “subscribe” buttons)
3) On some websites and again, depending on your WP theme, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Share, Links, or Stay In Touch toolbar section …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Share, Follow Us, or Links fixed, floating, or slide-out toolbar)
4) You can also view your WordPress feed by 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 WP site installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up your site’s feed page …
(Feed items displayed on Firefox web browser)
Note that your feed page will display differently depending on which web browser you are using …
(RSS items as seen on Google Chrome web browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
To specify how many posts you would like displayed in your RSS page, go to your Reading Settings section and type in the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(Reading Settings – Number of syndication feed items)
The feed section will show the number of items you have specified section …
(Your 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
Another setting in the WP Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display articles as full text, or just as a summary …
(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 feed content will display)
If you need help Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, to view the content of an RSDS feed, you have to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that reads and translates 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 link using any of the methods described earlier …
(Look for a ’subscribe to feed’ link. Image source: http://www.yourcoffeeguru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL to your clipboard)
If you want, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feed reader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image: Feedreader)
Like feed readers, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS feeds and convert these into content that can be read by your subscribers.
How To Add An RSS Feed To WordPress
Let’s show you how to add content sourced from another website to your WordPress site.
How To Add RSS Feeds 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 from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by adding their RSS feed. You can easily 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 content sourced from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar area …
(Let’s add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu)
copy the RSS feed from a website that publishes content that you would like to add to your site to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL to your clipboard)
Next, paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(Widgets Area – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:
Refresh your web browser. The content from the RSS feed should now display in the sidebar (or wherever the RSS widget has been added) …
(RSS Feed Added To WP 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:
How To Add A Feed To Your WordPress Posts
Can content from RSS feeds be added to posts instead of a sidebar? Yes, it can!
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Just search inside your ’Add Plugins’ section for RSS Post, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ section – RSS plugins for WordPress)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for setup instructions, or contact us if you need help configuring plugins.
Here are some plugins you can check out that let you add RSS feeds to your site:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from specific RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize 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 auto blogging plugin for WordPress that offers premium add-ons for additional functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension is a popular, feature-filled importer that allows you to import RSS feeds directly into WordPress posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
The RSS Post Importer plugin allows you to import, curate, syndicate, merge and display full-text feeds on your WordPress website or blog.
RSS Post Importer fetches an RSS feed and publishes the entire content of every item in your feed as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed)
POWr RSS Feed lets you automatically combine and display content from various RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS Feed plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust sizing and spacing of feeds, use custom colors, fonts, borders, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on all computers, tablets, and phones and supports text in all languages.
The premium plugin edition contains a number of additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes)
The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.
This plugin provides loads of powerful features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, 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 flexible syndication 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 sites, or bring together all your online activity 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, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Just 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
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types)
By default, WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed. You can use a plugin like the RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types plugin 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
In addition to making RSS feeds of your posts available, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of your latest post comments.
To view this, locate the ‘Meta’ section on your sidebar menu (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) and click on Comments RSS …
(Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items viewed on a Firefox web browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on which browser you are using …
(Comments feed entries seen with a Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into a feedreader …
(Paste your comments feed URL into a feedreader 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 site has been installed in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Creating RSS Feeds For Individual Items
Being able to display an RSS feed for a specific post item 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 making an RSS feed for an individual post item is shown below:
(Single Post Feed)
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 append “/feed” to the end of the web address of your post, WordPress will return the comments made on your post, not actual content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Using Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in syndicating content from specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
With WordPress, you can easily create individual category feeds.
All you have to do is use the format shown below:
(Format for WordPress category RSS feed)
Copy the selected category link address to your clipboard …
(Copy the category link address …)
Add the word “feed” to the end of it …
(WordPress post categories feed format)
The RSS feed now only includes content specific to that 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 – Create A Directory Of Feeds For Your Visitors
You can create your own page of feeds on your site that allows readers to subscribe to content in specific categories …
(Publish Your Own List Of Feeds)
All you need to do is link an icon like the one shown below to category feed URLs and then create a table or a list of all individual feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button image. Image: public-domain-photos.com)
We have created a detailed tutorial about adding tables to WordPress posts and pages here:
RSS – Additional Notes
You can customize feeds in several ways, such as adding videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows different feed configurations without editing code. Here are some examples of feed types you can use and how to format your feeds …
(WordPress RSS – Feed Types)
Below are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed in the table above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – displays your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Feed containing the latest comments published on your website or blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed containing a single post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Contains the latest comments made on a specific post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Contains latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/10/28/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Includes latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/11/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Displays the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Contains the latest entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Feed that displays the latest posts for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One last thing …
Remember to let users know that they can subscribe to your feeds. Make sure you place a subscribe buttons somewhere visible …
(Promote your feeds!)
Keep in mind that other sites will only subscribe to your content if you provide your visitors with very high-quality content that can add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Easily add someone else’s content and get other users to syndicate 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 RSS feed 🙂
Additional Resources:
- RSS Feed Buttons – Visit iconspedia.com/search/rss or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “rss logo”, etc.) for sites that contain downloadable RSS icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization with three primary duties: publishing the RSS specification, guiding developers who create RSS applications and furthering the understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about the benefits of using RSS.
- WordPress.org/WordPress Feeds – Official WordPress documentation and reference. Go here for additional information about feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know where 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 RSS feeds.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To read more about using the WP platform please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now