No matter what your business sells or what industry you belong to, providing quality information on your site or blog is important. For example, if you provide health-related services, it’s a good idea to provide users with the latest information from the health department, such as news and updates on medical research, health and fitness advice, etc.
To create and publish this kind of information, however, takes a great deal of work and resources. You have to do a ton of data gathering, researching and organizing, checking the accuracy of your facts, content writing and editing (or hire someone to do this for you), and then ensure 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 great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is one of the easiest ways to provide your readers with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Does RSS Stand For?
- RSS, which, according to some definitions is short for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly referred to now as Really Simple Syndication. It is often called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- Once users subscribe to a website’s feed, they no longer have to manually check the source website for updated content. Instead, their web browser will constantly monitor the feed and automatically keep subscribers updated.
- Feeds are also used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as blog posts, news, audio lists, etc., to which any user can then subscribe.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML (XML = Extensible Markup Language) document that includes either full or summarized text along with other metadata such as published date, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on sites that publish feeds and then browse updates posted on these sites using a feedreader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate their information.
- There are different kinds of feeds, 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 devices, feed readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also let you combine multiple RSS feeds to receive news and updates sourced from multiple sites.
This detailed guide shows you how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to display content from other sites on your site via their RSS feed.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful and legitimate way of sharing web content. Feeds provide online users with a simple and easy way to receive the latest information posted on different sites.
First, let’s look at how content syndication is used.
Online newspapers use syndication to publish stories from news agencies all around the world.
Content syndication allows many online newspapers and many leading online publications to deliver readers stories from all around the globe without having to post more news staff and news writers everywhere in the world …
(Many digital publishers rely on syndication to publish news and stories from news sources around the world.)
Syndication is used to share newsworthy content legitimately. Global media publications syndicate content using feeds …
(Content syndication is a legitimate way of sharing information)
Most websites actually would like you to syndicate their information. Syndicating content not only allows information to be shared, but it also drives visitors back to the original site that created and published the content being syndicated. This provides websites with additional opportunities to generate significant web visitors.
Most online newspapers provide links to a feed section (look for links that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “courier rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Leading online newspapers have a feed section. Image Source: Sydney Morning Herald )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section brings up a directory of RSS feeds for different content areas of the site …
(RSS feeds list. Source: nytimes.com)
Each of these feed items lets you access content about different sections of the site (e.g. technology news, entertainment news, jobs, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain further subcategory feeds …
(RSS Feed section. Image Source: Los Angeles Times)
Note: An RSS feed is simply a URL. All you need to do to use RSS feeds is to copy the URLs and paste these into a program that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Syndicating Content
Syndicating someone else’s content on your site has some obvious benefits. It helps someone else’s site and adds value to your site without you having to create this content …
(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Business And Yours!)
While adding RSS feeds 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 sites to use your content.
When other websites syndicate your content, this gives you the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive new visitors …
(It’s a good idea to get users to syndicate content using your RSS feed … it will help to increase traffic!)
WordPress RSS Feed – Overview
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on your WordPress site’s theme, there are a number of ways to get the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to display as part of your navigation menu, just scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(Meta widget – Entries RSS)
2) You can also find built-in links and/or buttons on certain themes that allow your visitors to copy your RSS feed.
For example, in the screenshot below, 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 to RSS” buttons)
3) On some websites and again, depending on which theme you have installed, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Share, Follow, or Links toolbar …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Link To Us, Follow Us, or Share toolbar section)
4) You can also view your 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 installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up your WordPress RSS feed page …
(Feed entries displayed using Firefox)
Note that your feed items will display differently depending on the browser you are using …
(Feed entries seen using Google Chrome)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
You can specify how many entries you would like to show in your Feeds page, by going to your Reading Settings section and selecting the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(Settings – Reading Settings – Syndication feed items field)
The feed page will show the number of items you have specified in your Reading Settings section …
(Your feed will display the number of posts as you have specified in the Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
The other setting in your WordPress Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display posts as full text, or just a summary …
(WP Settings – Reading Settings – Display ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for posts in your feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …
(Post excerpts can affect how a feed displays)
If you need help using excerpts in WordPress Posts, see this tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, to view a feed’s content, you have to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into an application that can read and translate feeds into readable content.
Let’s see how this works.
First, go to a website or blog and search for an RSS feed button …
(Look for an RSS feed section. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL)
If you want, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feed reader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feedreader to view the content. Image: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds.
Adding An RSS Feed To Your Site
In the example below, we’ll add content from another site’s RSS feeds to yours.
Adding RSS Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is a part of, you can easily add to your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing content from their feed. You can use feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, social media updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add content sourced from an RSS feed to your sidebar …
(Let’s add content from an RSS feed to your sidebar)
copy the RSS feed URL from a website that publishes content that you want to add to your site to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL)
Next, go to your Widgets screen and paste the feed into a new 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 can now be seen in your sidebar (or wherever you have added the RSS widget) …
(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:
Adding Content From RSS Feeds To Posts
Can content from RSS feeds be added to WordPress posts instead of your sidebar? Yes, it can!
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Just search on the WordPress plugin directory for RSS Post, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ section – RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for instructions, or contact us if you need assistance with plugin configuration.
Here are a number of autoblogging plugins that allow you to automatically add new using RSS feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin For WordPress)
WPeMatico is an easy to use plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from specific RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize them into campaigns and categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin For WordPress)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging plugin for WordPress with premium add-ons for extended functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension lets you add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into WP posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer)
The RSS Post Importer plugin lets you curate, syndicate, import, 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 article content of every item in your feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin)
POWr RSS automatically combines and displays content from multiple RSS feeds.
This plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust sizing and spacing of feeds, use custom colors, fonts, backgrounds, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on all phones, computers, and tablets and supports text in any language.
The premium plugin edition contains many additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, accept or reject posts in your feed, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin For WordPress)
The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to create 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, autoblogging, auto post to Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, export posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress)
FeedWordPress provides flexible syndication for WordPress site-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 FeedWordPress to create aggregator site (sites that combine and display content from various different sources), 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 in minutes, 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 a blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types Plugin For WordPress)
Use RSS Includes Pages to include pages in your RSS feed in addition to posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).
For more details, go here:
WordPress RSS – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of your post comments in addition to displaying RSS feeds of your latest posts.
To inspect this feed, locate the ‘Meta’ widget 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 display in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items seen on a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on which web browser you are using …
(RSS comments feed content as seen on a Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into an online feed reader …
(Paste your URL of your comments feed into a feed reader to view the content. Source: 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 WordPress installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Single Item Feeds
Being able to access an RSS feed for a specific post 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 using an RSS feed for a specific post is shown below:
(Feed For Specific Post)
To create the above feed, copy the post address, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post Feed)
Note: By default, if you only add “/feed” to the end of the URI of your post, WordPress will return the comments associated with your post, not actual post content itself.
Tip #3 – Using Category Feeds
Some your site visitors may only want to subscribe to content from specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
WordPress allows you to create separate category feeds.
Just use the format shown below:
(Feed format for category)
Select and copy the category URL …
(Copy your category link address …)
Now, add “feed” to the end of it …
(Use this format for WordPress post categories RSS feed)
The RSS feed now only contains content posted in 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 – Publish Your Own Page Of RSS Feeds For Visitors
You can set up a directory of RSS feeds for subscribers that allows readers to subscribe only to specific content, just like large authoritative sites …
(Provide Your Own Directory Of Feeds For Subscribers)
You can link an image like the one shown below to your category feeds and then create a table or a list of your category feeds on a separate page …
(RSS graphic. Image: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
For a detailed tutorial about inserting tables into WordPress posts, go here:
RSS Feeds – Notes
You can customize your RSS in several different ways, such as adding videos and images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows you to configure various feed types that do not require code editing skills. 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 shown in the table 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 – Contains the latest comments left on your website or blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed containing a specific post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Contains the latest comments made on specific items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/05/24/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – RSS feed containing the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/06/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Displays latest post entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Contains latest entries 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. Place a ’subscribe to RSS’ button or link in a visible location …
(Promote your feeds!)
Finally, keep in mind that other website owners will only syndicate your content if you publish great content. In other words, you must provide high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Easily add content from other sites and get others to syndicate your content online using 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 🙂
RSS – Resources:
- Download RSS Feed Buttons – Visit sites like Feedicons or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss images”, etc.) for sites that contain downloadable RSS icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information and links to resources about RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex: Feeds – WordPress documentation repository. Go here 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 content from other sites to your site using RSS feeds.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you grow your business online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business web site please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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