No matter what your business sells or what industry you are in, it’s important to provide high-quality information on your site or blog. For example, if your business provides travel-related services, you may want to publish information from government departments and foreign travel offices, such as news and updates on travel warnings, tips from consulates, etc.
The problem with creating this type of information, however, is that it requires a lot of work and expertise. You have to do a lot of data sorting, researching and organizing, checking sources for accuracy, 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 not only involves a lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is well beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is a much simpler way to keep your readers up-to-date with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - One of the simplest ways to provide your users with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Does RSS Mean?
- RSS is short for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred, Really Simple Syndication. It is also often called a “feed” or “news feed”.
- Once users subscribe to a website’s feed, they no longer have to physically visit and check the source website for updated content. Instead, their browser will continually monitor the feed and keep feed subscribers updated.
- Feeds are typically used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog post items, news headlines, audio playlists, etc., to which users can then subscribe.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML (XML = Extensible Markup Language) document that includes either full or summarized text along with metadata such as published date, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then browse updates posted on these websites using an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate content automatically.
- There are different feed formats and these can be 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 machines, feed readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also allow you to combine many RSS feeds to receive news and updates from many different sources.
In this in-depth guide, you are going to learn where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to add someone else’s content to your site using RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful (and legitimate) way of sharing web content. Feeds provide an easy way for online users to keep up with the latest information published on websites they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at syndication.
Online media publications rely on syndication to publish stories from news sources all around the world.
Content syndication allows leading digital content publishing agencies to deliver readers up-to-the-minute newsworthy items from all over the globe without actually having to send more news reporting and content writing departments to every place around the world …
(Global media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish newsworthy content from news sources all around the world.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing content with other sites. online media publications syndicate news stories using feeds …
(News reporting agencies syndicate their content using feeds)
Most sites actually want you to syndicate their information. Content syndication not only allows information of great value 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 new opportunities to generate significant web visitors.
Major content sites include an RSS feed section (look for links in the navigation menu 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 news reporting agencies and major content sites will have a feed section. Image Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section will bring up a directory of RSS feeds for different areas of the site …
(RSS directory. Source: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
gives you access to information from different areas of the website (e.g. business news, travel news, editorials, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: A feed is simply a URL. All you need to do to use the feed is copy the URL and paste it into an application that can process the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Syndicating Content – Benefits
Syndicating someone else’s content 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 this content …
(Content Syndication Benefits Someone Else’s Website And Yours!)
While adding RSS feeds 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 syndicate your content.
When other websites syndicate your feed, you have the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive more web traffic …
(Consider trying to get users to syndicate content using your RSS feed … it will help to increase your exposure online!)
Overview Of The WordPress RSS Feed
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing other online users to easily syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on your WordPress theme, there are a few ways to access the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme displays the Meta widget on your navigation menu …
(Your feed will show as many recent posts as you have specified in your 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 your posts as full text, or as a summary …
(Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for each article in your RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …
(Post excerpts affect how your feed content will display)
If you need help Post excerpts, see this step-by-step tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, all you have to do to view a feed’s content is to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that can read and translate feeds into readable content.
Let’s take a look at how this works.
First, go to a website whose content you want to syndicate and look for an RSS feed button using any of the methods described earlier …
(Search for an RSS 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 feed URL into an online feed reader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS feeds.
How To Add A Feed To Your WP Site
Let’s show you how to add content from another site to yours.
How To Add Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you can easily display on your site the latest updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by adding content from their feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, Facebook updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu …
(Let’s add an RSS feed to your sidebar)
First, find a site that publishes content that you would like to add to your sidebar and copy the RSS feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed to the clipboard)
Next, go to Appearance > Widgets and paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content can now be seen 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 RSS Feed Content To Your WordPress Posts
Can you add content from an RSS feed to a post instead of your sidebar? Yes, you can!
You can do this using plugins. Search inside the ’Add Plugins’ section (Plugins > Add New) for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ search results – WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for configuration instructions, or contact us if you need assistance configuring plugins.
Here are a number of plugins you can check out that allow you to curate and add content from RSS feeds to your posts and pages:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from multiple RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all the feeds you import and organize feeds according to categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging plugin for WordPress that offers a number of 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.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer WP Plugin)
RSS Post Importer allows you to curate, import, syndicate, merge and display full-text feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) on your WordPress website or blog.
The plugin will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full content of every item in the feed as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)
With POWr RSS Feed, you can automatically combine and display content from various sources using RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust the priority of different feeds, use custom borders, fonts, colors, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in any language.
The premium version of this plugin contains a number of 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)
The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.
This plugin provides loads of functionality 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 more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress WP Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a flexible Atom/RSS syndication plugin 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 bring together all of your online activity in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog WordPress Plugin)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in your feed URL, give the feed a name of your choosing (for admin purposes) and select a blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages Plugin For WordPress)
RSS Includes Pages modifies your RSS feeds to include pages in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WordPress Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of the latest comments posted on your site in addition to making RSS feeds of your posts available.
You can see this by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ widget area of your sidebar menu (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) …
(WordPress Comments Feed)
Comments posted on your site by visitors and users can be seen in your Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed entries seen using Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on the browser you use …
(RSS comments feed items viewed using Google Chrome)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste the URL of your comments feed into a feed reader 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 website or blog is located in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Creating Feeds For Individual Posts
Being able to access an RSS feed for an individual 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 accessing an RSS feed for a single post is shown below:
(Individual Post RSS Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the web address of your post, and add “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of the post URI, WordPress will return the comments made on your post, not actual post content itself.
Tip #3 – Using Post Category Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in syndicating content from a specific category. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
If your site contains content published under different categories, WordPress allows you to provide a separate RSS feed for each of these categories.
All you need to do is use the format shown below:
(Use this format for WordPress category RSS feed)
Copy the category link address …
(Select and copy your category URL …)
And append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(WordPress category RSS feed format)
The feed now only contains content posted for this 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 – Provide Your Own List Of RSS Feeds On Your Site
You can provide your own feeds directory that allows readers to subscribe only to content in the categories they are interested in …
(Publish Your Own Page Of RSS Feeds For Your Site Visitors)
All you need to do is link a button like the one shown below to category (or single post) feed URLs and then create a table or a list of your feeds on a new page …
(RSS button. Source: public-domain-photos.com)
We have written a detailed tutorial on inserting tables into WordPress content here:
RSS – Notes
You can customize your RSS in several different ways, such as adding videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows different feed configurations without editing code. Here are some examples of custom feed types you can use …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
Below are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the diagram 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 – Feed that includes the latest comments left on your website
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed containing individual posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: RSS Feed for the latest comments made on an individual post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Feed displaying the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/08/28/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/12/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Feed that includes latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Contains latest post entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Contains latest post entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One more thing …
It’s a good idea to promote your RSS feed. Make sure you place a subscribe link or button in a visible location …
(Encourage your site users to subscribe to your feeds!)
Keep in mind that online users will only subscribe to your content if your content is useful, informative, or highly entertaining. In other words, provide high-quality information that will add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add content from other sites and get other users to share your content online using 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:
- RSS Feed Images – Visit an online resource site like Feedicons or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “RSS icon”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download Free RSS images and icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to gain a better understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about the history and benefits of using RSS.
- WordPress Codex – Official WordPress documentation and information. Go here for more information about feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to add someone else’s content to your site via RSS.
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 using WordPress for a business website or blog please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)