No matter what your business provides or what industry you are in, you need to provide quality information on your site or blog. For example, if your business provides insurance services, it’s not a bad idea to provide users with information from government departments, such as news or updates on statistical research, insurance tips, etc.
The problem with providing this kind of information, however, is that it is very time-consuming. You have to sort through, research, and organize a lot of information, check your facts, write and edit content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually ensure that this information is kept up-to-date. As you can imagine, this not only involves a huge amount of work but most of the information you are dealing with is completely beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is a simpler way to regularly provide your site readers with up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - The simplest way to provide your site visitors with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Is RSS?
- RSS stands for Rich Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred to, Really Simple Syndication. It is also often called 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 typically used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog entries, news headlines, music playlists, etc., to which any user can then subscribe.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is a structured XML 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 view updates posted on these websites through an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate content.
- Feeds can be made available in different formats and read by different feed readers. 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 multiple RSS feeds to display news and updates from various sources.
In this detailed guide, we explain where your RSS feed is located, 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.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a very powerful method used for sharing web content. RSS Feeds provide a way for web users to stay up-to-date with the latest information posted on different websites.
First, let’s take a look at syndication.
Global media publications use syndication to publish newsworthy content from news sources around the world.
Syndication allows leading content agencies to deliver readers the latest stories and newsworthy content from all over the globe without actually having to post more reporters and content writers to every location in the world …
(Global media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish news and stories from other news agencies all around the planet.)
Syndication is used to share content legitimately with other sites. Global media publications syndicate their newsworthy content using feeds …
(Online newspapers syndicate newsworthy content using feeds)
Most websites actually would like you to syndicate their content. Syndicating content not only allows information to be shared, but it also drives 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.
Most digital content publishers provide links to a 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”, “calgary herald rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most news reporting agencies and leading online media publications include an RSS feed section. Source: Sydney Morning Herald )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section brings up a directory of RSS feeds for different content topics on the site …
(RSS feeds list. Image Source: nytimes.com)
These RSS feeds allow readers to source content from different areas of the website (e.g. technology news, travel news, health news, etc.)
An RSS directory can also contain feed subdirectories …
(RSS Feed section. Source: Los Angeles Times)
Note: A feed is simply a URL. All that’s required to use a feed is to 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 – Benefits
Syndicating content from someone else’s website on your site has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s site additional exposure online and adds value to your site without you having to create that content …
(Content Syndication 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 websites to syndicate YOUR content.
When other websites and blogs syndicate content using your feed, this gives you the opportunity to get increased exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Get users to syndicate content using your feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress RSS – Overview
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on the WordPress theme you have installed, there are a number of ways to access the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to display in a standard or custom menu, 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 buttons on certain WordPress themes that allow your visitors to copy your feed.
In the screenshot below, for example, a visitor can simply copy the RSS feed URL by clicking on on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy RSS links to your clipboard from “subscribe” buttons)
3) On some websites and again, depending on which theme you have installed, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Link To Us, Follow Us, or Share fixed, slide-out, or floating toolbar …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Share, Links, or Follow toolbar)
4) You can also view your RSS feed by typing your site’s URL into a web browser and adding “/feed” after the URL, e.g.:
- http://www.yourdomain.com/feed
- http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/feed (if your WordPress site installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up your WordPress RSS feed page …
(Feed items seen on a Firefox browser)
Note that your feed page will display differently depending on which browser you use …
(RSS items as seen using a Google Chrome web browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
To specify how many posts you would like to display in your RSS page, go to your Reading Settings section and select the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(WP Reading Settings – Syndication feed items field)
The feed section will display the number of items you have specified in the Reading Settings section …
(The feed page will display the number of items you have specified in your WordPress Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in your Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display each article in a feed as full text, or as a summary …
(Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …
(Post excerpts affect how your feeds appear)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using Post excerpts in WordPress here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, all you have to do to view the content of an RSS feed is 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 take a look at how this works.
First, find a website whose feed you want to subscribe to and search for a ’subscribe to feed’ icon or link …
(Look for an RSS feed section. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed to your clipboard)
If you want, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feed reader to view the feed content. Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS feeds.
Adding RSS Feeds To Your Site
Let’s show you how to add content sourced from another site to yours.
How To Add Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is in, you could display on your site the latest updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing content from their feed. You can use RSS 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 …
(Add content from an RSS feed to your sidebar)
copy the feed URL from a website or blog that publishes content that you want to display on your sidebar to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
Next, go to your Widgets area and paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Load your site in your web browser. The content should appear on the sidebar (or wherever you have placed the RSS widget – e.g. custom menu, footer, etc) …
(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 RSS Feed Content To WordPress Posts
What if you want to add content from an RSS feed to WordPress posts instead of a sidebar?
You can do this using WordPress plugins. Just search inside the Plugins section (Plugins > Add New) for RSS Post, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ screen)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us for assistance configuring plugins.
Here are a few plugins that allow you to curate and add content from RSS feeds to your posts and pages:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin For WordPress)
WPeMatico is an easy to use autoblogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds that you choose.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange feeds according to campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator – WordPress Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin with premium add-ons for extended functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin lets you import RSS feeds directly into your posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
The RSS Post Importer plugin lets you curate, import, syndicate, merge and display full text feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) on your WordPress site.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full content of each feed item as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)
With POWr RSS Feed, you can combine and display content from various RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS Feed plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust the priority of different feeds, use custom colors, backgrounds, fonts, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on any phone, tablet, or computer and supports text in any language.
The premium version contains many additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin For WordPress)
WP Pipes is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.
This plugin provides loads of features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter, export posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress – WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides simple and flexible syndication for WordPress 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 display content from many different sources), or display all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, LinkedIn, Flickr, or other online services, in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog WP 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 the URL of your feed, give it a name of your choosing (for admin purposes) and select a blog that you want it to post to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages – WordPress Plugin)
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types lets you display pages in your WordPress RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Using WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to giving online users access to feeds of your posts, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of the latest comments posted on your site.
You can inspect this by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ widget area of your sidebar menu …
(WordPress Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in the Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed entries as seen on Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on the web browser you use …
(RSS comments feed items seen using Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the comments feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into a feedreader …
(Paste your feed URL 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 site installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Creating Feeds For Single Posts
Being able to select an RSS feed for single post items can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific items to RSS directories, or you may have created a valuable resource that other online users will want to syndicate.
The formula for using an RSS feed for an individual post item is shown below:
(Single Post Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the post address, and add “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only add “/feed” to the end of your post, WordPress will return the comments made on that post, not the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Displaying Category Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in subscribing to content from a specific post category. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
If your website publishes content under multiple categories, you can provide a separate RSS feed for each category.
Just use the format shown below:
(WordPress category feed format)
Select and copy the category URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the selected category URL to your clipboard …)
Add “feed” to the end of it …
(WordPress RSS feed format for post categories)
The RSS feed will now only display content specific to this category …
(Category 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 – Create Your Own RSS Feeds Page
You can publish your own feeds list that allows readers to subscribe only to content in specific categories …
(Create A Directory Of Feeds For Your Visitors)
You can link an image like the one shown below to the URL of your feed and then create a table or a list of all feeds on a separate page …
(RSS image. Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
If you need help with creating tables in WordPress content, go here:
RSS Feeds – Notes
You can customize your feeds in several different ways, such as adding images and videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows different RSS feed configurations without code editing skills. Below are examples of some of the kinds of feed formats you can use …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create With WordPress RSS)
Here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown 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 single posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Feed for the latest comments made on a specific post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/09/15/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – RSS feed displaying the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/12/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Feed containing the latest 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 let your users know that they can subscribe to your feed. Place your ’subscribe to RSS’ links in a visible location …
(Encourage your visitors to subscribe to your feeds!)
Finally, keep in mind that online users will only want to syndicate your content if you provide your visitors with high-quality content that can add great value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Easily add great content to your site and get online users to syndicate your content with 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 RSS feed 🙂
RSS Resources:
- RSS Icons – Visit Iconspedia.com or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “RSS images”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download Free RSS graphic elements.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information and links to resources about RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about the benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex: WordPress Feeds – Official WordPress documentation and reference repository. Go here for additional information about WordPress RSS feeds.
Congratulations! Now you know 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 via their RSS feed.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website please see other great content we have published on this site.
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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