No matter what what industry you are in, it’s important to provide high-quality information on your site or blog. For example, if you provide insurance-related services, it’s not a bad idea to provide users with useful information from government departments, such as news and updates on statistical findings, insurance tips, etc.
To create and publish this type of information, however, involves a huge amount of work and expertise. You have to do a lot of data sorting, researching and organizing, fact-checking, content writing and editing (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 is not only a lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is entirely beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a much easier way to continually provide your users with expert, up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the simplest way to provide your site readers with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – What Is It?
- RSS stands for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred, Really Simple Syndication. It is often referred to as a “feed” or “news feed”.
- When a user subscribes to an RSS feed, they no longer have to manually check the source website for content updates. Instead, their web browser constantly monitors the content and keeps subscribers updated.
- RSS feeds are also used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog entries, news, music playlists, etc., which any user can then subscribe to.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML document that includes full or summarized text along with metadata such as date of publishing, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on sites and blogs that publish feeds and then view updates posted on these websites using an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate information automatically.
- Feeds can be made available in different formats and read by different aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom (also called AtomPub or APP feeds and RDF (RDF = Resource Description Framework) feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure that feeds are compatible with different devices and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also let you combine many RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from many sites.
In this guide, we explain where to find your WordPress RSS feed, 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 RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful and legitimate way of sharing content online. RSS Feeds provide web users with a way to receive the latest information published on websites they are interested in.
First, let’s look at the uses of syndication.
Online newspapers and many leading online publications rely heavily on syndication to publish newsworthy content from news sources around the world.
Syndication allows most online newspapers and leading media publications to deliver readers stories and news items from around the planet without having to send more news staff to every place around the world …
(Most news publishing agencies rely heavily on syndication to publish newsworthy stories from news sources all around the globe.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing content with other sites. Global media publications syndicate their stories using news feeds …
(Content syndication is a legitimate way of sharing content)
Most websites actually want you to syndicate their content. Content syndication not only allows information to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the site that originally published the content being syndicated. This creates new ways to drive traffic back to their site.
Most digital publishers and leading online media publications provide links to a feed section (look for menu links that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “la times rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most leading online media publications have an RSS feed section. Image Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section brings up a directory of RSS feeds for different areas of the site …
(RSS Feeds. Source: New York Times)
gives readers access to content from different areas of the site (e.g. business news, sports news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
An RSS feed list can also contain further feed subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Image: latimes.com feeds)
Note: An RSS feed is just a URL. All you need to do to use RSS feeds is copy the URLs and paste these into a program that can process the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
RSS Feeds – Benefits
Adding content from someone else’s site on your site has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s content additional exposure online, it also helps you by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Business And Yours!)
While adding a feed from another site is a great way to add content to your site that you don’t have to create, it’s worth keeping in mind that you also want other sites to syndicate your content.
When other websites syndicate your RSS feed, this gives you the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive more web traffic …
(Look for ways to get other sites to syndicate content using your RSS feed … it will help to increase your traffic!)
Overview Of The WordPress Feed
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on your WordPress site’s theme, there are a number of ways to access your RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to display as part of your navigation menu, you can scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(Meta section – Accessing your RSS feed)
2) You can also find links and buttons on certain WordPress themes that let your visitors copy your RSS 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 feed links to your clipboard from “subscribe to RSS” buttons)
3) On many sites and again, depending on which theme you have installed, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Links, Share, or Subscribe toolbar …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Share, Link To Us, or Follow Us toolbar)
4) You can also view your RSS 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 website is located in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up a page containing your RSS feed …
(Feed items seen with a Firefox browser)
Note that your feed items will display differently depending on the browser you are using …
(RSS feed entries displayed on Google Chrome web browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
You can specify how many posts you want to display in your RSS Feed section, by going to your Reading Settings section and typing the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(WP Reading Settings – Number of syndication feed items setting)
The feed section will show as many recent items you have specified section …
(Your feed will display the number of posts as you have specified in your Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in the Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display your posts as full text, or a summary …
(WP Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts affect how your feed content will appear)
If you need help Post excerpts, refer to this tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, all you have to do to view the content of a feed is to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that can read and translate feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, find a website or blog and search for a ‘subscribe’ button or link using any of the methods described earlier …
(Look for an RSS feed icon. 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 URL of your feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feedreader to view the feed content. Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds and convert these into readable content for humans.
How To Add RSS Feeds To Your Site
Let’s show you how to add content sourced from another site to yours.
Adding RSS Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you could add to your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply adding content from their RSS feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, social media updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu …
(Add an RSS feed to your sidebar)
First, find a website that publishes content that you would like to display on your site and copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
Next, go to your WordPress Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets and paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content can now be seen on the sidebar …
(RSS Feed Added To WordPress 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 RSS Feeds To Your WordPress Posts
What if you want to add content from an RSS feed to a post instead of the sidebar?
You can do this using WordPress plugins. Just search inside the Plugins admin section (Plugins > Add New) for RSS Post, RSS feed to post, etc.
(WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us if you need help with plugin configuration.
The plugins below are useful for adding feed content to posts, or “autoblog” (An auto blog 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 lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds that you select.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize feeds into campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin For WordPress)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and autoblogging plugin for WordPress that offers premium add-ons for additional functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin allows you to import RSS feeds directly into your WP posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress)
The RSS Post Importer plugin lets you syndicate, curate, import, merge and display full text RSS feeds on your WordPress blog.
The plugin will fetch an RSS feed and publish the entire content of each item in your feed as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)
With POWr RSS, you can automatically combine and display content from a number of different sources using RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS Feed plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust the priority of different feeds, use custom backgrounds, fonts, colors, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in all languages.
The premium version contains many additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, manually accept or reject posts in your feed, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes)
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 many other sources.
This plugin provides loads of powerful functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, export your posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to new levels.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a simple and flexible syndication plugin for WordPress.
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.
You can use this FeedWordPress to create aggregator site (sites that combine content from various different sources), or bring together all of your online activity in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(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, give your feed a name (for admin purposes) and select a blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages – WordPress Plugin)
RSS Includes Pages lets you display pages in your WordPress RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WordPress Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of your post comments in addition to making RSS feeds of your posts available.
You can view this feed by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ widget area …
(WordPress Comments RSS)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors and users display in your Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed items seen with Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on the web browser you are using …
(RSS comments feed entries displayed on Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the comments feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into a feed reader …
(Paste your comments feed URL into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image 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 website has been installed in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Using Individual Item Feeds
Being able to select an RSS feed for individual posts 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 creating an RSS feed for a single post is shown below:
(Single Post RSS Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the URL 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 your post, WordPress will return the comments associated with that post, not actual content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Category Feeds
Some your site users may only be interested in subscribing to content about specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
If your website displays content published under different categories, you can easily provide a separate RSS feed for each category.
Just use the format shown below:
(Feed format for post categories)
Copy the selected category URL …
(Copy the selected category link address …)
Add “feed” to the end of it …
(WP category RSS feed format)
The feed will now only include content posted under that particular 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 An RSS Feeds List
You can provide your own page of feeds for your visitors that allows readers to subscribe to content in the categories they are interested in …
(Publish A List Of RSS Feeds For Subscribers)
Link a button like the one shown below to each category feed and then create a table or a list of your feeds on a new page …
(RSS button. Image: public-domain-photos.com)
If you need help with adding tables to WordPress posts and pages, go here:
RSS – Additional Notes
Feeds can be customized in various different ways, such as adding images and videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows you to configure a number of feed formats that do not require editing code. For example, here are just some of the kinds of feeds you can use and how to format the feeds …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
Here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the image 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 – Displays the latest comments published on your website
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed for individual items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Feed that includes the latest comments made on a single post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – RSS feed that includes latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/12/09/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/10/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Contains latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/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: Contains latest entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One last thing …
It’s a good idea to let your site visitors know that they can subscribe to your feed. Make sure you place a subscribe links in a visible location …
(Encourage your site users to subscribe to your feeds!)
Finally, keep in mind that other website owners will only syndicate your content if you provide your subscribers with very high-quality content that will add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Easily add content to your site and get others to syndicate your content 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 RSS feed 🙂
RSS Resources:
- Download RSS Buttons – Visit a site like feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss logo download”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS graphics.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization responsible for publishing RSS specifications, guiding developers who create RSS applications and helping the general public gain a better understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about the history and benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress.org – Official WordPress documentation repository. Go here for more information about using WordPress RSS feeds.
Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to display content from other websites on your site via RSS.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you improve your business online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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