No matter what your business sells or what industry you are in, it’s vitally important to provide quality information to your site users. For example, if you provide medical services, you may want to publish useful information from the health department, such as news or updates on medical research, health and fitness advice, etc.
To create and publish this kind of information, however, is really time-consuming. You have to do a ton of data sorting, researching and organizing, checking the accuracy of your sources, 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 huge amount of work but most of the information you are dealing with is well beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is an easier way to provide your users with up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is one of the simplest ways to provide your users 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 known, Really Simple Syndication. It is often called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- When a user subscribes to a website’s feed, they no longer have to physically visit and check the source website for content updates. Instead, their web browser will continually monitor the feed and automatically keep subscribers updated.
- RSS feeds are typically used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as new blog posts, news headlines, videos, etc., to which any user can choose to subscribe.
- You can view the content of an RSS feed using a software-based tool called an RSS reader, or feed aggregator. Feedreaders are used to access new content published on websites and syndicate this content online.
- There are different kinds of feeds, read by different feedreaders. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom (also called AtomPub or APP feeds and RDF feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure compatibility with different devices and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also allow you to combine different RSS feeds to receive news and updates from different sources.
In this article, 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 add content from other websites and blogs to your site via RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful (and legitimate) way of sharing web content. Feeds provide a simple and easy way for online users to keep up with the latest information published on different websites and blogs.
First, let’s look at content syndication.
Most news reporting agencies rely heavily on content syndication to publish news from news agencies around the world.
Syndication allows content agencies to deliver readers up-to-the-minute news headlines and newsworthy stories from all over the planet without actually having to employ additional content writers everywhere in the world …
(News reporting agencies rely heavily on content syndication to publish newsworthy items from other news agencies around the planet.)
Syndication is used to share information legitimately with other sites. Online newspapers syndicate newsworthy content using news feeds …
(News reporting agencies syndicate their content using feeds)
Most sites actually want you to syndicate their content. Content syndication not only allows information to be shared, but it can also drive visitors back to the original site that published the content being syndicated. This provides websites with additional opportunities to generate significant web traffic.
Many news reporting agencies and major online media publications provide links to an RSS feed section (look for links in their navigation section that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “times of india rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many digital publishers and major content sites contain an RSS feed section. Source: Sydney Morning Herald RSS )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section will bring up a list of RSS feeds for different content topics on the site …
(RSS feeds list. Source: nytimes.com)
These RSS feeds allow readers to source content from different sections of the site (e.g. business news, sports news, health news, etc.)
A feed directory can also contain feed subdirectories …
(RSS Feed section. Image: latimes.com feeds)
Note: A feed is simply a URL. To use feeds, all you need to do is to copy the URLs and paste these into a program that can translate the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Using RSS Feeds – Benefits
Syndicating content from someone else’s website or blog on your website has some obvious benefits. It gives additional exposure online to someone else’s site and helps you by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(Syndicating Content - Benefits)
While adding a feed from another site is a great way to add content to your site without having to create it, it’s worth keeping in mind that you also want other sites to use your content.
When other sites syndicate your RSS feed, this gives you the opportunity to get increased exposure online and drive new visitors …
(Get other online users to syndicate your feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress Feed – About
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on which theme you have installed, there are a number of ways to get your RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to be displayed on 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 themes that let your visitors copy your feed.
For example, in the screenshot below, a visitor can simply copy the site’s RSS feed URL by clicking on on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy RSS URLs to your clipboard from “subscribe” buttons)
3) On many sites and again, depending on your WP theme, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Links, Social Share, or Follow section …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Links, Social Share, or Follow Us toolbar section)
4) You can also view your WordPress site’s feed by simply 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 your site’s feed page …
(Feed items as seen using Firefox)
Note that your feed content will display differently depending on which browser you are using …
(Feed entries as seen using a Chrome web browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
To specify how many items you want to show in your RSS Feed section, go to your Reading Settings section and enter the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(Reading Settings – Syndication feeds)
The feed section will show the number of items you have specified in your WP Reading Settings section …
(Your feed will display as many recent items you have specified in the WordPress 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 feeds is whether to display your posts as full text, or just a summary …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’: ‘Full text’ or ‘Summary’)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content displays …
(Post excerpts can affect how your feeds appear)
We have written a detailed tutorial on Post excerpts here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, all that’s required to view a feed’s content is to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into an application that reads and translates feeds into readable content.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, go to a website whose content you want to subscribe to and search for a ’subscribe to feed’ icon or link …
(Look for a ‘subscribe’ button. Image source: http://www.yourcoffeeguru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of your feed into a feed reader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feed reader to view the content. Source: Feedreader)
Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds.
How To Add Feeds To WordPress
In the example below, we’ll add content from another website or blog to your WordPress site.
How To Add An RSS Feed To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you can easily display on your site the latest news and updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by adding 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 the WordPress sidebar navigation menu …
(Add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu)
copy the RSS feed URL from a website containing content that you want to add to your site …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Refresh your web browser. The content from the RSS feed should now display 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 Feed Content To WordPress Posts
Can content from an RSS feed be added to WordPress posts instead of your sidebar? Yes, it can!
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Search inside the Plugins section for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ screen)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for complete instructions, or contact us for assistance with plugin configuration.
Here are a number of auto blogging tools that let you automatically create posts using RSS feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico – WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use auto blogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from multiple RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all the feeds you import 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 an RSS feed importer and autoblogging WordPress plugin with extended functionality with premium extensions (add-ons).
For example, the Feed to Post add-on allows you to import RSS feeds directly into WP posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
The RSS Post Importer plugin lets you import, syndicate, curate, merge and display full-text feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) on your WordPress site.
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 WordPress Plugin)
With POWr RSS, you can combine and display content from multiple content using RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust sizing and spacing of feeds, use custom colors, fonts, backgrounds, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in every language.
The premium plugin edition contains a number of additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin)
The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to 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 Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, export posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to a new level.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin For WordPress)
FeedWordPress provides versatile syndication options 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.
FeedWordPress can be used to create aggregator sites, or bring together all your online activity into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog by WPMUDev – WordPress Plugin)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in your feed URL, give it a name of your choosing (for admin purposes) and select the blog that you want it to post to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages WP Plugin)
By default, WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed. Install RSS Includes Pages if you would like to include pages in your RSS feed and not just posts.
For more details, go here:
Using WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to displaying feeds of your posts, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of your post comments.
To inspect the comments in your feed, go to the ‘Meta’ widget area on your sidebar menu (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) and click on Comments RSS …
(WordPress Comments Feed)
Comments posted on your site by visitors and users will appear in the Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed entries displayed on Firefox web browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on which browser you use …
(Comments feed items viewed using a Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into a feedreader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feedreader to view the content. Source: Feedreader.com)
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 subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Individual Item Feeds
Being able to use an RSS feed for an individual post can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific items 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:
(Feed For Single Post Item)
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 a post address, WordPress will return the comments made on your post, not the content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Displaying Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site users may only be interested in subscribing to content from a particular category. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
If you publish content under multiple categories, WordPress allows you to easily create a separate RSS feed for each post category.
Just use the format below:
(WP post categories RSS feed format)
Copy the category link address …
(Select and copy your category URL …)
Add “feed” to the end of it …
(WordPress category feed format)
Your feed now only includes content assigned to this particular category …
(Category 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 Page
You can create an RSS feeds list that allows readers to subscribe only to specific categories, just like the larger authoritative sites do …
(Publish An RSS Feeds Page)
You can link an RSS icon to a category feed URL and then create a table or a list of all your feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button image. Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
For a detailed tutorial on creating tables in WordPress posts and pages, go here:
RSS Feeds – Additional Notes
You can customize your feeds in a number of ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows a number of feed configurations without code editing skills. Below are examples of some of the kinds of custom feeds you can create …
(Different Feed Formats You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
Here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the table above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Includes your latest posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – RSS feed that displays the latest comments published on your site
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed containing specific posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Includes the latest comments made on specific post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Displays latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/04/11/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/04/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Contains the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Displays the 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 more thing …
It’s a good idea to let your site users know that they can subscribe to your feeds. Place a subscribe buttons in a visible location …
(Promote your feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that online users will only syndicate your content if you provide your subscribers with very high-quality content that can add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add great content from other sites and get visitors to subscribe to your content online with RSS!)
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 🙂
RSS Resources:
- Feed Graphics – Visit FeedIcons or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS logo”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS graphics.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information and resources about RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – General information about the benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress.org/Feeds – Official WordPress documentation and information. Visit this site for additional information about WordPress feeds.
Congratulations! Now you know how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to add content from other websites and blogs to your site using their RSS feed.
Hopefully, now you 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 using WordPress for a business website please see our related posts section.
***
"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie