No matter what product or service your business sells, providing high-quality information on your site or blog is vitally important. For example, if you provide insurance services, it’s a good idea to include the latest information from government departments, such as news and updates on statistical findings, insurance tips, etc.
The problem with providing this kind of information, however, is that it takes a great deal of work and resources. You have to do a ton of data sifting, researching and organizing, fact-checking, content writing and editing (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually make sure that this information is 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 simpler way to keep your readers up-to-date with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the easiest way to provide your site visitors with great information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
Some Basic Information About RSS
- RSS, which, according to some stands for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly known as Really Simple Syndication. It can also be referred to as a “feed” or “web feed”.
- RSS lets content publishers automatically syndicate their content so that their users can read it without having to keep revisiting sites to check for updates.
- Feeds are often used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as blog post items, news headlines, videos, etc., which any user can choose to subscribe to.
- RSS feed content can be read using software programs called feed readers, or aggregators. Aggregators can be used to access content on all different kinds of topics and syndicate this content online.
- There are different feed formats and these can be read by different feed aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom Publishing Protocol) feeds and RDF feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure compatibility 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 sourced from multiple websites.
This comprehensive guide explains where your RSS feed is located, 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 using RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful and legitimate method used to share content online. Feeds provide a simple way for online users to keep up with the latest information posted on different sites.
First, let’s look at content syndication.
Global media publications rely on syndication to publish content from news sources all around the world.
Content syndication allows most leading online newspapers to deliver readers global stories and the most recent news headlines from around the globe without actually having to hire more news writers in every location around the world …
(Media publications use syndication to publish stories from other news agencies all around the world.)
Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing newsworthy content with other sites. Digital publishing agencies syndicate stories using feeds …
(Digital news publishing agencies syndicate their news stories using feeds)
Most websites actually want you to syndicate their content. Syndicating content not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it also drives visitors back to the site that originally published the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Major content sites include 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”, “huffington post rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most digital news publishers and leading online media publications will include an RSS feed section. Image Source: Sydney Morning Herald RSS )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section brings up a list of RSS feeds for different content topics on the site …
(RSS feeds section. Image Source: nytimes.com)
These RSS feeds give readers access to different sections of the site (e.g. business news, entertainment news, editorials, etc.)
A feed list can also include further feed subdirectories …
(RSS Feed section. Image Source: Los Angeles Times)
Note: An RSS feed is only a URL. All you need to do to use RSS feeds is copy the URLs and paste these into a program that can translate the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Content Syndication
Syndicating someone else’s content on your website has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s website additional exposure online and helps your site by freeing you up from having to create this content …
(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Website And Yours!)
While adding an RSS feed 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 use YOUR content.
When other sites syndicate your RSS feed, this gives you the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Get visitors to syndicate your feed … it will help to increase your traffic!)
Overview Of The WordPress Feed
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing other online users to syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on the 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 be displayed in your navigation menu, scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(WordPress Meta section)
2) You can also find built-in links or buttons on certain WordPress themes that let your visitors copy your RSS feed.
In the screenshot below, for example, a visitor can simply copy the site’s 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 websites and again, depending on your theme, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Link To Us, Follow, or Share toolbar section …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Stay In Touch, Social Share, or Link To Us section)
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 WP installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up your RSS page …
(RSS feed content seen on a Firefox browser)
Note that your feed items will display differently depending on the browser you are using …
(Feed items displayed using a Google Chrome web browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
To specify how many items you would like to show in your Feeds page, go to your Reading Settings section and select the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(Reading Settings – Syndication feed items)
The feed will show as many recent items you have specified section …
(The 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
Another setting in the Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display your posts as full text, or a summary …
(Settings – Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’: ‘Full text’ or ‘Summary’)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts affect how content in your feeds appear)
To learn more about WordPress Post excerpts, refer to this tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, to view a feed’s content, you need 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, go to a website or blog and look for their RSS feed button …
(Look for an RSS feed link. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL)
If you want, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the URL of your feed into a feed reader …
(Paste the URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the content. Source: Feedreader)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS feeds and convert these into readable content for humans.
Adding Feeds To Your WordPress Site
In the example below, we’ll add content from another website or blog’s RSS feeds to your site.
Adding Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you operate in, you could easily display on your site the latest content from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing content from their feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, Facebook comments, 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 an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar)
First, Go to a website that publishes content that you would like to display on your sidebar and copy its RSS feed …
(Copy the feed URL)
Next, paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(Widgets Screen – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content from the RSS feed can now be seen on the sidebar (or wherever the RSS widget has been added) …
(RSS Feed Content Added To WP Sidebar Menu)
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 WordPress Posts
Can content from an RSS feed be added to WordPress posts? It sure can!
You can do this using plugins. Search inside the ’Add Plugins’ section (Plugins > Add New) for RSS Post, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ section – RSS plugins for WordPress)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us for assistance configuring plugins.
Here are a number of autoblogging tools that let you automatically add new using feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin For WordPress)
WPeMatico is an auto blogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds of your choice.
You can manage all the feeds you import and organize feeds into campaigns and categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator WordPress Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is an 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 add-on for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin lets you autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into your posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer WP Plugin)
RSS Post Importer can be used to syndicate, import, curate, merge and display full-text feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) on your WordPress blog.
RSS Post Importer fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full article content of each item in your feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin)
With POWr RSS Feed, you can combine and display content from various RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust sizing and spacing of feeds, use custom fonts, colors, borders, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on all computers, tablets, and phones and supports text in every language.
The premium plugin version contains many additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, accept or reject posts, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin For WordPress)
The WP Pipes plugin is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.
This plugin provides loads of powerful features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter, export your posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress WP Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides 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.
You can use this plugin to create aggregator site (sites that combine and display content from different sources), or bring together all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Twitter, YouTube, or other online services, 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, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Just 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
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types)
The RSS Includes Pages plugin modifies your RSS feeds to include pages and not just posts.
For more details, go here:
WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WordPress Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of your post comments in addition to displaying RSS feeds of your latest posts.
You can see these by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ widget (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) …
(Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors and users will appear in the Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed items displayed on a Firefox web browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on which web browser you use …
(Comments feed entries as seen on Google Chrome)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image 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 website has been installed in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Accessing Individual Item Feeds
Being able to create an RSS feed for single posts 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 making an RSS feed for a single post item is shown below:
(Individual Post 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 a post address, WordPress will return the comments left on that post, not the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Displaying Category RSS Feeds
Some your site users may only want to subscribe to content from one or two post categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
WordPress allows you to create category feeds.
All you need to do is use the format below:
(Format for WordPress category feed)
Copy the category link address …
(Copy the selected category URL …)
Now, add “feed” to the end of it …
(Format for WordPress category RSS feed)
The RSS feed will now only display content posted in 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 – Set Up A Directory Of RSS Feeds For Subscribers
You can provide your own page of feeds that allows readers to subscribe to specific content …
(Publish Your Own Page Of Feeds)
Link an RSS button graphic like the one shown below to the URL of your feed and then create a table or a list of your feeds on a separate page …
(RSS icon. Image Source: public-domain-photos.com)
To learn more about inserting tables into WordPress pages and posts, go here:
WordPress RSS – Notes
RSS 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 various feed formats without editing code. Here are some examples of custom feeds you can create …
(WordPress RSS – Feed Types)
For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the diagram above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Feed that displays your latest posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Displays the latest comments posted on your site
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed that includes single items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Feed that contains the latest comments made on a post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Contains the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/09/30/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Includes the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/03/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Contains the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Displays latest entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Feed that contains latest post 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 promote your RSS feed. Place a ’subscribe to RSS’ links somewhere visible …
(Promote your feeds!)
Keep in mind that online users will only subscribe to your content if you publish useful content that educates, engages, and entertains. In other words, focus on providing your visitors with high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add someone else’s content and get other sites 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 feed 🙂
RSS Resources:
- Feed Graphics – Visit Feedicons or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss icon”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable Free RSS images.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization with three primary duties: publishing the RSS specification, providing guidance to developers who create RSS applications and furthering the understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – General information about the benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex – Official WordPress documentation and reference repository. Go here for additional information about using RSS feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to display content from other websites and blogs on your site via RSS.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To learn more about using the WordPress CMS platform please see our related posts section.
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