No matter what service or product your business sells, you need to provide high-quality information on your site or blog. For example, if your business provides accounting services, it’s not a bad idea to provide users with useful information from the taxation office, such as news and updates on tax rulings, small business tax tips, etc.
To create and publish this kind of information, however, requires a great deal of effort and expertise. You have to filter through, gather, and organize a lot of data, check your facts, write and edit 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 completely beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a much simpler way to provide your users with up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the easiest way to provide your readers with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS Made Simple
- RSS, which, according to some experts stands for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly known now as Really Simple Syndication. It is also often called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- When users subscribe to an RSS feed, they no longer have to manually visit and check the website for updated content. Instead, their web browser will constantly monitor the site and automatically keep subscribers up-to-date.
- RSS feeds are also used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog posts, news, video lists, etc., to which any user can choose to subscribe.
- You can read an RSS feed using software called RSS feed readers, or feed aggregators. Feed readers can be used to find new content published on websites and syndicate this content to many online properties.
- There are different kinds of feeds, read by different feedreaders. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom Publishing Protocol) 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 machines and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also allow you to combine several RSS feeds to display news and updates from multiple sources.
In this comprehensive article, we will explain where your RSS feed is located, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to display content from other sites on your site using their RSS feed.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful method used for sharing content online. Feeds provide web users with a simple and easy way to stay up-to-date with the latest information published on different websites.
First, let’s take a look at content syndication.
Global media and online newspapers use syndication to publish stories from other news agencies all around the world.
Syndication allows digital content agencies to deliver readers stories from around the planet without having to employ more news reporters and content writers in every place around the world …
(Global media publications rely on syndication to publish stories from other news agencies around the planet.)
Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing information. online media publications syndicate information using news feeds …
(Content syndication is used by content publishers to share newsworthy content with other news publications)
Most sites actually want you to syndicate their content. Syndicating content not only allows valuable information to be shared, but it can also drive visitors back to the site that originally created theoriginally created and published the content being syndicated. This provides websites with additional opportunities to generate new web visitors.
Many news reporting agencies and major sites contain 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”, “international herald tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many news reporting agencies and major online media publications will include a feed section. Image: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link will bring up a list of different RSS feed sections of the site …
(RSS feeds section. Image Source: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
These feed items give you access to information from different areas of the site (e.g. business news, travel news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
A feed directory can also contain further feed subdirectories …
(RSS Feed section. Image: Los Angeles Times RSS)
Note: An RSS feed is simply a URL. To use feeds, all you have to do is to copy the URLs and paste these into an application that can translate the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Using Feeds – Benefits
Syndicating someone else’s content on your website has some obvious benefits. It not only helps someone else’s content, it also adds value to your site without you having to create the content …
(The Benefits Of Content Syndication)
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 a great idea to try and get other websites to use your content.
When other websites syndicate your feed, this gives your business the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive more web traffic …
(Consider trying to get other website owners to syndicate content using your feed … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)
WordPress Feed – About
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing other online users to easily syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on your WordPress theme, there are a number of ways to access the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to be displayed on the sidebar or footer menu, scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(WordPress Meta section – Entries RSS)
2) You can also find links and buttons on certain WordPress themes that let your visitors copy your RSS 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 some websites and again, depending on the theme you have installed, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Link To Us, Share, or Follow Us fixed, slide-out, or floating toolbar …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Link To Us, Share, or Subscribe toolbar)
4) You can also view your feed by simply 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 installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up a page containing your WordPress RSS …
(RSS feed entries as seen on Firefox)
Note that your feed page will display differently depending on which web browser you are using …
(RSS content displayed with a Chrome browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
You can specify how many posts you want to show in your RSS Feed page in the Reading Settings section. Type the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(Reading Settings – Syndication items)
Your feed will show the number of items you have specified section …
(Your feed will show the number of posts as you have specified in the WP Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in your Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display posts in the feed as full text, or as 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 displays …
(Post excerpts can affect how a feed displays)
To learn more about WordPress Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, all that’s required to view the content of a feed is to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that reads and translates feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, go to a website or blog and search for their RSS feed section using any of the methods described earlier …
(Look for an RSS feed section. Image source: http://www.yourcoffeeguru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL to the clipboard)
If you want, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste the URL of your feed into a feed reader to view the content. Source: Feedreader)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds and convert these into readable content.
Adding RSS Feeds To WordPress
In the example below, we’ll add content sourced from another website or blog to yours.
How To Add An RSS Feed To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is in, you could easily add to your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply importing their RSS feed. You can use RSS feeds to 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 your sidebar …
(Add content from an RSS feed to your sidebar)
First, Go to a site containing content that you would like to add to your site and copy the RSS feed …
(Copy your feed URL)
Next, paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Section – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Load your site in your web browser. The content from the RSS feed will now show in your 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 Posts
Can content from an RSS feed be added to WordPress posts instead of the sidebar? Yes, it can!
You can easily do this using plugins. Search on the WordPress plugin directory for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ screen)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for setup instructions, or contact us for help configuring plugins.
Here are a few plugins that you can use to curate and add content from RSS feeds to your posts:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin For WordPress)
WPeMatico is an autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds of your choice.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange feeds into categories and campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin For WordPress)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin that offers 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 WordPress posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer – WordPress Plugin)
RSS Post Importer allows you to syndicate, import, curate, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress website or blog.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the entire content of each feed item as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)
With POWr RSS, you can combine and display content from various content using RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust feed size and spacing, use custom fonts, colors, backgrounds, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in every language.
The premium edition of this plugin contains many additional features.
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 functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook, export WordPress posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a flexible Atom/RSS syndication plugin for WordPress.
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.
FeedWordPress can be used to create aggregator sites, or display all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Twitter, Flickr, or other online services, in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog Plugin For WordPress)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in your feed URL, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select the blog that you want it to post to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types)
Install RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types if you want to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed in addition to posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).
For more details, go here:
Using RSS – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of your latest post comments in addition to giving online users access to RSS feeds of your posts.
To see your comments feed, locate 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 can be seen in the Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items seen using Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on the browser you use …
(RSS comments feed content seen on Google Chrome)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your comments feed into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image: 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 site is located in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Accessing RSS Feeds For Single Posts
Being able to display an RSS feed for a single post 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 creating an RSS feed for a specific post is shown below:
(Individual Post RSS Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the URI of your post, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of a post, WordPress will return the comments associated with that post, not actual content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Displaying Category Feeds
Some your site users may only want to syndicate content from a specific category. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
With WordPress, you can create category feeds.
All you need to do is use the format below:
(WordPress category RSS feed format)
Copy the category link address …
(Copy your category link address …)
Append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(Format for WP category feed)
Your feed now only contains content posted in that category …
(Category-specific 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 Directory Of RSS Feeds For Subscribers
You can provide your own list of feeds that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in specific categories, just like large authoritative sites …
(Provide Your Own RSS Feeds List)
All you need to do is link an image to a feed URL and then create a table or a list of your feeds on a new page …
(RSS button. Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
We have written a detailed tutorial about adding tables to WordPress here:
RSS – Notes
RSS feeds can be customized in various different ways, such as adding videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows you to configure several feed types that do not require messing with code. Here are some examples of feeds you can display …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
Here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the table above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Includes your latest post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Feed that displays the latest comments published on your site
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed containing an individual post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Includes the latest comments made on a single post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – RSS feed containing the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/04/15/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/04/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Feed containing the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Includes the latest post entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Contains the latest posts 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. Make sure you place a ’subscribe to RSS’ button somewhere visible …
(Promote your RSS feeds!)
Finally, keep in mind that other sites will only want to subscribe to your content if you provide your visitors with very high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add someone else’s content and get other users to subscribe to your content 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:
- RSS Feed Icons – Visit sites like Feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss buttons”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS images and icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization responsible for publishing RSS specifications, providing guidance to developers who create RSS applications and furthering the understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about the benefits of using RSS.
- WordPress Codex: WordPress Feeds – WordPress software documentation and reference site. Go here to learn more about WordPress RSS feeds.
Congratulations! Now you know how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to display someone else’s content on your site using RSS.
Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you expand your business online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.
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