No matter what service or product you sell, providing high-value information on your site or blog is vitally important. For example, if you provide accounting or financial planning services, it’s a good idea to include the latest information from the taxation office, such as news and updates on tax rulings, small business tax deductions, etc.
The problem with providing this kind of information, however, is that it is really time-consuming. You have to do a lot of data sifting, researching and organizing, fact-checking, writing and editing content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually ensure that this information is up-to-date. As you can imagine, this is not only 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 keep your site readers up-to-date with your information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - The easiest way to provide your readers with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – What Is It?
- RSS, which, according to some experts is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly referred to now as Really Simple Syndication. It is often referred to as a “feed” or “news feed”.
- RSS allows content publishers to 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 frequently updated information, such as new blog post items, news headlines, audio lists, etc., which users can choose to subscribe to.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is a structured XML (Extensible Markup Language) document that includes full or summarized text along with metadata like published date, 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 syndicate their web content automatically.
- Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different feed aggregators. 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 compatibility with different devices, feed readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also allow you to combine multiple RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates from various sources.
This guide explains where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to display someone else’s content on your site via RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful and legitimate method used for sharing content online. Feeds provide a simple and easy way for web users to receive the latest information posted on websites they are interested in.
First, let’s look at content syndication.
Media publications use syndication to publish stories from content sources all around the world.
Syndication allows leading online newspapers to deliver readers stories on all kinds of topics as well as news from all over the planet without having to post more news writers everywhere in the world …
(Global media publications rely on syndication to publish newsworthy content from news sources around the globe.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing content with other sites. online media publications syndicate their stories using feeds …
(News reporting agencies syndicate content using feeds)
Most websites actually would like you to share their content. Syndicating content not only allows great information to be shared, but it also sends visitors back to the site that published the original content being syndicated. This provides websites with new opportunities to generate significant web visitors.
Most online newspapers and major content sites will have 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”, “texas tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most online newspapers and leading online media publications contain a feed section. Image: SMH )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link will bring up a list of RSS feeds for different content topics on the site …
(RSS feeds list. Image Source: nytimes.com)
These RSS feed items let you source content from different areas of the website (e.g. technology news, entertainment news, editorials, etc.)
Feed sections can also include further subcategory feeds …
(A feed directory can also include subcategories. Image: LA Times RSS)
Note: An RSS feed is simply a URL. To use an RSS feed, all that’s required is to copy the URL and paste it into an application that can process the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Using Feeds
Syndicating someone else’s content on your site has some obvious benefits. It not only helps someone else’s business, it also helps you by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(Syndicating Content Has Many Benefits!)
While adding an RSS 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 sites to use your content.
When other sites syndicate your content, this gives your business the opportunity to get increased exposure online and drive new visitors …
(Get other online users to syndicate content using your feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress RSS Feed – About
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing other online users to syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on which theme you have installed, there are a few ways to access the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget on the sidebar …
(The feed page will show the number of items 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 feeds is whether to display your posts as full text, or just a summary …
(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 can affect how content in your feeds will display)
If you need help WordPress Post excerpts, see this step-by-step tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, all that’s required to view a feed’s content is to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that can translate feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s see how this works.
First, find a website whose content you want to syndicate and look for their RSS feed button …
(Search for a ‘subscribe’ link. 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 what the feed contains by pasting the URL of your feed into a feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your feed into a feed reader to view the content. Image Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS feeds and convert these into readable content for humans.
How To Add Feeds To Your WP Site
Let’s show you how to add content from other website’s RSS feeds to your site.
How To Add Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you could display on your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing content from their RSS feed. You can use feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, social media comments, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu …
(Let’s add an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation area)
copy the RSS feed URL from a site containing content that you would like to add to your sidebar to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL to the clipboard)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(RSS Widget)
To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:
Refresh your web browser. The content from the RSS feed will now show on the sidebar …
(RSS Feed Content Added To 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:
How To Add Feeds 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. Search inside your Plugins admin section for RSS Post, RSS feed to post, etc.
(RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us if you need 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 WP Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from specific 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 WordPress Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin with a number of premium add-ons for additional functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on lets you add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into your 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 site.
The plugin fetches an RSS feed and publishes the entire content of each feed item as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed)
With POWr RSS, you can combine and display content from a number of different content using RSS feeds.
This plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust feed size and spacing, use custom colors, backgrounds, fonts, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on all computers, tablets, and phones and supports text in any language.
The premium version of this plugin contains many additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes)
The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.
This plugin provides loads of functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, export your posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin For WordPress)
FeedWordPress is a simple and flexible Atom/RSS syndication plugin for WordPress content.
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 site (sites that bring together content from many different sources), or display all your online activity in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog by WPMUDev)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in your feed URL, give your feed a name (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 and Custom Post Types – WordPress Plugin)
By default, WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed. You can use a plugin like RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types if you want to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of your latest post comments in addition to displaying feeds of your posts.
You can see this feed by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ widget of your sidebar menu (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) …
(WordPress Comments Feed)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors and users can be seen in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items as seen with a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on the web browser you are using …
(RSS comments feed content viewed with Google Chrome)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into a feedreader …
(Paste your URL of your comments feed into a feed reader 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 WordPress installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Accessing Feeds For Individual Post Items
Being able to use 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 making an RSS feed for specific posts is shown below:
(Single Post RSS Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the post URL, and add “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post Feed)
Note: By default, if you only add “/feed” to the end of your post URL, WordPress will return the comments for that post, not actual content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Displaying Post Category Feeds
Some your site users may only want to syndicate content from a particular category. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
If your site publishes content under different categories, WordPress allows you to easily offer users a separate feed for each category.
All you have to do is use the format shown below:
(Format for WP category RSS feed)
Copy the selected category link address …
(Copy the selected category link address to your clipboard …)
Now, append “feed” to the end of it …
(WP category RSS feed format)
The feed will now only display content assigned to this 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 Your Own RSS Feeds Page
You can set up a feeds page that allows readers to subscribe only to content in the categories that interest them …
(Provide Your Own Page Of Feeds For Your Subscribers)
You can link an icon like the one shown below to a category feed and then create a table or a list of all your feeds on a new page …
(RSS icon. Source: public-domain-photos.com)
To learn more about adding tables to WordPress posts, go here:
RSS Feeds – Notes
Feeds can be customized in several ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows you to configure a number of feed formats that do not require messing with code. Below are examples of some of the kinds of feed types you can use and how to structure your feeds …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – RSS feed that includes your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Includes the latest comments published on your website or blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed that contains individual post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Includes the latest comments made on individual posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Contains the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/06/04/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Includes the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/09/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: RSS feed containing latest post entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: RSS feed displaying latest entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One more thing …
Remember to promote your feed. Make sure you place your subscribe link in a visible location …
(Remember to promote your feeds!)
Finally, keep in mind that other sites will only subscribe to your content if you publish great content. In other words, focus on providing your subscribers with high-quality information that will add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Add great content to your site and get other sites to subscribe to your content online using WordPress and 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 🙂
Resources:
- RSS Feed Graphics – Visit Feedicons or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “RSS logo”, etc.) for sites that contain downloadable Free RSS graphics.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization responsible for publishing the RSS specification, providing guidance to developers who create RSS applications and helping to further the understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – Learn more about the history and benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex – WordPress documentation site. 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 RSS feeds.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you grow your business online. To read more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website please click on links to visit other great articles and tutorials we have published on this site.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)