No matter what your business provides or what industry you belong to, you need to provide high-quality information on your site or blog that better educates, informs, or improves engagement with your visitors. For example, if your business provides insurance services, it’s a good idea to include information from government departments, such as news or updates on statistical findings, insurance tips, etc.
The problem with creating this type of information, however, is that it is very time-consuming. You have to do a ton of data sorting, researching and organizing, checking the accuracy of your facts, content writing and editing (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually ensure 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 beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is a much simpler way to keep your site readers up-to-date with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is one of the simplest ways to provide your subscribers with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
Some Basic Information About RSS
- RSS stands for Rich Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred to, Really Simple Syndication. It is often called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- RSS lets content publishers automatically syndicate their content to save users time from having to keep revisiting their site to check for updates.
- RSS feeds are typically used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog posts, news headlines, audios, etc., to which users can choose to subscribe.
- RSS feed content can be read using a program called a feedreader, or feed aggregator. Feedreaders can be used to access new content published on websites and syndicate this content (and any updates made to this content) to various online properties.
- There are different kinds of feeds, read by different feed aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom Publishing Protocol) feeds and 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 allow you to combine many RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates sourced from many websites.
In this guide, you are going to learn where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, and how to display content from other sites on your site via RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a very powerful (and legitimate) way of sharing content online. RSS Feeds provide a simple way for online users to keep up with the latest information published on websites they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at syndication.
Many digital content agencies use syndication to publish stories from news sources around the world.
Syndication allows news reporting agencies to deliver readers stories and news from all over the globe without having to send more content writers all around the world …
(Media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish newsworthy items from news sources around the world.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing newsworthy content with other sites. online media publications syndicate their stories using news feeds …
(Online newspapers syndicate their information using news feeds)
Most sites actually would like you to share their information. Syndicating content not only allows information to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the site that originally created theoriginally created and published the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Most online newspapers will contain a feed section (look for links in their navigation menu that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “daily telegraph rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most online newspapers contain an RSS feed section. Image Source: Sydney Morning Herald )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section brings up a list of different RSS feeds …
(RSS feeds directory. Source: nytimes.com)
These RSS feeds give readers access to information from different areas of the website (e.g. technology news, arts news, science news, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain further subcategory feeds …
(Feed sections can also contain subcategories. Image Source: latimes.com)
Note: A feed is only a URL. All that’s required to use an RSS feed is to copy the URL and paste it into software that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Using RSS Feeds – Benefits
Adding content from someone else’s website or blog on your site has some obvious benefits. It gives additional exposure online to someone else’s website and adds value to your site without you having to create this content …
(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Website And Yours!)
While adding feeds 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 there are benefits in getting other sites to use YOUR content.
When other websites syndicate your feed, you have the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Get other website owners to syndicate your feed … it will help to increase your web traffic!)
Overview Of The WordPress RSS
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on your WP theme, there are a number of ways to get your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget in your navigation menu …
(Your feed will show as many recent posts as you have specified in the WP Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
The other setting in the Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display your posts as full text, or just a summary …
(Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content displays …
(Post excerpts affect how a feed displays)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using Post excerpts in WordPress here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, 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 can read and translate feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s take a look at how this works.
First, find a website or blog and search for an RSS feed icon using any of the methods described earlier …
(Look for a ‘subscribe’ 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 feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image: Feedreader)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds.
Adding Feeds To Your WordPress Site
In the example below, we are going to add RSS content from another website to yours.
How To Add A Feed To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you can 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 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 content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation area …
(Let’s add an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar area)
copy the RSS feed URL from a site that publishes content that you want to add to your site …
(Copy the feed URL)
Next, paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(Widgets Screen – RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Load your site in your browser. The content will now display in your sidebar (or wherever the RSS widget has been placed) …
(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:
Adding Feed Content To Your Posts
Can content from an RSS feed be added to a post? Yes, it can!
You can do this using plugins. Just search inside your Plugins admin section (Plugins > Add New) for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ section)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for complete instructions, or contact us if you need help configuring plugins.
Here are some autoblogging tools that allow you to create new with feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds that you specify.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange them according to 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 a number of premium add-ons for additional functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension lets you add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into your WordPress posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer)
RSS Post Importer can be used to syndicate, import, curate, merge and display full text 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 Plugin For WordPress)
The POWr RSS Feed plugin automatically combines and displays content from multiple RSS feeds.
This plugin also lets you display videos, images, and articles, adjust feed priority, use custom colors, borders, fonts, 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 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 many other sources.
This plugin provides features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter, export WordPress posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress – WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides flexible syndication 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 bring together posts from many different sources), or bring together all your online activity into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog by WPMUDev Plugin For WordPress)
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, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select a blog that you want it to post to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types Plugin For WordPress)
Install a plugin like RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed and not just posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).
For more details, go here:
WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WordPress Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to displaying feeds of your latest posts, WordPress also displays RSS feeds of your post comments.
You can view these by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ widget area …
(WordPress Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors will appear in your Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed items displayed with Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on the web browser you use …
(Comments feed items displayed on Google Chrome)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste your feed URL 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 WP installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Displaying Single Item Feeds
Being able to display an RSS feed for a specific post 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 specific post item is shown below:
(RSS Feed For Single Post Item)
To create the above feed, copy the URI of your post, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of a post, WordPress will return the comments left on that post, not the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Category Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in syndicating content from specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
WordPress allows you to create category feeds.
All you need to do is use the format shown below:
(WordPress category RSS feed format)
Select and copy the category link address …
(Copy your category link address …)
Append “feed” to the end of it …
(Feed format for post categories)
Your RSS feed now only contains content published in that category …
(Category 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 List Of Feeds For Visitors
You can publish your own list of RSS feeds that allows your readers to subscribe to specific content, just like the larger websites do …
(Provide Your Own Directory Of Feeds For Subscribers)
You can also link an RSS button image to the URL of your feed and then create a table or a list of all category feeds on a new page …
(RSS graphic. Source: public-domain-photos.com)
For a detailed tutorial about creating tables in WordPress posts, go here:
RSS Feeds – Notes
RSS feeds can be customized in several different ways, such as adding videos and images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows various feed configurations without messing with code. For example, the table below shows some of the kinds of custom feeds you can create …
(Different Feed Formats You Can Create With WordPress RSS)
Below are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Includes your latest entries
- 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 displays a post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Contains the latest comments made on a post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – RSS feed that displays latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/11/26/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/03/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Feed containing latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Includes the latest entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: RSS feed containing the latest posts for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One more thing …
Remember to let visitors know that they can subscribe to your RSS feeds. Make sure you place your subscribe button or link somewhere visible …
(Encourage visitors to syndicate your feeds!)
Keep in mind that other website owners will only want to syndicate your content if you provide great content. In other words, focus on providing your subscribers with high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Easily add content to your site and get other users to syndicate your content with 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 feed 🙂
RSS – Resources:
- RSS Icons – Visit FeedIcons.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS logo”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable 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 broadening the public understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex – WordPress documentation repository. Go here for additional information about feeds in WordPress.
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 via RSS feeds.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you expand your business online. To learn more about using WordPress please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum