No matter what your business sells or what industry you belong to, it’s important to provide quality information on your site or blog. For example, if you provide insurance services, it’s not a bad idea to include useful information from government departments, such as news and updates on statistical research, insurance advice, etc.
To create and publish this type of information, however, is really time-consuming. You have to sort through, research, and organize a lot of data, check your facts, write and edit content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually make sure that this information is kept 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 entirely beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a simpler way to regularly provide your readers with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - One of the easiest ways to provide your site readers with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – What You Need To Know
- RSS, which, according to some definitions is short for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly referred to as Really Simple Syndication. It it is also called a “feed” or “news feed”.
- Once users subscribe to an RSS feed, they no longer have to physically check the source website for updated content. Instead, their web browser will continually monitor the feed and automatically keep subscribers updated.
- RSS feeds are typically used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog entries, news headlines, audio lists, etc., to which users can then subscribe.
- You can view the content of RSS feeds with a software-based tool called a feed reader, or aggregator. Feed readers are used to access content on all kinds of topics and syndicate this content (and any updates made to the content) to online properties.
- Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom (also called AtomPub or APP 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 devices, readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also let you combine multiple RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates sourced from many websites.
This article explains where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, 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 very powerful and legitimate way of sharing web content. RSS Feeds provide online users with a simple and easy way to keep up with the latest information posted on websites and blogs they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at how content syndication is used.
Global media and online newspapers rely on syndication to publish newsworthy content from news sources around the world.
Content syndication allows leading digital content agencies to deliver readers fresh news and stories of general interest from around the globe without having to hire and set up more news writers everywhere around the world …
(Global media publications rely on syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies around the planet.)
Syndication is used to share information legitimately. Digital content publishing agencies syndicate their newsworthy content using news feeds …
(Content syndication is used by digital news agencies to share content with other publications)
Most websites actually would like you to syndicate their content. Syndicating content not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it also sends visitors back to the site that originally published the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Most digital agencies and major sites provide links to a 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”, “texas tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most news reporting agencies and major sites include a feed section. Image: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link will bring up a directory of different RSS feed sections …
(RSS feeds section. Source: New York Times RSS)
Each of these RSS feeds lets you access content from different sections of the site (e.g. business news, sports news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain feed subdirectories …
(An RSS directory can also include subcategory feeds. Source: LA Times RSS)
Note: An RSS feed is simply a URL. All you need to do to use the feed is copy the URL and paste it into a program that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Content Syndication – Benefits
Adding someone else’s content to your site has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s website additional exposure online and adds value to your site without you having to create the content …
(Content Syndication 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 worth keeping in mind that there are benefits in getting other sites to use your content.
When other websites syndicate your RSS feed, this gives your business the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive new web traffic …
(Look for ways to get visitors to syndicate content using your feed … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)
WordPress RSS
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing other online users to syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on your theme, there are a few ways to access the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget on your navigation menu …
(The feed page will show the number of posts as you have specified in your Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
The other setting in your WP Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display posts as full text, or a summary …
(Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts can affect how your feed content appears)
If you need help WordPress Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, to view the content of an RSDS feed, you need to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that can read and translate feeds into readable content.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, find a website whose content you want to subscribe to and search for a ‘subscribe’ button using any of the methods described earlier …
(Search for a ’subscribe to feed’ link. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL to the clipboard)
If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into a feedreader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image: Feedreader)
Like feed readers, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS feeds and convert these into readable content.
How To Add A Feed To Your WordPress Site
In the example below, we’ll add content sourced from another site to your site.
Adding An RSS Feed To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you can display on your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by adding content from their feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, social media updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to your sidebar …
(Let’s add an RSS feed to your sidebar)
copy the feed URL from a website or blog that publishes content that you would like to add to your site to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL to your clipboard)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Panel – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Load your site in your web browser. The content should display on your sidebar …
(RSS Feed Added To Sidebar)
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 RSS Feeds To Your Posts
Can content from an RSS feed be added to a post instead of the sidebar? It sure can!
You can do this using WordPress plugins. Search on the WordPress plugin directory for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ search results)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for complete instructions, or contact us for help configuring plugins.
The plugins listed below can be used to feed content to posts, or “autoblog” (An auto blog is a blog with content that is automatically gathered and compiled from RSS feeds):
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico – WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an autoblogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds that you choose.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and arrange feeds according to categories and campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and autoblogging plugin for WordPress that offers premium add-ons for extended functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin lets you autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into WordPress posts.
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 RSS feeds on your WordPress website or blog.
The plugin will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full content of each feed item as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed WP Plugin)
POWr RSS allows you to combine content from various content using RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS Feed plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust feed size and spacing, use custom colors, fonts, borders, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in every language.
The premium edition of this plugin contains many additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, manually accept or reject posts, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes WP Plugin)
WP Pipes is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.
This plugin provides loads of 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 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 display posts from multiple sources), or display all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, LinkedIn, YouTube, or other online services, in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog by WPMUDev)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Simply 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 and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types)
Use a plugin like RSS Includes Pages 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:
Using RSS – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress makes available RSS feeds of the latest comments posted on your site in addition to making RSS feeds of your latest posts available to online users.
To inspect your comments feed, go to the ‘Meta’ widget on your sidebar menu (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) and click on Comments RSS …
(Comments Feed)
Comments posted on your site by visitors and users will appear in your Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed content viewed on Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on which browser you use …
(RSS comments feed content seen using a Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into a feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your comments feed into a feedreader to view the 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 or blog is located in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Creating Specific Post Feeds
Being able to create an RSS feed for specific 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 displaying an RSS feed for individual post items is shown below:
(Specific Post Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the web address of your post, and add “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only add “/feed” to the end of the post, WordPress will return the comments left on your post, not actual post content itself.
Tip #3 – Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only want to subscribe to content from a particular post category. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
With WordPress, you can create category feeds.
Just use the format shown below:
(Use this format for WordPress post categories feed)
Copy the category link address to your clipboard …
(Select and copy your category link address …)
Now, add “feed” to the end of it …
(WordPress post categories feed format)
The RSS feed now only includes content assigned to that 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 Your Own RSS Feeds Page
You can create your own RSS feeds directory that allows your readers to subscribe to specific categories …
(Create An RSS Feeds List)
Link an icon to the URL of your category feed and then create a table or a list of all your feeds on a new page …
(RSS image. Image: public-domain-photos.com)
We have written a detailed tutorial about creating tables in WordPress posts here:
RSS Feeds – Additional Notes
You can customize your RSS in a number of ways, such as adding images and videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows several RSS feed configurations without editing code. Here are some examples of feeds you can use …
(WordPress RSS – Custom Feeds)
For your convenience, here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – displays your latest post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Displays the latest comments left on your website or blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed for a specific post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Displays the latest comments made on specific items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/09/10/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – RSS feed displaying latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/07/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – RSS feed displaying the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Includes the latest posts for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Displays latest 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 feed. Make sure you place a ’subscribe to RSS’ button or link somewhere visible …
(Promote your feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that online users will only syndicate your content if you provide your subscribers with very 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 subscribe to your content using RSS feeds!)
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 RSS feed 🙂
Additional RSS Resources:
- RSS Feed Graphics – Visit a site like www.feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “rss images”, etc.) for sites that contain downloadable RSS graphic elements.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information and resources about RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – General information about the history and benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex – WordPress software documentation. Visit this site to learn more about RSS feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to add someone else’s content to your site via RSS.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you grow your business online. To read more about using the WP platform please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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