No matter what what industry you are in, it’s vitally important to provide high-value information on your site or blog that better educates, informs, and engages your readers. For example, if you provide accounting or financial planning services, it’s not a bad idea to provide users with information from the taxation office, such as news and updates on tax rulings, small business tax deductions, etc.
To create and publish this type of information, however, requires an enormous amount of effort and expertise. You have to do a ton of information sifting, researching and organizing, fact-checking, content writing and editing (or hire someone to do this for you), and then ensure that this information is continually up-to-date. As you can imagine, this not only involves a huge amount of work but most of the information you are dealing with is entirely beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a much simpler way to keep your readers up-to-date with your information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the easiest way to provide your site visitors with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Is RSS?
- RSS, which, according to some is short for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly known now as Really Simple Syndication. It is also often called a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
- RSS allows content publishers to automatically syndicate their content to save users time from having to keep revisiting their site to check for updates.
- RSS feeds are also used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as new blog entries, news, audios, etc., which other users can choose to subscribe to.
- You can view an RSS feed using software-based programs called RSS feed readers, or feed aggregators. Feedreaders can be used to find content on all kinds of topics and distribute this content online.
- There are different kinds of feeds, read by different feed aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom 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 machines and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also allow you to combine multiple RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates from various sources.
In this guide, 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 add content from other websites and blogs to your site using RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful and legitimate method used to share content online. RSS Feeds provide a way for web users to receive the latest information posted on websites they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at syndication.
News reporting agencies and many popular online publications rely on content syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies around the world.
Content syndication allows most leading digital publishers to deliver readers stories from all around the planet without actually having to employ additional staff and writers everywhere in the world …
(Global media publications use content syndication to publish newsworthy items from other news agencies around the world.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing content. Online newspapers syndicate their stories using feeds …
(Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing content)
Most sites actually want you to syndicate their content. Content syndication not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it also drives visitors back to the original site that published the content being syndicated. This creates links that can drive traffic back to their site.
Most news reporting agencies include a feed section (look for links in their navigation section that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “chicago tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many online newspapers provide links to a feed section. Source: Sydney Morning Herald )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link will bring up a directory of different RSS feed sections of the site …
(RSS directory. Image: nytimes.com)
gives you access to content from different sections of the site (e.g. technology news, sports news, editorials, etc.)
An RSS list can also contain subcategory feeds …
(An RSS list can also contain subcategories. Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: An RSS feed is simply a URL. To use a feed, all you need to do is copy the URL and paste it into an application that can translate the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Using RSS Feeds
Adding content from someone else’s website or blog on your website has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s website additional exposure online and helps you by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(Syndicating Content Has Many Benefits!)
While adding a 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 sites to use your content.
When other sites syndicate your content, this gives you the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive more web traffic …
(Get visitors to syndicate content using your feed … it will help to increase traffic!)
About Your WordPress RSS Feed
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing other online users to syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on the WP theme you have installed, there are a few ways to get your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget as part of your navigation menu …
(The feed will display as many recent posts as you have specified in your WP Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
The other setting in the WordPress Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display each article as full text, or just a summary …
(WordPress Reading Settings – Display ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for articles in your RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …
(Post excerpts affect how a feed appears)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using WordPress Post excerpts here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, to view the content of an RSDS feed, you need to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into an application that can translate feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s see how this works.
First, go to a website or blog and look for their RSS feed section using any of the methods described earlier …
(Look for an RSS feed icon. Image source: 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 feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feedreader to view the content. Image: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds.
How To Add Feeds To Your WordPress Site
Let’s show you how to add content from another website or blog’s RSS feeds to your WordPress site.
Adding Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business operates in, you could display on your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply adding their feed. You can use 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 sourced from an RSS feed to your sidebar …
(Add content from an RSS feed to your sidebar)
copy the RSS feed URL from a site containing content that you would like to display on your sidebar to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(WordPress RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content from the RSS feed will now show on your sidebar (or wherever you have inserted the RSS widget – e.g. footer, custom menu, etc) …
(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 Feeds To WordPress Posts
What if you want to add content from an RSS feed to posts instead of the sidebar?
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Just search inside your Plugins section for RSS Post, RSS feed to post, etc.
(RSS plugins for WordPress)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us for assistance configuring plugins.
Here are a number of WordPress plugins that you can use to curate and add content from RSS feeds to your pages:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds of your choice.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and arrange them according to 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 additional functionality with a number of premium add-ons.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on lets you autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer)
RSS Post Importer lets you syndicate, import, curate, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress blog.
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)
POWr RSS Feed automatically combines and displays content from a number of different RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust feed priority, use custom fonts, colors, borders, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in any language.
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 – WordPress Plugin)
The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to create 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 your posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to a new level.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress)
FeedWordPress provides versatile syndication for WordPress site-generated 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 FeedWordPress to create aggregator sites, or display all your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Facebook, Flickr, or other online services, in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog Plugin)
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 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 – WordPress Plugin)
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types modifies your RSS feeds to include pages in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to displaying feeds of your latest posts, WordPress also displays RSS feeds of comments posted on your site.
To see this, go to the ‘Meta’ widget area on your sidebar (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) and click on Comments RSS …
(WordPress Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items viewed on a Firefox web browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on which web browser you use …
(RSS comments feed entries displayed on Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check what the comments RSS feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into a feed reader …
(Paste the 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 WP site installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Displaying RSS Feeds For Specific Post Items
Being able to create an RSS feed for single 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 an individual post is shown below:
(Specific Post RSS Feed)
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 add “/feed” to the end of the URI of your post, WordPress will return the comments left on that post, not actual content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site users may only want to syndicate content from specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
WordPress allows you to create separate category feeds.
Just use the format below:
(Format for WordPress post categories RSS feed)
Select and copy the category URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the category link address …)
Add the word “feed” to the end of it …
(Format for WordPress category feed)
Your RSS feed will now only display content specific to this category …
(Category RSS feed page)
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 – Publish A Feeds Page
You can publish your own list of feeds that allows readers to subscribe to content in specific categories …
(Set Up A Feeds Directory)
You can also link a button graphic to the URL of your category feed and then create a table or a list of all category feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button image. Image 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 inserting tables into WordPress content here:
RSS Feeds – Additional Notes
You can customize RSS in a number of ways, such as adding videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows you to configure various feed formats without code editing skills. For example, the table below shows some of the kinds of feeds you can display …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
Here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed in the table above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – displays your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Includes the latest comments left on your website or blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed containing individual post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Displays the latest comments made on a specific post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/01/17/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/12/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Contains the latest posts for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Contains 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 let your users know that they can subscribe to your feed. Place a ’subscribe to RSS’ links in a visible location …
(Promote your RSS feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that online users will only syndicate your content if you provide your subscribers with high-quality content that will add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add great content from other sites and get others to share your content with RSS feeds!)
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:
- Download RSS Feed Images – Visit www.feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “rss images”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable RSS icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization with three primary duties: publishing RSS specifications, guiding developers who create RSS applications and helping the public to gain a better understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about the history and benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex – Official WordPress documentation and information. Visit this site to learn more about WordPress and RSS.
Congratulations! Now you know where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to add someone else’s content to your site via RSS.
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 learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website or blog please click on links to visit other great articles and tutorials we have published on this site.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now