No matter what what industry you are a part of, it’s vitally important to provide high-quality information to your site or blog readers. For example, if your business provides insurance-related services, it’s not a bad idea to provide users with useful information from government departments, such as news or updates on statistical findings, insurance tips, etc.
The problem with creating this kind of information, however, is that it involves an enormous amount of time and resources. You have to sort through, research, and organize a lot of information, check your facts, write and edit content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then make sure that this information is continually 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 completely beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a much simpler way to keep your users up-to-date with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - The easiest way to provide your site visitors with great information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – What Is It?
- RSS is short for Rich Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred to, Really Simple Syndication. It can also be referred to as a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
- When a user subscribes to an RSS feed, they no longer have to manually check the source website for updated content. Instead, their browser will continually monitor the content and automatically keep subscribers up-to-date.
- Feeds are also used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog posts, news headlines, video lists, etc., to which other users can then subscribe.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML document that includes either full or summarized text along with other metadata such as date of publishing, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then browse any updates posted on these sites using a feedreader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate their information automatically.
- Feeds can be made available in different formats and read by different feed aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom feeds and RDF feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure compatibility with different machines and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also let you combine different RSS feeds to receive news and updates from many different sources.
This article shows you 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 sites to your site using their RSS feed.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful (and legitimate) method used for sharing web content. Feeds provide a way for web users to receive the latest information posted on different sites.
First, let’s look at syndication.
Global media and news reporting agencies rely on content syndication to publish stories from news sources around the world.
Content syndication allows digital content publishers and influential online media publications to deliver readers stories from all around the planet without actually having to hire additional reporters and content writers in every place around the world …
(Media publications rely on content syndication to publish newsworthy stories from other news agencies all around the planet.)
Syndication is used to share information legitimately with other sites. online media publications syndicate news stories using news feeds …
(Content agencies syndicate their newsworthy content using feeds)
Most websites actually want you to syndicate their content. Syndicating content not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it can also drive visitors back to the original site responsible for creating and publishing the content being syndicated. This provides websites with additional opportunities to generate new web visitors.
Major content sites will include 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”, “times of india rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many online newspapers and major content sites will include an RSS feed section. Image: Sydney Morning Herald )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section will bring up a list of different RSS feed sections of the site …
(RSS Feeds. Image: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
gives readers access to information about different sections of the site (e.g. technology news, arts news, editorials, etc.)
An RSS feed directory can also include further subcategories …
(A feed list can also contain feed subdirectories. Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: A feed is simply a URL. All you need to do to use RSS feeds is copy the URLs and paste these into a program that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Content Syndication
Syndicating someone else’s content on your site has some obvious benefits. It not only helps someone else’s website, it also helps your site by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(Content Syndication Has Many Benefits!)
While adding RSS feeds 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 syndicate YOUR content.
When other websites syndicate your feed, this gives you the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive new visitors …
(Look for ways to get visitors to syndicate content using your RSS feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress Feed – About
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on your WP theme, there are a few ways to access the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme displays the Meta widget in a navigation menu …
(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 the Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display each article as full text, or as a summary …
(Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for each article in your feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …
(Post excerpts affect how your feed content will appear)
To learn more about 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 to your clipboard and paste it into an application that can translate feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, go to a website or blog and look for a ’subscribe to feed’ button …
(Look for a ’subscribe to feed’ icon. Image source: http://www.yourcoffeeguru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL to your clipboard)
If you want, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feed reader …
(Paste your URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image: Feedreader)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS feeds.
Adding A Feed To Your Site
In the example below, we’ll add content from another site to your site.
Adding RSS Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you operate in, you could easily display on your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply importing content from their feed. You can use RSS feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site such as 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 the WordPress sidebar navigation area)
copy the feed URL from a website that publishes content that you want to display on your sidebar to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL)
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 sidebar widgets, go here:
Load your website in your web browser. The content from the RSS feed should now appear on the sidebar (or wherever the RSS widget has been added – e.g. footer, custom menu, etc) …
(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 Content From RSS Feeds To Posts
What if you want to add content from RSS feeds to WordPress posts instead of a sidebar?
You can easily do this using plugins. Just search on the WordPress plugin repository for RSS feed, RSS feed to post, etc.
(RSS plugins for WordPress)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for configuration instructions, or contact us for help configuring plugins.
Here are a few plugins that allow you to add RSS feeds to your pages and posts:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an auto blogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from selected RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange them into campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin For WordPress)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin with additional functionality with premium extensions (add-ons).
For example, the Feed to Post extension for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin lets you import RSS feeds directly into your posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer – WordPress Plugin)
The RSS Post Importer plugin lets you curate, import, syndicate, merge and display full text RSS feeds on your WordPress website or blog.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full article content of each feed item as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed)
With POWr RSS, you can automatically combine and display content from various RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust the priority of different feeds, use custom fonts, borders, colors, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on any computer, phone, or tablet and supports text in every language.
The premium version contains a number of additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin)
WP Pipes 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, autoblogging, auto post to Twitter/LinkedIn/Facebook, export your posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress – WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a versatile Atom/RSS syndication plugin for WordPress site 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.
You can use this FeedWordPress to create aggregator sites, or bring together all of your online activity in one place.
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 very quickly, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Simply 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 and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types WP Plugin)
Use RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types if you would like 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 WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to giving online users access to RSS feeds of your latest posts, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of your latest post comments.
To see the comments in your feed, go to the ‘Meta’ section 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 entries viewed with a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on which web browser you use …
(Comments feed items as seen with Google Chrome)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …
(Paste your URL of your comments feed into a feed reader to view the feed content. 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 subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Using Single Item Feeds
Being able to use an RSS feed for a specific 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 displaying an RSS feed for a single post item 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 your post URI, WordPress will return the comments made on your post, not the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Category Feeds
Some your site visitors may only want to syndicate content from one or two post categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
If your website contains content published under different categories, WordPress allows you to provide a separate RSS feed for each category.
All you have to do is use the format below:
(Format for WP category RSS feed)
Copy the category URL …
(Select and copy your category URL …)
Add “feed” to the end of it …
(WordPress category feed format)
Your category RSS feed now only includes content assigned to this particular category …
(Category-specific 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 – Set Up A Feeds Directory
You can set up a directory of RSS feeds for visitors that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in specific categories, just like the larger authoritative sites do …
(Publish A Directory Of RSS Feeds For Your Site Visitors)
You can also link an image like the one shown below to the URL of your feed and then create a table or a list of all your feeds on a new page …
(RSS button image. Image: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
To learn more about creating tables in WordPress content, go here:
WordPress RSS – Notes
RSS feeds can be customized in various different ways, such as adding videos and images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows several feed configurations without code editing skills. Below are examples of some of the kinds of custom feeds you can create …
(Different Feed Formats You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed in the image above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – RSS feed that includes your latest post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Includes the latest comments left on your website
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: 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 an individual post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/04/02/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/09/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Contains latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: RSS feed that contains the latest items for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Includes latest items for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One more thing …
It’s a good idea to promote your feeds. Place your ’subscribe to RSS’ link or button in a visible location …
(Encourage your site users to syndicate your feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that other website owners will only subscribe to your content if you provide your visitors with high-quality information that can add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Easily add content to your site and get other users to share your content online with WordPress and RSS!)
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 feed 🙂
RSS – Resources:
- RSS Feed Icons – Visit FeedIcons or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss icon”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS images and icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to learn more about RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about the benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex: Feeds – WordPress documentation and reference repository. Visit this site for additional information about RSS feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know 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 via RSS feeds.
Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you grow your business online. To read more about the benefits of using WordPress please see other great content we have published on this site.
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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