No matter what what industry you are a part of, providing high-value information to your blog readers is vitally important. For example, if you provide medical services, it’s a good idea to provide users with useful information from the health department, such as news or updates on medical research, health and fitness advice, etc.
The problem with providing this type of information, however, is that it involves a lot of work and resources. You have to do a ton of data sorting, researching and organizing, fact-checking, content writing and editing (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 site visitors up-to-date with the latest information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - The simplest way to provide your readers with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Is RSS?
- RSS is short for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred to, Really Simple Syndication. It it is also called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- RSS lets content publishers automatically syndicate their content so that their site readers can read it without having to keep revisiting sites to check for updates.
- RSS feeds are often used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as new blog post items, news, videos, etc., which other 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 such as published date, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then view updates posted on these sites using an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate content.
- 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 (Resource Description Framework) feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure compatibility with different devices and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also allow you to combine different RSS feeds to receive news and updates from several different sources.
In this detailed article, we will explain how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to display content from other sites on your site via RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful method used for sharing web content. Feeds provide online users with a way to keep up with the latest information posted on websites and blogs they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at syndication.
Online media publications use content syndication to publish stories from news agencies all around the world.
Syndication allows leading online newspapers to deliver readers the latest news items and fresh stories from all over the globe without actually having to set up additional reporters in every place around the world …
(Most news reporting agencies rely heavily on syndication to publish newsworthy stories from other news agencies around the world.)
Syndication is used to share information legitimately. Global media publications syndicate their content using news feeds …
(Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing content)
Most sites actually would like you to syndicate their information. Content syndication not only allows information to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the original site that created and published the content being syndicated. This provides websites with new opportunities to generate significant web traffic.
Many online newspapers and leading online media publications provide links to 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.) …
(Most news reporting agencies and major online media publications provide links to an RSS feed section. Image Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section brings up a directory of different RSS feed sections …
(A directory of different feeds. Source: NY Times RSS)
These RSS feeds give readers access to information from different sections of the site (e.g. technology news, travel news, health news, etc.)
Feed sections can also include further feed subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Image Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: A feed is only a URL. All you need to do to use the 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.
The Benefits Of Using RSS Feeds
Adding someone else’s content to your website has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s website additional exposure online and adds value to your site without you having to create this content …
(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Website And Yours!)
While adding an RSS 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 websites and blogs syndicate your content, this gives you the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive new visitors …
(It’s worth trying to get users to syndicate your content … it will help to increase your exposure online!)
About Your WordPress RSS
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on your WordPress theme, there are a number of ways to access your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to be displayed as part of your navigation menu, just scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(Meta widget – Entries RSS)
2) You can also find built-in links or buttons on certain themes that allow your visitors to copy your RSS feed.
In the screenshot below, for example, a visitor can simply copy the feed URL by clicking on on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy feed links to your clipboard from “subscribe” buttons)
3) On many sites and again, depending on your WordPress site’s theme, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Links, Keep In Touch, or Share section …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Social Share, Subscribe, or Links toolbar section)
4) You can also view your RSS feed by simply typing your site’s URL into a browser and adding “/feed” after the URL, e.g.:
- http://www.yourdomain.com/feed
- http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/feed (if your WP installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up your WordPress RSS page …
(Feed items seen using a Firefox browser)
Note that your feed content will display differently depending on which browser you are using …
(RSS entries seen with a Chrome web browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
You can specify how many posts you want displayed in your Feeds page, by going to your Reading Settings section and selecting the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(Reading Settings – Syndication items)
The feed page will display as many recent posts as you have specified section …
(Your feed page will display 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 RSS feed is whether to display articles as full text, or just a summary …
(WP Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for articles in your feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content displays …
(Post excerpts affect how your feeds will display)
To learn more about Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, to view the content of an RSDS feed, you have to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that reads and translates feeds into readable content.
Let’s take a look at how this works.
First, find a website whose content you want to syndicate and search for an 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 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 feed URL into a feedreader to view the feed content. Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feed readers, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS feeds and convert these into content that is readable by humans.
Adding A Feed To Your Site
Let’s show you how to add content from another site to your site.
Adding RSS Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are part of, you could display on your site the latest updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply importing content from their feed. You can easily 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 the WordPress sidebar navigation menu …
(Let’s add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu)
First, find a site containing content that you want to add to your site and copy the RSS feed to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
Next, paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(Widgets Panel – RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Load your website in your browser. The content should display in your sidebar (or wherever you have added the RSS widget) …
(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:
Adding Content From RSS Feeds To Your Posts
Can content from an RSS feed be added to posts? It sure can!
You can easily do this using plugins. Search inside your Plugins admin screen for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ screen – RSS plugins for WordPress)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us if you need assistance with plugin configuration.
Here are a few auto blogging plugins for WordPress that allow you to automatically create new using feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds of your choice.
You can manage all the feeds you import and organize feeds into categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator – WordPress Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and autoblogging plugin for WordPress with additional functionality with premium extensions (add-ons).
For example, the Feed to Post extension is an advanced, feature-rich importer that allows you to add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into your WP posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer WP Plugin)
RSS Post Importer lets you syndicate, curate, import, 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 every item in the feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin For WordPress)
With the POWr RSS Feed plugin, you can combine and display content from various RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS Feed plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust the priority of different feeds, use custom fonts, colors, borders, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on all computers, tablets, and phones and supports text in every language.
The premium version contains many additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, accept or reject posts in your feed, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes – WordPress 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 powerful functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, export WordPress posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to a new level.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress)
FeedWordPress is a 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.
You can use this plugin to create aggregator site (sites that display posts from multiple sources), or bring together all of your online activity into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog by WPMUDev – WordPress Plugin)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in your feed URL, give your feed a name (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 WordPress Plugin)
By default, WordPress only posts posts in your RSS feed. Install the RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types plugin if you would like to include pages in your RSS feed and not just posts.
For more details, go here:
Using RSS – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WordPress Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to displaying RSS feeds of your latest posts, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of your post comments.
To inspect 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 Feed)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed entries displayed using Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on which browser you use …
(RSS comments feed entries displayed on Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feed reader …
(Paste your URL of your comments feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image: 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 has been installed in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Accessing RSS Feeds For Individual Posts
Being able to create an RSS feed for an individual 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 individual post items is shown below:
(Specific Post Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the web address 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 web address of your post, WordPress will return the comments for your post, not the content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Displaying Post Category Feeds
Some your site users may only want to subscribe to content from one or two categories. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
WordPress allows you to create category feeds.
Just use the format below:
(WordPress post categories RSS feed format)
Copy the category link address to your clipboard …
(Copy your category URL …)
Append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(Feed format for post categories)
Your RSS feed will now only display content posted in that particular category …
(Category 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 – Create An RSS Feeds Directory
You can set up a page of RSS feeds on your site that allows readers to subscribe to specific content, just like large authoritative sites …
(Create Your Own List Of Feeds)
You can also link an RSS 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 Source: public-domain-photos.com)
To learn more about adding tables to WordPress, see this step-by-step tutorial:
RSS – Additional Notes
Feeds can be customized in various different ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows different RSS feed configurations without code editing skills. Here are some examples of custom feed types you can display on your site and how to create your feeds …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the diagram above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – contains your latest posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Contains the latest comments published on your website
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed containing a specific post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Includes the latest comments made on individual items
- 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/2014/10/09/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/05/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Feed containing latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: RSS feed that contains the latest entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Contains the latest post entries 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 feeds. Make sure you place a ’subscribe to RSS’ link somewhere visible …
(Encourage your visitors to subscribe to your feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that other website owners will only want to syndicate your content if you publish great content that educates, engages, and entertains. In other words, you need to provide high-quality information that will add value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Easily add great content to your site and get visitors to subscribe to your content online using 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 🙂
Resources:
- Download RSS Buttons – Visit sites like Iconspedia or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss images”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable RSS graphic elements.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization with three primary duties: publishing RSS specifications, guiding developers who create RSS applications and furthering the understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about the history and benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex: WordPress Feeds – WordPress software documentation and information repository. Go here to learn more about using WordPress and RSS.
Congratulations! Now you know 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.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business web site please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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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