No matter what product or service you provide or what industry your business is a part of, you need to provide high-quality information to your site or blog visitors. For example, if your business provides insurance-related services, it’s not a bad idea to publish the latest information from government departments, such as news and updates on statistical research, insurance tips, etc.
The problem with providing this type of information, however, is that it involves a great deal of time and resources. You have to do a lot of information sifting, researching and organizing, fact-checking, content writing and editing (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually make sure that this information is 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 well beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a much easier way to keep your users up-to-date with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - One of the easiest ways to provide your blog subscribers with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Does RSS Stand For?
- RSS, which, according to some stands for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly referred to now as Really Simple Syndication. It is often called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- RSS allows content publishers to automatically syndicate their content to save readers time from having to keep revisiting their site to check for updates.
- RSS feeds are typically used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as blog post items, news headlines, audio lists, etc., which other users can then subscribe to.
- You can read an RSS feed with software programs called RSS readers, or feed aggregators. Aggregators are used to find content on all different kinds of topics and syndicate this content (and updates made to this content) online.
- Feeds can be made available in different formats and read by different feedreaders. 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, feed readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also let you combine many RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from various sites.
In this in-depth article, we will explain where to find your WordPress RSS feed, 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.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful method used for sharing content online. Feeds provide a simple and easy way for online users to stay up-to-date with the latest information published on different sites.
First, let’s take a look at how syndication is used.
Most digital news publishers rely on syndication to publish content from news sources all around the world.
Content syndication allows news reporting agencies to deliver readers up-to-date newsworthy items and stories of general interest from all around the planet without actually having to send additional staff to every location in the world …
(Media publications rely on content syndication to publish news and stories from other news agencies around the world.)
Syndication is used to share newsworthy content legitimately with other sites. News reporting agencies syndicate their information using feeds …
(Online newspapers syndicate their newsworthy content using news feeds)
Most websites actually want you to syndicate their information. Content syndication 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 creates new ways to drive traffic back to their site.
Many digital news publishers have a feed section (look for navigation links that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “huffington post rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most digital news publishing agencies and major sites have a feed section. Source: SMH RSS )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section brings up a directory of different RSS feed sections of the site …
(RSS feeds directory. Image: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
gives you access to information from different areas of the site (e.g. technology news, arts news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
A feed directory can also include subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Image: latimes.com)
Note: An RSS feed is only a URL. To use feeds, all you need to do is copy the URLs and paste these into a program that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Using RSS Feeds
Syndicating someone else’s content on your site has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s website additional exposure online, it also helps you by freeing you up from having to create this content …
(The Benefits Of Content Syndication)
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 and blogs syndicate content using your feed, this gives your business the opportunity to get increased exposure online and drive new visitors …
(Get visitors to syndicate content using your feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress Feed – About
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on which theme you have installed, there are a few ways to get your RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to be displayed in a navigation menu, you can scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(Meta widget)
2) You can also find built-in links and/or buttons on certain themes that let your visitors copy your feed.
For example, in the screenshot below, a visitor can simply copy the RSS feed URL by clicking on on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy RSS links to your clipboard from “subscribe” buttons)
3) On many websites and again, depending on your WP theme, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Share, Link To Us, or Follow Us floating, fixed, or slide-out toolbar …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Links, Share, or Keep In Touch fixed, floating, or slide-out toolbar)
4) You can also view your WordPress site’s RSS feed by 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 site installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up your RSS feed page …
(Feed entries viewed with a Firefox web browser)
Note that your feed page will display differently depending on which web browser you are using …
(Feed entries displayed using a Google Chrome browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
To specify how many entries you would like to display in your RSS section, go to your Reading Settings section and enter the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(WP Reading Settings – Syndication feed items)
The feed will show the number of posts as you have specified in the Reading Settings section …
(Your feed page will display the number of posts as you have specified in the 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 posts as full text, or a summary …
(Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’: ‘Full text’ or ‘Summary’)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts can affect how feeds will display)
We have created a detailed tutorial about WordPress Post excerpts here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, to view a feed’s content, you need to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into an application that translates feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s see how this works.
First, go to a website whose feed you want to syndicate and search for a ‘subscribe’ link using any of the methods described earlier …
(Search for a ‘subscribe’ icon. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL)
If you want, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the URL of your feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste your URL of your feed into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feed readers, WordPress also has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds and convert these into human-readable content.
Adding An RSS Feed To Your WP Site
Let’s show you how to add content sourced from another website to your site.
How To Add RSS Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you operate in, you can display on your site the latest content from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply importing content from their RSS feed. You can use RSS feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, Facebook comments, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to your sidebar …
(Add an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar)
copy the feed URL from a site that publishes content that you want to add to your site to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL)
Next, paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(WP RSS Widget)
To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:
Load your website in your web browser. The content from the RSS feed will now show in your sidebar (or wherever the RSS widget has been added) …
(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 RSS Feeds To WordPress Posts
What if you want to add content from RSS feeds to posts instead of a sidebar?
You can easily do this using plugins. Just search on the WordPress plugin repository for RSS Post, RSS feed to post, etc.
(RSS plugins)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for configuration instructions, or contact us if you need assistance configuring plugins.
Here are a few WordPress plugins that you can use to curate and add content from RSS feeds to your posts and pages:
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 of your imported feeds and organize them according to categories and campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator – WordPress Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and autoblogging WordPress plugin that offers a number of premium add-ons for extended functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin allows you to import RSS feeds directly into your posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer)
The RSS Post Importer plugin can be used to syndicate, import, curate, merge and display full-text feeds on your WordPress blog.
The plugin will fetch an RSS feed and publish the entire content of each item in your feed as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin)
With POWr RSS Feed, you can combine and display content from various RSS feeds.
This 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 any language.
The premium version contains a number of 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 Plugin For WordPress)
The WP Pipes plugin 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 features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook, export WordPress posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to new levels.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress WP Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides versatile syndication options for WordPress site-generated 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 sites, or display all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, LinkedIn, Flickr, or other online services, in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog by WPMUDev Plugin)
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 your feed URL, give the feed a name of your choosing (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)
The RSS Includes Pages plugin modifies your default WordPress RSS feed to include pages in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to displaying feeds of your latest posts, WordPress also displays RSS feeds of comments posted on your site.
To inspect the comments in your feed, locate the ‘Meta’ section on your sidebar (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) and click on Comments RSS …
(Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in the Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed content as seen using a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on the web browser you use …
(Comments feed items viewed with Google Chrome)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feed reader …
(Paste the comments feed URL into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image Source: Feedreader)
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 site is located in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Using Specific Item RSS Feeds
Being able to select an RSS feed for individual posts 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 using an RSS feed for individual posts is shown below:
(RSS Feed For Single Post Item)
To create the above feed, copy the post URI, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of the URI of your post, WordPress will return the comments associated with that post, not actual post content itself.
Tip #3 – Using Category Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in subscribing to content from a specific post category. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
If your website displays content published under a number of categories, you can easily offer subscribers a separate feed for each post category.
All you have to do is use the format below:
(Format for WordPress post categories feed)
Select and copy the category link address to your clipboard …
(Copy the selected category link address …)
Add the word “feed” to the end of it …
(WordPress category RSS feed format)
Your RSS feed now only contains content published 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 A List Of RSS Feeds
You can provide your own directory of feeds that allows readers to subscribe only to content in the categories they are interested in …
(Set Up Your Own List Of Feeds For Your Visitors)
All you need to do is link an icon to category (or specific post) feed URLs and then create a table or a list of all feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button graphic. Image Source: public-domain-photos.com)
If you need help with inserting tables into WordPress content, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
RSS Feeds – Notes
You can customize your feeds in several ways, such as adding videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows different feed configurations without messing with code. Here are some examples of custom feed types you can use …
(WordPress RSS – Custom Feeds)
Here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the diagram above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Includes your latest posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Contains the latest comments posted on your website
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed for single posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: RSS Feed for the latest comments made on specific post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Contains latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/07/06/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/09/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Feed containing latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Includes the latest items 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 visitors know that they can subscribe to your RSS feed. Place your subscribe links in a visible location …
(Remember to promote your RSS feeds!)
Finally, keep in mind that online users will only syndicate your content if you publish useful content that informs, engages, and entertains. In other words, focus on providing your visitors with high-quality information that can add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Add content from other sites and get online users to syndicate your content using 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 RSS feed 🙂
RSS – Resources:
- RSS Graphics – Visit a site like Iconspedia.com or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “rss logo download”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS graphic elements.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization responsible for publishing RSS specifications, guiding developers who create RSS applications and furthering the understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – General information about RSS.
- WordPress.org/Feeds – WordPress documentation and reference. Go here to learn more about using WordPress RSS.
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 someone else’s content to your site using RSS.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress please see our related posts section.
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