No matter what service or product you provide, providing high-quality information to your site visitors is essential. For example, if your business provides insurance-related services, you may want to include the latest information from government departments, such as news and updates on statistical findings, insurance advice, etc.
To create and publish this kind of information, however, involves an enormous amount of work and resources. You have to do a ton of information gathering, researching and organizing, checking sources for accuracy, content writing and editing (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 lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is well beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a simpler way to provide your users with expert, up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is one of the simplest ways to provide your subscribers with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
Basic Information About RSS
- RSS, which, according to some is short for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly known as Really Simple Syndication. It is often called a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
- When a user subscribes to an RSS feed, they no longer have to physically visit and check the website for content updates. Instead, their web browser constantly monitors the site and keeps feed subscribers updated.
- Feeds are typically used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog post items, news, audio playlists, etc., to which other users can then subscribe.
- RSS feed content can be viewed with a software program called a feed reader, or feed aggregator. Feed readers can be used to access content on all kinds of topics and syndicate this content (and updates made to this content) to other online properties.
- There are different kinds of feeds, read by different feedreaders. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom Publishing Protocol) feeds and RDF feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure that feeds are compatible with different devices, feedreaders, and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also let you combine several RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates from various sources.
In this comprehensive article, we will show you where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, and how to display content from other websites and blogs on your site using RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a very powerful and legitimate method used to share content online. RSS Feeds provide web users with a simple and easy way to stay up-to-date with the latest information posted on different sites.
First, let’s take a look at content syndication.
Online media publications rely heavily on syndication to publish stories from other news agencies around the world.
Content syndication allows online newspapers to deliver readers interesting stories and the latest newsworthy items from around the planet without having to post more news reporting agencies everywhere in the world …
(Media publications use syndication to publish newsworthy stories from other news agencies around the world.)
Syndication is used to share information legitimately with other sites. online media publications syndicate their stories using news feeds …
(Content syndication is used by global media publications to share newsworthy content with other publications)
Most sites actually want you to syndicate their content. Content syndication not only allows information to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the site that published the original content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Most online newspapers and major online media publications have a feed section (look for navigation links that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “star tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most leading online media publications provide links to an RSS feed section. Source: SMH RSS )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section will bring up a list of different RSS feed sections …
(RSS feeds section. Image: New York Times RSS)
These RSS feeds allow you to source content from different areas of the website (e.g. technology news, arts news, jobs, etc.)
Feed sections can also include feed subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Image: latimes.com)
Note: A feed is just a URL. To use an RSS feed, all you have to do is 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 Syndicating Content
Syndicating content from someone else’s website on your site has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s site additional exposure online and helps your site by freeing you up from having to create this content …
(The Benefits Of Using Feeds)
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 you also want other sites to syndicate your content.
When other websites syndicate content using your feed, this gives your business the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive new visitors …
(Look for ways to get users to syndicate your content … it will help increase your exposure online!)
About Your WordPress RSS
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on your WP theme, there are a number of ways to access your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to display as part of your navigation menu, just scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(You can access your WordPress RSS feed from the Meta section)
2) You can also find built-in links and buttons on certain themes that allow your visitors to copy your RSS feed.
For example, in the screenshot below, a visitor can simply copy the site’s RSS feed URL by clicking on on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy RSS URLs to your clipboard from “subscribe to RSS” buttons)
3) On many websites and again, depending on your theme, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Follow Us, Social Share, or Links toolbar …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Share, Link To Us, or Follow floating, slide-out, or fixed toolbar)
4) You can also view your RSS feed by simply typing your site’s URL into a web 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 RSS feed page …
(RSS feed items displayed using Firefox)
Note that your feed content will display differently depending on which browser you use …
(RSS feed items seen on Google Chrome web browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
You can specify how many items you want to show in your RSS Feed section, by going to your Reading Settings section and typing the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings – Syndication feeds)
The feed will show as many recent posts as you have specified in your WordPress Reading Settings section …
(The feed will show the number of posts as you have specified in your WordPress 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 RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts affect how a feed displays)
If you need help using excerpts in WordPress Posts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, all you need to do to view the content of a feed is to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that can translate feeds into readable content.
Let’s see how this works.
First, find a website whose feed you want to subscribe to and look for a ‘subscribe’ link …
(Search for a ’subscribe to feed’ icon. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL)
If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into an online feed reader …
(Paste the URL of your feed into a feed reader to view the content. Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds.
How To Add A Feed To Your Site
In the example below, we’ll add RSS content from another website to your site.
How To Add RSS Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business operates in, you can easily add to your site the latest news and updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply adding their RSS feed. You can use RSS feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, social media comments, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to your sidebar …
(Add content from an RSS feed to your sidebar)
First, Find a website containing content that you would like to display on your sidebar and copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
Next, go to your Widgets section and paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Panel – RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Refresh your web browser. The content should appear in the sidebar …
(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 Your WordPress Posts
What if you want to add content from an RSS feed to a post instead of your sidebar?
You can easily do this using plugins. Search inside your ’Add Plugins’ section for RSS feed, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ section)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us for assistance with plugin configuration.
Here are a few auto blogging plugins that allow you to create new with feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from selected RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all the feeds you import and organize them into categories and campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin For WordPress)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and autoblogging plugin for WordPress that offers premium add-ons for additional functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension allows you to autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress)
The RSS Post Importer plugin can be used to import, syndicate, curate, merge and display full text feeds on your WordPress website or blog.
RSS Post Importer fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full article content of each feed item as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed)
POWr RSS Feed allows you to combine content from various RSS feeds.
This plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust feed spacing and size, use custom colors, borders, fonts, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in any language.
The premium version contains many additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin)
WP Pipes is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.
This plugin provides 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 WP Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a simple and flexible 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 plugin to create aggregator sites, or bring together all of your online activity into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(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. 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 and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages Plugin For WordPress)
Install a plugin like RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types if you want to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed in addition to posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress makes available RSS feeds of your latest post comments in addition to displaying feeds of your posts.
You can view the comments in your feed by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ widget of your sidebar menu …
(Comments Feed)
Comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in the Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed entries viewed on a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on which browser you are using …
(Comments feed items as seen with Google Chrome)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into a feedreader …
(Paste the comments feed URL into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
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 is located in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Individual Post RSS 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 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 is shown below:
(RSS Feed For Individual Post Item)
To create the above feed, copy the URI of your post, and add “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post Feed)
Note: By default, if you only add “/feed” to the end of your post address, WordPress will return the comments made on your post, not the content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Using Category Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in syndicating content from a specific post category. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
WordPress allows you to create category feeds.
All you have to do is use the format below:
(Use this format for WordPress post categories feed)
Copy the category link address to your clipboard …
(Copy the category link address to your clipboard …)
Add “feed” to the end of it …
(Feed format for post categories)
Your RSS feed now only contains content published under that particular 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 Directory Of RSS Feeds For Your Visitors
You can provide a feeds directory that allows your readers to subscribe only to specific content …
(Publish Your Own Page Of Feeds For Your Subscribers)
You can link an RSS button to a feed and then create a table or a list of all category feeds on a new page …
(RSS icon. Image Source: public-domain-photos.com)
To learn more about adding tables to WordPress pages and posts, see this step-by-step tutorial:
WordPress RSS – Notes
RSS feeds can be customized in several ways, such as adding videos and images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows you to configure a number of different feed formats without editing code. Here are some examples of custom feeds you can use …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
Here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – RSS feed that displays your latest post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – RSS feed that displays the latest comments published on your blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed for a post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Feed that contains the latest comments made on a single post
- 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/2012/06/28/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/05/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Contains the latest entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Includes latest entries 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 feed. Place a ’subscribe to RSS’ button image somewhere visible …
(Promote your RSS feeds!)
Finally, keep in mind that online users will only want to syndicate your content if you publish great information. In other words, you must provide high-quality information that will add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Easily add great content to your site and get visitors to subscribe to your content with 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 feed 🙂
Additional RSS Resources:
- Feed Icons – Visit online resource sites like FeedIcons.com or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “rss buttons”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable Free RSS graphic elements.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization responsible for publishing the RSS specification, providing guidance to developers who create RSS applications and furthering the understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – General information about RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex – WordPress software documentation and information. Visit this site for additional information about WordPress RSS feeds.
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 to your site via RSS feeds.
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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"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