No matter what your business provides or what industry you are a part of, it’s vitally important to provide high-quality information to your site or blog visitors. For example, if your business provides taxation services, you may want to include useful information from the taxation office, such as news or updates on tax rulings, small business tax tips, etc.
To create and publish this kind of information, however, is very time-consuming. You have to filter 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 continually make sure that this information is 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 beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a simpler way to keep your site visitors up-to-date with your information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is one of the easiest ways to provide your subscribers with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – An Overview
- RSS stands for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred, Really Simple Syndication. It it is also referred to as a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
- RSS lets content publishers automatically syndicate their content to save readers time from having to keep revisiting their site to check for updates.
- RSS feeds are also used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog entries, news headlines, video lists, etc., to which users can choose to subscribe.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML document that includes full or summarized text along with metadata such as date of publishing, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then view any updates posted on these sites using an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate their information automatically.
- There are different kinds of feeds, read by different aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom feeds and RDF (RDF = Resource Description Framework) feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure compatibility with different machines, readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also allow you to combine multiple RSS feeds to display news and updates from several different sources.
In this article, 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 display content from other websites and blogs on your site using RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful (and legitimate) method used for sharing content online. Feeds provide a simple way for web users to stay up-to-date with the latest information posted on different websites and blogs.
First, let’s look at how content syndication is used.
Digital content publishing agencies rely heavily on content syndication to publish news and stories from news sources all around the world.
Syndication allows news reporting agencies to deliver readers up-to-date news and content of interest from around the planet without actually having to set up more writers everywhere around the world …
(Media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish newsworthy stories from news sources all around the world.)
Syndication is used to share information legitimately. Digital content publishers syndicate stories using news feeds …
(Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing information)
Most websites actually want you to share their information. Syndicating content not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the original site responsible for creating and publishing the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Most digital news publishing agencies will have a feed section (look for links in their navigation menu that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “courier mail rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most news reporting agencies and major sites provide links to an RSS feed section. Source: SMH )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link will bring up a directory of different RSS feed sections …
(RSS feeds list. Source: NY Times RSS)
Each of these feeds allows readers to access content from different areas of the site (e.g. business news, arts news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
Feed sections can also include further feed subcategories …
(Feed sections can also contain subcategory feeds. Image: Los Angeles Times)
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 a program that can translate the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Using Feeds
Adding content from someone else’s website on your website has some obvious benefits. It helps someone else’s business and helps you by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(The Benefits Of Using RSS Feeds)
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 worth keeping in mind that you also want other sites to use YOUR content.
When other websites and blogs syndicate your RSS feed, you have the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Get users to syndicate content using your feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress Feed – Overview
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all 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 access your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to display on your sidebar, just scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(Access your WordPress RSS feed from the Meta section)
2) You can also find links or buttons on certain themes that let your visitors copy your feed.
In the screenshot below, for example, a visitor can simply copy the RSS feed URL by right-clicking and copying 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 the theme you have installed, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Share, Links, or Subscribe section …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Link To Us, Follow, or Share toolbar)
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 website is located in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up your WordPress RSS feed page …
(RSS feed content displayed with a Firefox browser)
Note that your feed items will display differently depending on the browser you are using …
(RSS entries viewed with Google Chrome)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
To specify how many entries you want to display in your RSS Feed section, go to your Reading Settings section and type in the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(WordPress Reading Settings – Syndication feeds)
Your feed page will display the number of items you have specified in the WordPress Reading Settings section …
(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
The other setting in your Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display your posts as full text, or a summary …
(WP Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for each article in a feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …
(Post excerpts can affect how your feeds appear)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, to view a feed’s content, you need to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that can read and translate feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s take a look at how this works.
First, go to a website or blog and search for an RSS feed icon using any of the methods described earlier …
(Look for an RSS feed button. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the 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 the URL of your feed into a feed reader to view the content. Source: Feedreader)
Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process RSS feeds.
How To Add Feeds To Your WordPress Site
In the example below, we are going to add content sourced from another website or blog to yours.
How To Add Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you operate in, you can add to your site the latest content from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply adding 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 content sourced from an RSS feed to your sidebar …
(Add content from an RSS feed to your sidebar)
First, Go to a website or blog containing content that you would like to add to your sidebar and copy the RSS feed …
(Copy your feed URL to your clipboard)
Next, go to Appearance > Widgets and paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Screen – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:
Load your site in your web browser. The content should appear on your sidebar …
(RSS Feed Content Added To WordPress Sidebar Menu)
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 Feeds To WordPress Posts
Can you add content from RSS feeds to WordPress posts instead of your sidebar? Yes, you can!
You can do this using plugins. Just search inside the ’Add Plugins’ section (Plugins > Add New) for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ search results – WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for complete instructions, or contact us for help configuring plugins.
Here are a number of auto blogging plugins that let you automatically add posts using feeds and imported content:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from selected RSS/Atom feeds.
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 auto blogging WordPress plugin with additional functionality with a number of premium extensions (add-ons).
For example, the Feed to Post add-on allows you to autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into WP posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
The RSS Post Importer plugin can be used to curate, import, syndicate, merge and display full text feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) on your WordPress 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)
The POWr RSS Feed plugin combines and displays content from a number of different sources using RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust feed size and spacing, use custom fonts, colors, backgrounds, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in any language.
The premium version contains many additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin For WordPress)
The WP Pipes plugin is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.
This plugin provides features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter, export your posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to new levels.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin For WordPress)
FeedWordPress provides versatile syndication options for WordPress.
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 site (sites that display posts from multiple sources), or display all of your online activity into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in your feed URL, give your feed a name (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 Plugin For WordPress)
By default, WordPress only posts posts in your RSS feed. Use the RSS Includes Pages plugin if you want to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed and not just posts.
For more details, go here:
Using RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of comments posted on your site in addition to making RSS feeds of your posts available.
To access these comments, go to the ‘Meta’ widget on your sidebar menu (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 will appear in the Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed entries as seen using a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on the browser you are using …
(RSS comments feed entries displayed using Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste the feed URL into a feed reader to view the 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 WP site installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Individual Item Feeds
Being able to use an RSS feed for individual 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 accessing an RSS feed for a specific post is shown below:
(Single Post RSS Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the post address, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of the web address of your post, WordPress will return the comments made on that post, not actual content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Using Category RSS 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 separate category feeds.
All you have to do is use the format below:
(Use this format for WP category RSS feed)
Select and copy the category link address …
(Select and copy your category URL …)
And add “feed” to the end of it …
(Feed format for category)
Your feed now only contains content posted for this 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 Directory Of Feeds
You can publish your own list of RSS feeds for subscribers that allows readers to subscribe only to specific categories …
(Provide Your Own List Of Feeds)
You can also link an icon like the one shown below to a feed URL and then create a table or a list of all 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)
To learn more about adding tables to WordPress pages and posts, see this tutorial:
WordPress RSS – Additional Notes
You can customize your feeds in various different ways, such as adding videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows several feed configurations that do not require messing with code. Below are examples of some of the kinds of feeds you can use …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
Below are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – displays your latest posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – RSS feed that contains the latest comments published on your blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed that includes single items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Contains the latest comments made on an individual post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Displays latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/03/17/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/10/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Contains latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: RSS feed containing latest items for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Displays latest entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One last thing …
Remember to promote your RSS feed. Make sure you place a ’subscribe to RSS’ link in a visible location …
(Promote your RSS feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that other sites will only want to syndicate your content if you provide useful information. In other words, provide high-quality information that can add value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Easily add someone else’s content and get visitors to share 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 feed 🙂
RSS Resources:
- RSS Feed Buttons – Visit sites like FeedIcons.com or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “RSS buttons”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download Free RSS images and icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to learn more about RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about the history and benefits of using RSS.
- WordPress Codex – Official WordPress documentation and information. Go here for more information about feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to display someone else’s content on your site via RSS.
Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about using the WordPress CMS software please see our related posts section.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)