No matter what product or service you provide or what industry your business is in, providing high-value information to your site users is important. For example, if you provide travel services, it’s a good idea to publish useful information from government departments and foreign travel offices, such as news or updates on travel warnings, advice from consulates, etc.
To create and publish this type of information, however, involves an enormous amount of work and expertise. You have to do a ton of information gathering, researching and organizing, fact-checking, writing and editing content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then make sure that this information is continually 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 beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is an easier way to provide your users with expert, up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - One of the simplest ways to provide your site readers with great information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS Made Simple
- RSS, which, according to some definitions is short for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly known as Really Simple Syndication. It can also be called a “feed” or “news feed”.
- When a user subscribes to a website’s feed, they no longer have to manually visit and check the source website for updated content. Instead, their browser will continually monitor the content and automatically keep subscribers up-to-date.
- Feeds are often used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog entries, news headlines, videos, etc., which 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 like published date, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on sites that publish feeds and then browse updates posted on these sites using a feedreader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate information automatically.
- There are different feed formats and these can be read by different feed readers. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom (also called AtomPub or APP feeds and RDF (Resource Description Framework) 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 several RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from various different websites.
In this guide, we will show you where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, and how to display content from other websites on your site using RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful (and legitimate) way to share content online. RSS Feeds provide a simple way for web users to stay up-to-date with the latest information published on different websites and blogs.
First, let’s look at the uses of content syndication.
Online newspapers and many popular media publications rely heavily on syndication to publish content from news sources all around the world.
Content syndication allows news publishers to deliver readers the latest newsworthy items and stories of interest from all over the planet without actually having to set up more reporting agencies in every location in the world …
(Online newspapers and many influential online media publications rely heavily on syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies all around the world.)
Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing newsworthy content. Global media publications syndicate their stories using feeds …
(News reporting agencies syndicate their stories using news feeds)
Most websites actually would like you to syndicate their content. Syndicating content not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it also drives visitors back to the original site that published the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Many news reporting agencies and major sites provide links to an RSS feed section (look for links in their 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 sites include an RSS feed section. Image: Sydney Morning Herald )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section brings up a list of RSS feeds for different content topics on the site …
(RSS directory. Image Source: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
gives you access to information about different sections of the site (e.g. business news, travel news, jobs, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain subcategory feeds …
(A feed directory can also contain feed subdirectories. Image: latimes.com)
Note: A feed is simply a URL. To use feeds, all you need to do is copy the URLs and paste these into an application that can process the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Syndicating Content
Adding someone else’s content to your website has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s website additional exposure online, it also helps your site by freeing you up from having to create that content …
(The Benefits Of Using RSS Feeds)
While adding a 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 there are benefits in getting other websites to syndicate your content.
When other sites syndicate your RSS feed, this gives you the opportunity to gain more exposure online and drive more web traffic …
(Get visitors to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)
Overview Of The WordPress RSS
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on your WordPress theme, there are a few ways to get the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme displays the Meta widget on your sidebar menu …
(Your feed will show the number of items you have specified in your Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in your WordPress Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display posts in the feed as full text, or just a summary …
(Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts affect how feeds will appear)
We have written a detailed tutorial on Post excerpts here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, to view the content of a feed, you need to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that can translate feeds into readable content.
Let’s take a look at how this works.
First, find a website or blog and look for a ‘subscribe’ link …
(Look for a ’subscribe to feed’ link. Image source: http://www.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 feed URL into a feedreader …
(Paste your URL of your feed into a feed reader to view the feed content. Source: Feedreader)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds and convert these into readable content for humans.
How To Add Feeds To Your WP Site
In the example below, we’ll add content from other website or blog’s RSS feeds 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 simply by importing their feed. You can easily 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 content from an RSS feed to your sidebar …
(Add content from an RSS feed to your sidebar)
copy the feed URL from a site that publishes content that you want to add to your sidebar to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
Next, go to your Widgets screen and paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(WordPress RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Load your website in your browser. The content will now appear in the sidebar …
(RSS Feed Added To 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:
How To Add Feeds To Posts
Can you add content from an RSS feed to posts instead of your sidebar? Yes, you can!
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Search inside the ’Add Plugins’ screen for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ screen – WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for instructions, or contact us for help with plugin configuration.
The plugins listed below can be used to feed content to posts, or “auto blog” (An autoblog is a blog with content that is automatically gathered and compiled from RSS feeds):
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin)
WPeMatico is an easy to use auto blogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds that you choose.
You can manage all the feeds you import and organize feeds according to campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin with additional functionality with a number of premium add-ons.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on allows you to import RSS feeds directly into posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
The RSS Post Importer plugin lets you curate, syndicate, import, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress blog.
The plugin will fetch an RSS feed and publish the entire content of every item in the feed as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed)
POWr RSS lets you combine and display content from various sources using RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display videos, images, and articles, adjust the priority of different feeds, 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, accept or reject posts, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes – WordPress Plugin)
The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.
This plugin provides functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn, export WordPress posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides simple and flexible syndication for WordPress site-generated content.
As stated in the FeedWordPress site …
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 bring together all of your online activity into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog 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 the URL of your feed, 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 WP Plugin)
Use RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types if you want 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:
WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress makes available RSS feeds of your post comments in addition to giving online users access to feeds of your posts.
You can view your comments feed by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ widget area of your sidebar menu …
(Comments RSS)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items as seen on Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on the browser you are using …
(Comments feed entries displayed with a Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into a feed reader …
(Paste your URL of your comments feed into a feedreader to view the 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 installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Displaying Specific Item Feeds
Being able to use an RSS feed for single 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 using an RSS feed for a specific post is shown below:
(Single Post RSS Feed)
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 – Post Category Feeds
Some your site users may only be interested in subscribing to content from a particular post category. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
If your website or blog contains content published under several categories, you can easily offer visitors a separate RSS feed for each category.
All you have to do is use the format below:
(WP post categories RSS feed format)
Copy the selected category link address to your clipboard …
(Select and copy your category URL …)
Add “feed” to the end of it …
(WordPress post categories feed format)
The feed now only displays content posted under that particular category …
(Category RSS feed)
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 An RSS Feeds Directory
You can publish an RSS feeds list that allows readers to subscribe only to content in the categories that interest them …
(Publish A Directory Of Feeds)
All you need to do is link an icon 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: 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 posts, go here:
WordPress RSS – Notes
You can customize your RSS in various different ways, such as adding images and videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows you to configure various feed formats that do not require messing with code. For example, here are some of the kinds of custom feeds you can use on your site and how to structure these feeds …
(WordPress RSS – Custom Feeds)
For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the table above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – contains your latest post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – RSS feed that contains the latest comments published on your website or blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed for a specific post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: RSS Feed that includes the latest comments made on single items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/07/31/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/05/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – RSS feed displaying latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Displays 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 let your site visitors know that they can subscribe to your feeds. Place a subscribe link somewhere visible …
(Remember to make your RSS feeds visible your feeds!)
Keep in mind that other sites will only syndicate your content if you provide your visitors with very high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add content from other sites and get other users to syndicate your content online with 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 🙂
Resources:
- Feed Images – Visit Feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS logo”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable RSS images and icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to learn more about RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – Learn more about the benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress.org/WordPress Feeds – Official WordPress documentation and information. Go here to learn more about WordPress 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 someone else’s content to your site via their RSS feed.
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 read more about using WordPress for a business web site please click on links to visit other great articles and tutorials on this site.
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