No matter what your business sells or what industry you are a part of, providing quality information on your site or blog is essential. For example, if you provide medical services, it’s a good idea to provide users with information from the health department, such as news and updates on medical research, health and fitness tips, etc.
To create and publish this kind of information, however, is really time-consuming. You have to sort through, research, and organize a ton of data, check your facts, write and edit content (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 lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is completely beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is an easier way to provide your readers with expert, up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the easiest way to provide your site visitors with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – Basic Definition
- RSS, which, according to some definitions is short for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly referred to as Really Simple Syndication. It can also be called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- RSS lets content publishers automatically syndicate their content to save readers time from having to keep revisiting their site to check for updates.
- Feeds are often used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog post items, news, audio playlists, etc., which any user can then subscribe to.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is a structured XML document that includes either full or summarized text along with other metadata such as published date, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on sites and blogs that publish feeds and then keep up with any updates posted on these websites through 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 readers. 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, feedreaders, and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also let you combine several RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from different sites.
This guide explains how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to display someone else’s content on your site using their RSS feed.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful (and legitimate) way of sharing content online. Feeds provide an easy way for web users to receive the latest information published on websites they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at the concept of syndication.
Media publications rely heavily on syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies around the world.
Content syndication allows most online newspapers and many popular online media publications to deliver readers up-to-date newsworthy items and stories of interest from all around the globe without actually having to set up more news writers in every place around the world …
(Content publishing agencies and many highly-visited media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish newsworthy stories from news sources around the planet.)
Syndication is used to share newsworthy content legitimately with other sites. Global media publications syndicate their information using news feeds …
(Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing information)
Most sites actually would like you to syndicate their information. Content syndication not only allows great information to be shared, but it also sends visitors back to the original site that published the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Major content sites have an RSS 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”, “salt lake tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most online newspapers and major content sites provide links to an RSS feed section. Image Source: Sydney Morning Herald )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link will bring up a list of different RSS feeds …
(A list of different RSS feeds. Source: nytimes.com)
These feeds give you access to different sections of the website (e.g. business news, sports news, health news, etc.)
An RSS feed list can also contain further subcategory feeds …
(An RSS directory can also include subcategory feeds. Image Source: latimes.com)
Note: An RSS feed is just a URL. To use a feed, all that’s required is to copy the URL and paste it into software that can process the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Syndicating Content – Benefits
Adding someone else’s content to your site has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s content additional exposure online, it also helps your site by freeing you up from having to create this content …
(The Benefits Of Syndicating Content)
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 sites to use your content.
When other websites syndicate content using your feed, this gives you the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive more web traffic …
(Consider trying to get other websites and blogs to syndicate your feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress RSS – About
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing other online users to easily syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on the WordPress theme you have installed, there are a number of ways to access your RSS feed:
1) If your theme displays the Meta widget in your navigation menu …
(Your feed will show the number of items 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 feeds is whether to display each article in a feed as full text, or as a summary …
(Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’: ‘Full text’ or ‘Summary’)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content displays …
(Post excerpts affect how content in your feeds will display)
To learn more about WordPress Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, to view the content of a feed, you need to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that reads and translates feeds into readable content.
Let’s take a look at how this works.
First, go to a website or blog and search for their RSS feed button using any of the methods described earlier …
(Search for an RSS feed link. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL to the clipboard)
If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into a feedreader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feedreader to view the content. Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS feeds.
How To Add RSS Feeds To WordPress Sites
Let’s show you how to add content from other website’s RSS feeds to yours.
Adding Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business operates in, you can display on your site the latest updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply importing their feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, Facebook comments, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to your sidebar …
(Let’s add an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu)
copy the RSS feed from a website that publishes content that you would like to add to your site to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL)
Next, go to your Widgets screen and paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(Widgets Panel – RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content can now be seen on 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:
Adding RSS Feeds To Your Posts
Can you add content from RSS feeds to posts instead of your sidebar? You sure can!
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Just search inside the Plugins admin section for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ section)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for setup instructions, or contact us if you need help with plugin configuration.
Here are a few WordPress plugins that let you add RSS feeds to your pages and posts:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin)
WPeMatico is an auto blogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds of your choice.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange feeds into campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and autoblogging WordPress plugin that offers premium add-ons for extended functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension allows you to import RSS feeds directly into your posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
RSS Post Importer can be used to curate, syndicate, import, merge and display full-text feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) on your WordPress site.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full content of each item in the feed as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)
With POWr RSS, you can combine and display content from a number of different RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust feed priority, use custom backgrounds, colors, fonts, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in every language.
The premium plugin edition contains a number of additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin For WordPress)
The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.
This plugin provides loads of powerful functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter, export WordPress posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to a new level.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides flexible syndication 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 sites, or bring together 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. Simply copy and paste in the URL of your feed, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select the blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages – WordPress Plugin)
Install RSS Includes Pages if you would like to include pages in your RSS feed in addition to posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).
For more details, go here:
WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to making RSS feeds of your latest posts available to online users, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of your post comments.
To see this feed, locate the ‘Meta’ widget on your sidebar (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) and click on Comments RSS …
(WordPress Comments Feed)
Comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in your Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed entries displayed with a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on which web browser you use …
(RSS comments feed content displayed with Google Chrome)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste your 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 WordPress site installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Individual Item Feeds
Being able to display an RSS feed for a single post item can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific posts to RSS aggregator sites, or you may have created a valuable resource that other online users will want to syndicate.
The formula for creating an RSS feed for an individual post item is shown below:
(Single Post 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 add “/feed” to the end of the post, WordPress will return the comments associated with your post, not the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Category RSS Feeds
Some your site users may only want to syndicate content from a particular category. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
WordPress allows you to create category feeds.
Just use the format shown below:
(WordPress category feed format)
Copy the selected category link address to your clipboard …
(Copy the selected category link address to your clipboard …)
Append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(WordPress post categories RSS feed format)
Your RSS feed will now only include content published under this 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 – Set Up A Feeds Page
You can publish your own page of feeds on your site that allows your readers to subscribe to content in the categories they are interested in, just like the larger authoritative sites do …
(Create Your Own Directory Of RSS Feeds For Subscribers)
You can link an RSS icon to the URL of your category feed and then create a table or a list of your individual feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button. Image: public-domain-photos.com)
We have written a detailed tutorial about inserting tables into WordPress content here:
RSS – Notes
You can customize 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 several RSS feed configurations that do not require messing with code. Here are some examples of custom feeds you can use …
(WordPress RSS – Custom Feeds)
Below are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Includes your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – RSS feed that includes the latest comments left on your site
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed for a post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Includes the latest comments made on single items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – RSS feed that includes the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/02/24/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – RSS feed containing latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/03/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Displays the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Includes the latest posts for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Includes the 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 feeds. Place your ’subscribe to RSS’ links somewhere visible …
(Promote your RSS feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that other sites will only subscribe to your content if you provide your subscribers with very high-quality content that can add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Easily add content to your site and get other sites 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 feed 🙂
Additional Resources:
- RSS Feed Graphics – Visit Iconspedia.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss logo download”, etc.) for sites that contain downloadable RSS icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here to learn more about RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – General information about using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex – Official WordPress documentation and reference. Go here to learn more about RSS feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know where 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 their RSS feed.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To read more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website or blog please click on links to visit other great articles and tutorials we have published on this site.
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