No matter what product or service you sell, it’s important to provide high-quality information on your site or blog. For example, if your business provides travel-related services, you may want to provide users with useful information from government and foreign travel departments, such as news and updates on travel warnings, advice from consular offices, etc.
The problem with providing this type of information, however, is that it involves an enormous amount of work and expertise. You have to do a ton of information sifting, researching and organizing, checking the accuracy of your facts, writing and editing content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then ensure that this information is continually kept 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 entirely beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a much easier way to continually provide your readers with up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - The easiest way to provide your subscribers with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – Basic Definition
- RSS, which, according to some definitions stands for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly known as Really Simple Syndication. It is often referred to as a “feed” or “web feed”.
- RSS allows content publishers to automatically syndicate their content so that subscribers can read it without having to keep revisiting sites to check for updates.
- Feeds are also used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog posts, news headlines, videos, etc., which users can choose to subscribe to.
- You can view an RSS feed with a software program called an RSS reader, or feed aggregator. Feedreaders can be used to find new content published on websites and distribute this content online.
- There are different kinds of feeds, read by different feedreaders. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom feeds and RDF 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 receive news and updates sourced from various sites.
In this comprehensive guide, you are going to learn how to find your WordPress RSS feed, 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.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful way to share content online. Feeds provide online users with a simple way to stay up-to-date with the latest information posted on sites they are interested in.
First, let’s look at how content syndication is used.
Global media and news reporting agencies use content syndication to publish stories from content sources around the world.
Syndication allows news reporting agencies to deliver readers fresh newsworthy items and content of interest from around the globe without having to post additional reporters everywhere around the world …
(Most online newspapers and highly-visited media publications use content syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies around the world.)
Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing content. Global media publications syndicate stories using feeds …
(Content syndication is a legitimate method of sharing information)
Most websites actually would like you to syndicate their content. Syndicating content not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it can also drive visitors back to the original site responsible for publishing the content being syndicated. This provides websites with additional opportunities to generate significant web visitors.
Many online newspapers and major online media publications include an RSS feed section (look for menu links that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “express tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many digital content publishing agencies have a feed section. Image Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link will bring up a list of RSS feeds for different areas of the site …
(RSS feeds directory. Image: nytimes.com)
These feeds let readers access content from different sections of the site (e.g. technology news, arts news, editorials, etc.)
An RSS feed directory can also include subcategory feeds …
(RSS Feed section. Image: Los Angeles Times)
Note: A feed is only a URL. All you need to do to use RSS feeds is to copy the URLs and paste these 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 or blog on your site has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s website additional exposure online and helps your site by freeing you up from having to create that content …
(The Benefits Of Syndicating Content)
While adding feeds 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 syndicate your content.
When other websites and blogs syndicate your RSS feed, this gives you the opportunity to gain increased exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Try to get users to syndicate content using your feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
WordPress RSS – About
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on your WP theme, there are a number of ways to access the WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget in a navigation menu …
(The 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 your Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display your posts as full text, or just as a summary …
(Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for posts in a RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed displays …
(Post excerpts can affect how your feed content will appear)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using excerpts in WordPress Posts here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, to view a feed’s content, you have to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into an application that can translate feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, go to a website or blog and search for a ‘subscribe’ button …
(Search for an RSS feed link. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL to your clipboard)
If you want, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste your URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image Source: Feedreader.com)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS feeds and convert these into readable content for humans.
How To Add RSS Feeds To WordPress
Let’s show you how to add content from another website’s RSS feeds to your site.
Adding RSS Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you can easily add to your site the latest updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply importing content from their feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, social media updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu …
(Let’s add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar)
copy the RSS feed URL from a website containing content that you would like to display on your site to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed to your clipboard)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Section – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content can now be seen on the sidebar …
(RSS Feed Content Added To Sidebar)
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 Feed Content To Your WordPress Posts
Can content from an RSS feed be added to a post? Yes, it can!
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Just search inside your Plugins admin section (Plugins > Add New) for RSS feed, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ search results – 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 some auto blogging plugins that let you automatically add posts with RSS feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico)
WPeMatico is an autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from multiple RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize feeds into campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator – WordPress Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and autoblogging plugin for WordPress that offers a number of premium add-ons for additional functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on is an advanced importer that lets you import RSS feeds directly into WordPress posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer WP Plugin)
RSS Post Importer allows you to syndicate, curate, import, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress website or blog.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full article content of each item in your feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin For WordPress)
POWr RSS lets you automatically combine and display content from multiple sources using RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display videos, images, and articles, adjust the priority of different feeds, use custom colors, fonts, borders, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on any phone, tablet, or computer and supports text in all languages.
The premium version contains a number of additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, accept or reject posts in your feed, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes WordPress Plugin)
WP Pipes is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you 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 posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress – WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a versatile Atom/RSS syndication plugin for WordPress 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 site (sites that display content from many different sources), or bring together all of your online activity in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog by WPMUDev)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in the URL of your feed, 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 and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types Plugin)
By default, WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed. Use a plugin like RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types to include pages in your RSS feed and not just posts.
For more details, go here:
Using RSS – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WordPress Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress makes available RSS feeds of your latest post comments in addition to giving online users access to RSS feeds of your latest posts.
You can inspect these by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ widget of your sidebar menu (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) …
(WordPress Comments Feed)
Comments posted on your site by visitors and users can be seen in the Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed entries viewed using Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on which web browser you use …
(RSS comments feed entries displayed on Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the comments RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feedreader …
(Paste your URL of your comments feed into a feed reader to view the content. 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 site is located in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Accessing Feeds For Individual Posts
Being able to access an RSS feed for an individual post item 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 displaying an RSS feed for a specific post is shown below:
(RSS Feed For Specific Post)
To create the above feed, copy the post URL, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only add “/feed” to the end of a post, WordPress will return the comments associated with your post, not the content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Category Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in syndicating content from specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
If your website or blog contains content published under different categories, WordPress allows you to easily provide a separate RSS feed for each different category.
Just use the format shown below:
(Use this format for WordPress post categories RSS feed)
Select and copy the category link address to your clipboard …
(Select and copy your category link address …)
And append “feed” to the end of it …
(Use this format for WP category feed)
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 – Provide Your Own Page Of RSS Feeds
You can create your own RSS feeds page that allows readers to subscribe only to content in the categories that interest them …
(Create A List Of Feeds For Your Visitors)
All you need to do is link an RSS button image to category feeds and then create a table or a list of all your category feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button. Image Source: public-domain-photos.com)
If you need help with adding tables to WordPress content, see this tutorial:
RSS – Notes
You can customize your feeds in a number of ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows you to configure several feed types without messing with code. For example, the table below shows some of the kinds of feed types you can use …
(WordPress RSS – Feed Types)
Here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed in the diagram above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Feed that contains your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – RSS feed that contains the latest comments posted on your website or blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed containing specific posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Feed that displays the latest comments made on specific posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/06/06/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/07/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Displays the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Contains latest posts for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: RSS feed displaying the latest post 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 let your visitors know that they can subscribe to your feeds. Make sure you place your ’subscribe to RSS’ links somewhere visible …
(Promote your feeds!)
Keep in mind that other website owners will only syndicate your content if you publish useful content that educates, engages, and entertains. In other words, provide high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Easily add great content from other sites and get other users to subscribe to your content online with RSS feeds!)
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:
- Download RSS Feed Buttons – Visit a site like FeedIcons or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “rss images”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS images.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to gain a better understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about using RSS feeds.
- WordPress.org – WordPress software documentation and information site. 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 content from other sites on your site using RSS feeds.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues 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 web site please see other great articles and tutorials we have published on this site.
***
"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)