No matter what what industry you are a part of, it’s vitally important to provide high-value information to your site or blog users. For example, if your business provides travel services, you may want to include the latest information from government departments and foreign travel offices, such as news and updates on travel warnings, advice from consular offices, etc.
The problem with creating this kind of information, however, is that it involves a lot of effort and resources. You have to filter through, research, and organize a ton of information, 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 huge amount of work but most of the information you are dealing with is entirely 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 - The easiest way to provide your blog subscribers with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS Made Simple
- RSS is an acronym for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly known, Really Simple Syndication. It is often called a “feed” or “news feed”.
- After a user subscribes to an RSS feed, they no longer have to physically check the website for updated content. Instead, their browser will continually monitor the site and automatically keep subscribers updated.
- Feeds are typically used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as blog entries, news headlines, video lists, etc., to which other users can choose to subscribe.
- You can read an RSS feed with a program called a feed reader, or aggregator. Feedreaders can be used to find new content published on websites and syndicate this content (and updates made to this content) to other online properties.
- There are different kinds of feeds, read by different feed aggregators. 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, feed readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also let you combine several RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates sourced from many websites.
This guide shows you 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 very powerful (and legitimate) way to share web content. Feeds provide online users with a simple and easy way to keep up with the latest information posted on different websites and blogs.
First, let’s look at how content syndication is used.
Online media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies around the world.
Syndication allows online newspapers to deliver readers stories and newsworthy content from all over the planet without having to employ and post more news reporting agencies everywhere in the world …
(Global media publications rely on syndication to publish newsworthy items from news sources all around the planet.)
Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing content with other sites. News publishers syndicate their content using news feeds …
(Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing newsworthy content)
Most sites actually would like you to syndicate their information. Syndicating content not only allows information of great value to be shared, but it can also drive visitors back to the site that originally published the content being syndicated. This creates links that can drive traffic back to their site.
Most digital news publishing agencies and major sites will contain an RSS feed section (look for links in their navigation section that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “nz herald rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most leading online media publications will include a feed section. Image: Sydney Morning Herald RSS )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link brings up a directory of different RSS feeds …
(RSS directory. Image: nytimes.com)
gives readers access to content from different sections of the website (e.g. technology news, arts news, editorials, etc.)
Feed sections can also include further subcategory feeds …
(RSS Feed section. Image Source: latimes.com)
Note: A feed is just a URL. To use RSS feeds, all you need to do is copy the URLs and paste these into a program that can process the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Content Syndication – Benefits
Adding someone else’s content to your website has some obvious benefits. It not only gives additional exposure online to someone else’s website, it also adds value to your site without you having to create this content …
(Content Syndication Benefits Someone Else’s Website And Yours!)
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 websites and blogs syndicate your feed, this gives you the opportunity to get increased exposure online and drive new visitors …
(Get users to syndicate your feed … it will help to increase traffic!)
WordPress RSS – About
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on your WordPress site’s theme, there are a few ways to get your RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget in a navigation menu …
(The 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 Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display each article in a feed as full text, or a summary …
(Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for posts in your RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …
(Post excerpts can affect how a feed appears)
To learn more about Post excerpts, see this tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, to view the content of an RSDS feed, you have to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into an application that can read and translate feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, find a website whose feed you want to syndicate and look for a ’subscribe to feed’ link or button using any of the methods described earlier …
(Look for an RSS feed section. Image source: http://www.yourcoffeeguru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL)
If you want, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feedreader …
(Paste your URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the content. Image Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds and convert these into content that is readable by humans.
How To Add RSS Feeds To WordPress Sites
Let’s show you how to add content from other websites or blogs to your site.
Adding Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you can display on your site the latest news and updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by adding 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 the WordPress sidebar …
(Let’s add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu)
copy the RSS feed from a website or blog that publishes content that you would like to display on your site …
(Copy the URL of your feed to your clipboard)
Next, go to your Widgets section and paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(WordPress RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Load your website in your web browser. The content from the RSS feed will now appear in your sidebar …
(RSS Feed Content 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 RSS Feeds To Your Posts
Can content from an RSS feed be added to WordPress posts instead of the sidebar? It sure can!
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Search on WordPress.org plugin directory for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ search results)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for setup instructions, or contact us if you need help configuring plugins.
Here are a number of autoblogging plugins for WordPress that let you create posts with RSS feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico WordPress Plugin)
WPeMatico is an autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds that you choose.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and arrange them into campaigns and categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator – WordPress Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and autoblogging WordPress plugin that offers additional functionality with premium extensions (add-ons).
For example, the Feed to Post extension allows you to autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into your posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
The RSS Post Importer plugin allows you to curate, syndicate, import, merge and display full-text feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) on your WordPress website or blog.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full content of each feed item as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)
POWr RSS lets you combine and display content from multiple RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust sizing and spacing of feeds, use custom backgrounds, colors, fonts, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on all tablets, computers, and phones and supports text in all languages.
The premium edition of POWr contains many 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)
The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.
This plugin provides features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn, export posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a simple and flexible syndication plugin for WordPress-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 site (sites that combine posts from different sources), or display all of your online activity into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog by WPMUDev WordPress Plugin)
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 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 Plugin)
The RSS Includes Pages plugin modifies the default WordPress RSS feed to include pages in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WordPress Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to making RSS feeds of your posts available, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of the latest comments posted on your site.
You can inspect this feed by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ section of your sidebar …
(Comments Feed)
Comments posted on your site by visitors display in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items viewed on Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on which browser you are using …
(RSS comments feed entries viewed using a Google Chrome web browser)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into an online feed reader …
(Paste the URL of your comments feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image: 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 subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Accessing Feeds For Specific Posts
Being able to select an RSS feed for a specific 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:
(Feed For Single Post)
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 your post, WordPress will return the comments made on your post, not actual post content itself.
Tip #3 – Displaying Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only want to syndicate content from a particular post category. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
If your site publishes content under several categories, WordPress allows you to easily provide a separate RSS feed for each different category.
All you have to do is use the format shown below:
(Feed format for post categories)
Copy the selected category link address to your clipboard …
(Copy your category link address …)
Add the word “feed” to the end of it …
(WordPress RSS feed format for category)
Your category feed will now only contain content specific to that 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 Page Of RSS Feeds
You can create your own RSS feeds page that allows your readers to subscribe to content in the categories that interest them, just like the larger authoritative sites do …
(Publish A Directory Of Feeds For Your Subscribers)
All you need to do is link an image like the one shown below to each feed URL and then create a table or a list of all category feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button graphic. Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about inserting tables into WordPress, go here:
WordPress RSS – Notes
RSS feeds can be customized in several ways, such as adding videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows you to configure various feed types without editing code. Here are some examples of custom feed types you can create …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create With WordPress RSS)
For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed in the diagram 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 – Includes the latest comments left on your website
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed containing specific items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Contains the latest comments made on a post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/12/10/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – RSS feed containing latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/07/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Displays the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Includes latest items for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Displays 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 users know that they can subscribe to your RSS feeds. Make sure you place your ’subscribe to RSS’ button somewhere visible …
(Promote your RSS feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that other website owners will only syndicate your content if your information is useful, educational, or highly engaging. In other words, focus on providing your subscribers with high-quality information that will add great value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Easily add great content to your site and get others to syndicate your content with RSS!)
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 RSS feed 🙂
RSS Resources:
- Download RSS Feed Buttons – Visit FeedIcons or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “rss buttons”, etc.) for sites that contain downloadable RSS images and icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to gain a better understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – Learn more about RSS.
- WordPress.org/RSS Feeds – Official WordPress documentation. Visit this site for additional information about WordPress feeds.
Congratulations! Now you know how 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 websites on your site using RSS.
Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you expand your business online. To read more about using WordPress for a business website or blog please click on links to visit 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