No matter what what industry you belong to, providing high-quality information to your blog users is important. For example, if you provide insurance services, you may want to provide users with information from government departments, such as news and updates on statistical research, insurance advice, etc.
The problem with creating this type of information, however, is that it involves a lot of effort and expertise. You have to do a ton of information gathering, researching and organizing, fact-checking, content writing and editing (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually make sure that this information is kept up-to-date. As you can imagine, this not only involves 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 site visitors with expert, up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - The easiest way to provide your site visitors with great information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Is RSS?
- RSS is an acronym for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred to, Really Simple Syndication. It is often called a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
- When a user subscribes to an RSS feed, they no longer have to physically check the source website for updated content. Instead, their browser constantly monitors the site and keeps subscribers updated.
- RSS feeds are also used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as new blog posts, news headlines, video lists, etc., which users can then subscribe to.
- RSS feed content can be read using a program called a feedreader, or feed aggregator. Feedreaders are used to access content on all kinds of topics and distribute this content (and updates made to this content) to online properties.
- Feeds can be made available in different formats and 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 devices, feedreaders, and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also allow you to combine many RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates from various sources.
This article shows you where your RSS feed is located, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to add content from other sites to your site via RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful and legitimate method used to share web content. Feeds provide a simple and easy way for online users to receive the latest information published on websites they are interested in.
First, let’s look at how syndication is used.
Global media and news agencies rely on content syndication to publish news from content sources all around the world.
Syndication allows leading online newspapers to deliver readers stories on all kinds of topics from around the globe without actually having to hire and post additional news staff and reporters all around the world …
(Global media publications rely heavily on syndication to publish newsworthy stories from news sources all around the globe.)
Syndication is used to share newsworthy content legitimately. online media publications syndicate their stories using news feeds …
(Content syndication is used by global media publications to share information with other publications)
Most websites actually would like you to syndicate their content. Syndicating content not only allows information to be shared, but it also drives 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.
Many news reporting agencies and major content sites 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”, “salt lake tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most content publishing agencies and major online media publications have an RSS feed section. Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section will bring up a list of different RSS feeds of the site …
(RSS feeds section. Image Source: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
These RSS feed items let readers source content from different sections of the site (e.g. business news, sports news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain further subcategory feeds …
(RSS Feed section. Image Source: LA Times RSS)
Note: An RSS feed is just a URL. To use feeds, all you have to do is copy the URLs and paste these into software that can process the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Syndicating Content
Adding content from someone else’s site on your website has some obvious benefits. It not only helps someone else’s site, it also adds value to your site without you having to create this content …
(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Website And Yours!)
While adding an RSS feed from another site is a great way to add content to your site that you don’t have to create, it’s worth keeping in mind that there are benefits in getting other websites to syndicate your content.
When other websites syndicate your RSS feed, you have the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive more visitors …
(It’s a good idea to get visitors to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)
WordPress RSS – Overview
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on your theme, there are a few ways to get your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget on your navigation menu …
(The feed page will display the number of posts as you have specified in your Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in the Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display posts as full text, or just a summary …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’: ‘Full text’ or ‘Summary’)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …
(Post excerpts affect how your feeds display)
If you need help using excerpts in WordPress Posts, refer to this tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, all that’s required to view a feed’s content is to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into an application that translates feeds into readable content.
Let’s see how this works.
First, find a website whose content you want to subscribe to and look for a ’subscribe to feed’ link or button using any of the methods described earlier …
(Look for an RSS feed icon. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed to your clipboard)
If you want, you can check the feed content 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: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds.
How To Add RSS Feeds To WordPress Sites
In the example below, we’ll add RSS content from another site to yours.
How To Add A Feed To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you operate in, you can easily display on your site the latest content from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by adding their RSS feed. You can use feeds to 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 your sidebar …
(Let’s add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar area)
First, find a website or blog that publishes content that you would like to add to your sidebar and copy its RSS feed …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
Next, paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content can now be seen on your sidebar (or wherever the RSS widget has been inserted) …
(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:
How To Add Feeds To Posts
Can content from RSS feeds be added to WordPress posts? Yes, it can!
You can do this using plugins. Just search on the WordPress plugin repository for RSS Post, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ search results)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for instructions, or contact us for assistance configuring plugins.
Here are a number of autoblogging plugins that let you create new using RSS feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico WordPress 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 organize them into campaigns and categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin For WordPress)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin that offers premium add-ons for additional functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin allows you to add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into your posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
RSS Post Importer allows you to syndicate, curate, import, merge and display full text feeds on your WordPress website or blog.
The plugin fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full content of each item in the feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin)
POWr RSS lets you automatically combine and display content from various RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display images, videos, and articles, adjust feed priority, use custom backgrounds, colors, fonts, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in every language.
The premium edition of this plugin 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 WP Plugin)
The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.
This plugin provides loads of functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn, export posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to new levels.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress – WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a versatile Atom/RSS syndication plugin for WordPress site 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.
You can use this plugin to create aggregator site (sites that bring together content from various different sources), or display all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Twitter, Flickr, or other online services, into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog – WordPress Plugin)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in your feed URL, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select the blog that you want it to post to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages)
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types modifies your RSS feeds to include pages in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to giving online users access to feeds of your latest posts, WordPress also displays RSS feeds of your latest post comments.
To view these, go to the ‘Meta’ widget on your sidebar (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) and click on Comments RSS …
(WordPress Comments RSS)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors will appear in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed entries viewed on Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on which browser you use …
(Comments feed entries viewed using a Google Chrome web browser)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …
(Paste your URL of your comments feed 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 WP installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Displaying Specific Item RSS Feeds
Being able to select an RSS feed for single posts 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 accessing an RSS feed for an individual post is shown below:
(Feed For Individual Post)
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 append “/feed” to the end of the post, WordPress will return the comments associated with that post, not the content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Displaying Category Feeds
Some your site visitors may only want to syndicate content from a specific category. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
If you publish content under multiple categories, WordPress allows you to easily offer readers a separate feed for each category.
Just use the format below:
(WordPress RSS feed format for category)
Select and copy the category URL …
(Copy the selected category URL …)
Add the word “feed” to the end of it …
(WordPress post categories RSS feed format)
The feed will now only include content published in that category …
(Category-specific 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 – Create Your Own List Of Feeds
You can publish an RSS feeds list that allows your readers to subscribe to specific categories, just like large authoritative sites …
(Set Up A List Of Feeds)
You can also link an RSS button image to the URL of your category feed and then create a table or a list of your individual feeds on a separate page …
(RSS image. Image Source: public-domain-photos.com)
We have created a detailed tutorial on adding tables to WordPress content here:
RSS – Notes
RSS feeds can be customized in several different ways, such as adding videos and images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows you to configure different feed types without touching code. Here are some examples of custom feeds you can display …
(WordPress RSS – Feed Formats)
Here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed in the table 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 – Includes the latest comments left on your site
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed that includes single posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Feed that includes the latest comments made on single post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Displays latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/12/31/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/05/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Contains latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/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: Contains the latest entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One more thing …
Remember to promote your RSS feed. Make sure you place your subscribe button in a visible location …
(Encourage your site users to syndicate your RSS feeds!)
Also, keep in mind that online users will only subscribe to your content if your information is useful, educational, or highly engaging. In other words, provide high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Add great content to your site and get visitors 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 🙂
Additional Resources:
- RSS Images – Visit Feedicons or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss icon”, etc.) for sites that contain downloadable Free RSS images.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information about RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about using RSS feeds.
- WordPress.org/Feeds – Official WordPress documentation repository. Visit this site 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 add someone else’s content to your site via RSS.
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 using WordPress for a business website or blog please click on links to visit other great content we have published on this site.
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"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com