No matter what your business provides or what industry you belong to, providing high-quality information to your blog readers is vitally important. For example, if you provide accounting services, it’s not a bad idea to publish the latest information from the taxation office, such as news and updates on tax rulings, small business tax tips, etc.
To create and publish this type of information, however, takes a lot of time and expertise. You have to sift through, research, and organize a lot 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 well beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is a much simpler way to continually provide your site visitors with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the easiest way to provide your users with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – What Does It Mean?
- RSS stands for Rich Site Summary, or, as is more commonly known, Really Simple Syndication. It it is also referred to as a “feed” or “news feed”.
- After users subscribe to a website’s feed, they no longer have to physically check the source website for updated content. Instead, their web browser will constantly monitor the feed and automatically keep subscribers up-to-date.
- Feeds are often used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog post items, news headlines, video lists, etc., which other users can then subscribe to.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML (XML = Extensible Markup Language) document that includes full or summarized text along with other metadata like published date, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on sites that publish feeds and then keep up with any updates posted on these sites through a feedreader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate their information automatically.
- There are different kinds of feeds, read by different aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom Publishing Protocol) feeds and RDF (RDF = Resource Description Framework) feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure compatibility with different machines, feed readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also allow you to combine different RSS feeds to receive news and updates from various sources.
In this comprehensive article, we explain how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to display someone else’s content on your site via their RSS feed.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a very powerful and legitimate method used to share content online. Feeds provide online users with an easy way to stay up-to-date with the latest information published on websites and blogs they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at content syndication.
Global media publications rely on syndication to publish content from other news agencies all around the world.
Syndication allows most leading news reporting agencies to deliver readers the most recent news items and newsworthy content from all over the planet without actually having to hire more news reporting and content writing teams in every location in the world …
(Most digital publishing agencies rely heavily on content syndication to publish news and stories from news sources all around the globe.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing newsworthy content. online media publications syndicate content using feeds …
(Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing information)
Most sites actually would like you to syndicate their content. Syndicating content not only allows valuable information to be shared, but it also sends visitors back to the site that originally created theoriginally created and published the content being syndicated. This creates links that can drive traffic back to their site.
Most online newspapers and major content sites will contain an RSS feed section (look for navigation links that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “miami herald rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many digital publishers and major content sites provide links to an RSS feed section. Image: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link brings up a directory of different RSS feeds of the site …
(A list of feeds. Source: nytimes.com)
These feeds give readers access to content from different areas of the site (e.g. technology news, travel news, editorials, etc.)
Feed sections can also include further subcategories …
(RSS Feed section. Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: An RSS feed is just a URL. All you need to do to use feeds is copy the URLs and paste these into an application that can translate the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Syndicating Content – Benefits
Syndicating content from someone else’s website on your website has some obvious benefits. It gives someone else’s website additional exposure online and adds value to your site without you having to create the content …
(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Website And Yours!)
While adding a feed 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 websites to syndicate YOUR content.
When other sites syndicate your feed, you have the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive more visitors …
(It’s a good idea to get other websites and blogs to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help increase your exposure online!)
Overview Of The WordPress RSS
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on which theme you have installed, 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 display the number of items you have specified in the WordPress Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in the WordPress Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display articles as full text, or a summary …
(Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for posts in a feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content displays …
(Post excerpts can affect how a feed will appear)
If you need help Post excerpts, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, all you need to do to view the content of an RSS feed is to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into an application that can translate feeds into readable content.
Let’s show you how this works.
First, go to a website or blog and look for an RSS feed link …
(Look for an RSS feed icon. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed)
If you want, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the URL of your feed into an online feed reader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image: 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 RSS content from another site to your site.
Adding A Feed To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business operates in, you can easily add to your site the latest updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing their RSS feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, Facebook updates, 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 your sidebar)
First, Find a site containing content that you want to add to your site and copy the RSS feed URL …
(Copy the URL of your feed to the clipboard)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Load your website in your web browser. The content should now display in the sidebar (or wherever the RSS widget has been added) …
(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 Content From RSS Feeds To Your Posts
What if you want to add content from RSS feeds to posts instead of the sidebar?
You can do this using WordPress plugins. Search inside the Plugins section for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ search results – RSS plugins for WordPress)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for instructions, or contact us for assistance configuring plugins.
Here are a number of auto blogging plugins for WordPress that allow you to automatically create posts with feeds and imported content:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico)
WPeMatico is an easy to use plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from multiple RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize them into categories and campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator WordPress Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin with a number of premium add-ons for extended functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on lets you import RSS feeds directly into posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer – WordPress Plugin)
The RSS Post Importer plugin can be used to import, syndicate, curate, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress site.
The plugin will fetch an RSS feed and publish the entire content of each item in the feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin)
With the POWr RSS Feed plugin, you can combine and display content from a number of different RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS Feed plugin also lets you display videos, images, and articles, adjust feed size and spacing, use custom borders, fonts, colors, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in any language.
The premium version contains many 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)
WP Pipes is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to 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, auto blogging, auto post to Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter, export your posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to a new level.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin For WordPress)
FeedWordPress is a simple and flexible Atom/RSS syndication plugin 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.
You can use this plugin to create aggregator sites, or bring together all your online activity into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog by WPMUDev 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 your feed URL, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select a blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages Plugin)
By default, WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed. You can use a plugin like the RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types plugin to include pages in your RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Using WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of your latest post comments in addition to displaying feeds of your latest posts.
You can inspect these comments by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ section …
(Comments Feed)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors display in the Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed entries viewed on Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on which browser you are using …
(Comments feed entries as seen using Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feed reader …
(Paste your URL of your comments feed into a feed reader to view the content. Image 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 website or blog has been installed in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Single Item Feeds
Being able to access an RSS feed for single posts 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 a single post item is shown below:
(Single Post RSS Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the URI of your post, 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 URI, WordPress will return the comments associated with that post, not actual content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Post Category RSS Feeds
Some your site users may only be interested in syndicating content from one or two post categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
WordPress allows you to create individual category feeds.
All you have to do is use the format below:
(Feed format for post categories)
Copy the category URL …
(Copy the selected category link address to your clipboard …)
Now, append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(Format for WordPress post categories feed)
Your category feed now only displays content posted in that particular 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 – Provide A List Of RSS Feeds
You can set up a directory of feeds that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in the categories they are interested in, just like the larger websites do …
(Create A Feeds Directory)
Link an icon like the one shown below to a feed and then create a table or a list of all category feeds on a separate page …
(RSS button image. Source: public-domain-photos.com)
To learn more about creating tables in WordPress posts and pages, see this step-by-step tutorial:
WordPress RSS – Notes
Feeds can be customized in various 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 formats without editing code. Here are some examples of feed types you can create …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create With WordPress RSS)
For your convenience, here are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – RSS feed that includes your latest post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Contains the latest comments posted on your blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed for a specific post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: RSS Feed containing the latest comments made on a post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/05/13/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/11/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Contains latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Contains the latest post entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Contains latest posts for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One last thing …
It’s a good idea to let users know that they can subscribe to your RSS feeds. Place a subscribe links somewhere visible …
(Remember to promote your feeds!)
Keep in mind that other sites will only subscribe to your content if you provide your subscribers with high-quality information that will add great value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Add great content from other sites and get others to share your content 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 feed 🙂
Additional RSS Resources:
- Download RSS Feed Images – Visit an online resource site like Feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS logo download”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS images.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information and links to resources about RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – Learn more about the benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress.org/Feeds – WordPress software documentation site. Visit this site for more information about using RSS feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, and how to display someone else’s content on your site via RSS.
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 learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business web site please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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"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)