No matter what product or service you sell, providing high-quality information to your blog visitors is essential. For example, if your business provides taxation services, it’s not a bad idea to include useful information from the taxation office, such as news or updates on tax rulings, small business tax deductions, etc.
The problem with providing this kind of information, however, is that it requires a lot of time and expertise. You have to sort through, gather, and organize a ton of information, check your sources for accuracy, write and edit content (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 well beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is a much simpler way to regularly provide your readers with expert, up-to-date information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - One of the simplest ways to provide your blog subscribers with great information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Is RSS?
- RSS, which, according to some definitions is short for Rich Site Summary, is more commonly referred to as Really Simple Syndication. It is also often referred to as a “feed” or “news feed”.
- RSS lets content publishers automatically syndicate their content so that users can read it without having to keep revisiting their site to check for updates.
- Feeds are typically used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog posts, news, videos, etc., which users can then subscribe to.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is a structured XML document that includes full or summarized text along with metadata such as published date, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then view updates posted on these sites through a feedreader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate their content.
- Feeds can be made available in different types and 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 that feeds are compatible with different devices and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also allow you to combine several RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates from various sources.
This article shows you how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to display content from other websites on your site using RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a powerful way to share web content. Feeds provide online users with a way to keep up with the latest information posted on different websites and blogs.
First, let’s take a look at syndication.
Many news reporting agencies use syndication to publish newsworthy content from news agencies all around the world.
Syndication allows most content publishing agencies and many influential media publications to deliver readers global stories and up-to-the-minute news headlines from all around the planet without actually having to employ additional writers everywhere around the world …
(Global media publications use syndication to publish content from news sources all around the world.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing information. Online newspapers syndicate newsworthy content using feeds …
(Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing information)
Most websites actually want you to syndicate their information. Syndicating content not only allows information to be shared, but it also drives visitors back to the original site that created and published the content being syndicated. This provides websites with new opportunities to generate significant web traffic.
Major sites have a 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”, “courier mail rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Major content sites provide links to a feed section. Image: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds section brings up a list of RSS feeds for different content topics on the site …
(RSS feeds section. Image: New York Times)
Each of these RSS feeds lets you access information from different areas of the website (e.g. business news, arts news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
Feed sections can also include subcategories …
(Feed sections can also contain feed subdirectories. Image: latimes.com feeds)
Note: A feed is simply a URL. To use RSS feeds, all you need to do is copy the URLs and paste these into software that can process the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
The Benefits Of Content Syndication
Syndicating content from someone else’s site on your website has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s website additional exposure online, it also helps your site by freeing you up from having to create this content …
(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Business And Yours!)
While adding RSS 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 websites to use your content.
When other websites and blogs syndicate your content, this gives your business the opportunity to get increased exposure online and drive more web traffic …
(Get visitors to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help to increase traffic!)
WordPress RSS – Overview
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing other online users to easily syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on which theme you have installed, there are a number of ways to access your RSS feed:
1) If your theme displays the Meta widget on the sidebar or footer …
(The feed will show as many recent posts as you have specified in your 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 RSS feed is whether to display posts as full text, or as a summary …
(WP Settings – Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for each article in your RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content appears …
(Post excerpts affect how your feeds will display)
If you need help WordPress Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, to view a feed’s content, you need to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into an application that can read and translate feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s take a look at how this works.
First, go to a website or blog and look for an RSS feed section …
(Look for an RSS feed link. 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 URL of the feed into a feed reader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feedreader to view the content. Image: Feedreader.com)
Like feed readers, WordPress has the ability to process RSS feeds and convert these into human-readable content.
Adding Feeds To Your Site
Let’s show you how to add content from another website’s RSS feeds to yours.
Adding RSS Feeds To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is in, you can easily add to your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by adding their RSS feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, Facebook 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 an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar area)
First, Find a site containing content that you would like to add to your sidebar and copy its RSS feed …
(Copy the URL of your feed to the clipboard)
Next, go to your WordPress Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets and paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(Widgets Panel – RSS Widget)
To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:
Load your website in your web browser. The content from the RSS feed should appear in 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 Feed Content To Your Posts
Can content from an RSS feed be added to a post instead of your sidebar? It sure can!
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Search on the WordPress plugin repository for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ section)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us for assistance with plugin configuration.
The plugins below can be used to feed content to posts, or “autoblog” (An auto blog is a blog with content that is automatically gathered and compiled from RSS feeds):
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin)
WPeMatico is an autoblogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds that you specify.
You can manage all the feeds you import and arrange them according to categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging plugin for WordPress that offers premium add-ons for extended functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin lets you autoblog 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 WordPress Plugin)
RSS Post Importer allows you to import, syndicate, curate, merge and display full text RSS feeds on your WordPress website or blog.
The plugin fetches an RSS feed and publishes the entire content of each feed item as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)
With POWr RSS Feed, you can combine and display content from a number of different RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust feed priority, use custom colors, borders, fonts, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in every language.
The premium edition of POWr contains many 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 allows you to create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.
This plugin provides loads of powerful features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, export WordPress 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)
FeedWordPress is a flexible Atom/RSS 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 bring together content from different sources), or bring together all your online activity into a Lifestream.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog by WPMUDev WordPress Plugin)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in the URL of your feed, give your feed a name (for admin purposes) and select the 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)
Install RSS Includes Pages to include pages in your RSS feed and not just posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WP Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of comments posted on your site in addition to giving online users access to RSS feeds of your posts.
To view this feed, go to the ‘Meta’ widget on your sidebar (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) and click on Comments RSS …
(Comments RSS)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors and users display in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed entries displayed on Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on which browser you are using …
(Comments feed entries as seen on Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the comments feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your comments feed into a feed reader to view the content. 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 WP installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Using RSS Feeds For Specific Post Items
Being able to display an RSS feed for an individual 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 displaying an RSS feed for specific post items is shown below:
(Specific Post RSS Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the URL of your post, 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 URI, WordPress will return the comments made on your post, not the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Displaying Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in subscribing to content from one or two post categories. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
If your website publishes content under a number of categories, WordPress allows you to easily create a separate feed for each of these categories.
Just use the format shown below:
(WordPress post categories RSS feed format)
Select and copy the category link address …
(Copy the category URL …)
Add “feed” to the end of it …
(Format for WP post categories feed)
The RSS feed will now only include content assigned to this particular category …
(Category-specific 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 Your Own Page Of RSS Feeds On Your Site
You can create a feeds list that allows readers to subscribe to specific categories, just like the larger online publishers do …
(Create A Feeds Page)
All you need to do is link a button icon to category feed URLs and then create a table or a list of all your individual feeds on a new page …
(RSS button graphic. Image Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
We have written a detailed tutorial on adding tables to WordPress posts here:
RSS – Additional Notes
You can customize your RSS in several different ways, such as adding images and videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows you to configure various feed types that do not require messing with code. Here are some examples of feeds you can use and how to format the feeds …
(Different Feed Types You Can Create With WordPress RSS)
Below are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the image above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – contains your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Displays the latest comments published on your site
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed that displays specific post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: RSS Feed containing the latest comments made on specific posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Displays latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/05/30/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/05/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – RSS feed that includes the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Displays latest entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Includes the latest posts 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. Make sure you place your subscribe button in a visible location …
(Promote your feeds!)
Keep in mind that other sites will only want to subscribe to your content if you provide your subscribers with high-quality information that will add value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add someone else’s content and get online users to subscribe to your content using 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 🙂
Additional RSS Resources:
- Feed Images – Visit sites like Iconspedia.com or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “rss buttons”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable Free RSS images.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information about RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – General information about using RSS feeds.
- WordPress.org – WordPress software documentation and reference site. Go here to learn more about using feeds in WordPress.
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 add someone else’s content to your site via their RSS feed.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you expand your business online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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