No matter what what industry you belong to, it’s important to provide high-value information on your site or blog. For example, if you provide travel-related services, it’s a good idea to include information from government departments and foreign travel offices, such as news and updates on travel warnings, tips from consular offices, etc.

To create and publish this type of information, however, is really time-consuming. You have to filter through, research, 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 ensure that this information is kept up-to-date. As you can imagine, this is not only 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 site readers with great information.

It’s called RSS …

(RSS - The simplest way to provide your readers with great information)

The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS

RSS – What You Need To Know

• RSS is short for RDF Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred, Really Simple Syndication. It it is also called a “feed” or “news feed”.
• RSS lets content publishers automatically syndicate their content to save readers time from having to keep revisiting their site to check for updates.
• Feeds are also used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as blog entries, news, audio lists, etc., to which other users can choose to subscribe.
• RSS feed content can be viewed with a software program called a feed reader, or feed aggregator. Aggregators can be used to find content on all different kinds of topics and distribute this content to many online properties.
• There are different kinds of feeds, read by different feedreaders. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom Publishing Protocol) feeds and RDF feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure that feeds are compatible with different machines and programs.
• Many sites and software applications also allow you to combine several RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates sourced from various sites.

This detailed article shows you where 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 using their RSS feed.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds

Content syndication is a very powerful (and legitimate) method used for sharing web content. RSS Feeds provide online users with a simple way to stay up-to-date with the latest information published on different sites.

First, let’s take a look at content syndication.

News publishing agencies use syndication to publish content from other news agencies around the world.

Syndication allows most news reporting agencies to deliver readers the most recent stories and newsworthy content from all around the planet without actually having to hire and send additional reporters and writers to every place around the world …

(Media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish newsworthy stories from news sources all around the planet.)

Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing newsworthy content with other sites. online media publications syndicate newsworthy content using feeds …

(Syndication is a legitimate method 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 original site that created and published the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.

Many digital content publishers and major sites have a 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”, “international herald tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …

(Many news reporting agencies and major content sites include an RSS feed section. Image Source: SMH )

Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link will bring up a directory of RSS feeds for different content sections of the site …

(RSS directory. Image: nytimes.com RSS feeds)

gives you access to information about different sections of the website (e.g. technology news, sports news, editorials, etc.)

Feed sections can also include subcategory feeds …

(An RSS feed directory can also include feed subdirectories. Source: latimes.com feeds)

Note: A feed is just 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 into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.

The Benefits Of Content Syndication

Adding someone else’s content to your site has some obvious benefits. It not only gives additional exposure online to someone else’s site, it also adds value to your site without you having to create that content …

(Content Syndication Benefits Someone Else’s Business 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 you also want other sites to use your content.

When other websites syndicate your feed, you have the opportunity to gain more exposure online and drive new visitors …

(Get other online users to syndicate your content … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)

WordPress Feed – Overview

By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing others to syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.

Depending on your WP theme, there are a number of ways to get your RSS feed:

1) If your theme has been configured to display the Meta widget in a standard or custom menu …

(Your feed will show the number of items you have specified in your WP Reading Settings section)

Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed

Another setting in the WP Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display each article as full text, or as a summary …

(Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for articles in a RSS feed)

Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …

(Post excerpts can affect how content in feeds display)

We have written a detailed tutorial on Post excerpts here:

• WordPress Post Excerpts A Guide For WordPress Beginners

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 a feedreader, i.e. an application that can translate feeds into readable content.

Let’s take a look at how this works.

First, find a website or blog and look for an RSS feed button …

(Look for an RSS feed button. Image source: http://www.yourcoffeeguru.com)

Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …

(Copy the URL of your feed)

If you want, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …

(Paste your URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the content. Image Source: Feedreader)

Like feed readers, WordPress also has the ability to process RSS feeds.

How To Add Feeds To Your WP Site

In the example below, we’ll add content from another website’s RSS feeds to your site.

How To Add Feeds To Your Sidebar

As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is a part of, you could add to 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, social media updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.

Let’s add RSS content to the WordPress sidebar navigation area …

(Let’s add content from an RSS feed to your sidebar)

copy the RSS feed from a website or blog containing content that you would like to display on your sidebar …

(Copy your feed URL to the clipboard)

Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into an RSS widget …

(Widgets Panel – RSS Widget)

To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:

• How To Add And Configure WordPress Widgets In Your Sidebar

Load your site in your web browser. The content from the RSS feed will now display on your 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:

• How To Set Up Webmaster Accounts

Adding Feed Content To Your Posts

Can you add content from an RSS feed to a post instead of your sidebar? Yes, you can!

You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Search on the WordPress plugin repository for RSS Aggregator, 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 if you need assistance configuring plugins.

The plugins below are useful for adding feed content to posts, or “auto blog” (An autoblog is a blog with content that is automatically gathered and compiled from RSS feeds):

WPeMatico

(WPeMatico)

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 arrange them into categories and campaigns.

For more details, go here:

• WPeMatico – WordPress Plugin

WP RSS Aggregator

(WP RSS Aggregator – WordPress Plugin)

WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and autoblogging plugin for WordPress with extended functionality with a number of premium extensions (add-ons).

For example, the Feed to Post add-on for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin lets you add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into your posts.

For more details, go here:

• WP RSS Aggregator WordPress Plugin

RSS Post Importer

(RSS Post Importer Plugin)

The RSS Post Importer plugin lets you curate, syndicate, import, merge and display full text feeds on your WordPress website or blog.

The plugin fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full article content of each feed item as a separate post.

For more details, go here:

• RSS Post Importer

Powr RSS Feed

(Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin)

With POWr RSS, you can automatically combine and display content from a number of different sources using RSS feeds.

The POWr RSS Feed plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust feed spacing and size, use custom borders, fonts, colors, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in all languages.

The premium version contains many additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, manually accept or reject posts in your feed, and more.

For more details, go here:

• Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin

WP Pipes

(WP Pipes Plugin For WordPress)

The WP Pipes plugin is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.

This plugin provides loads of features like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, export posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!

For more details, go here:

• WP Pipes WordPress Plugin

FeedWordPress

(FeedWordPress Plugin For WordPress)

FeedWordPress provides simple and flexible syndication 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 and display content from different sources), or display all your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Twitter, Flickr, or other online services, in one place.

For more details, go here:

• FeedWordPress WP Plugin

Autoblog

(Autoblog by WPMUDev Plugin For WordPress)

Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in your feed URL, give the feed a name of your choosing (for admin purposes) and select a blog to post content to.

For more details, go here:

• Autoblog by WPMUDev Plugin

RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types

(RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types – WordPress Plugin)

Install RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed in addition to posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).

For more details, go here:

• RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types WordPress Plugin

Using RSS Feeds – Useful Tips

Tip #1 – WordPress Comment RSS Feeds

WordPress makes available RSS feeds of comments posted on your site in addition to displaying feeds of your latest posts.

To see these, go to the ‘Meta’ section on your sidebar menu (note: this section may not be visible on some themes) and click on Comments RSS …

(WordPress Comments Feed)

All the comments posted on your site by visitors display in the Comments RSS page …

(RSS comments feed content displayed on Firefox)

Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on the web browser you are using …

(Comments feed items seen using a Google Chrome web browser)

Again, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …

(Paste the URL of your comments feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image: 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 WordPress installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)

Tip #2 – Creating RSS Feeds For Single Items

Being able to use an RSS feed for an individual post 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 accessing an RSS feed for specific posts is shown below:

(Feed For Single Post Item)

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 URL, WordPress will return the comments associated with your post, not the post content itself.

Tip #3 – Category Feeds

Some your site users may only be interested in subscribing to content from specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.

WordPress allows you to create category feeds.

All you have to do is use the format shown below:

(RSS feed format for category)

Select and copy the category link address to your clipboard …

(Copy the category link address …)

Append the word “feed” to the end of it …

(WP post categories RSS feed format)

The category RSS feed will now only display content assigned to 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 – Set Up Your Own Feeds Page

You can create an RSS feeds list that allows your readers to subscribe to specific categories …

(Provide Your Own RSS Feeds List)

All you need to do is link an RSS icon like the one shown below to your category feeds and then create a table or a list of your feeds on a new page …

(RSS icon. Image Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)

We have created a detailed tutorial about adding tables to WordPress content here:

• Creating And Adding Tables In Posts And Pages With WordPress

WordPress RSS – Additional Notes

You can customize feeds in several different ways, such as adding videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require code editing skills.

WordPress allows various RSS feed configurations without touching code. Here are some examples of feed formats you can use and how to create these feeds …

(WordPress RSS – Custom Feeds)

Here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the image above:

• Feed Type: All Posts
• Description: Content feed – displays your latest post entries
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/

• Feed Type: All Comments
• Description: Comments feed – Feed that displays the latest comments published on your website
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/

• Feed Type: Individual Posts
• Description: Feed that includes a single post
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/

• Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
• Description: Displays the latest comments made on a single post
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Day – Feed displaying the latest entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/05/11/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Month – Displays the latest items in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/12/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Year – Includes latest posts in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/feed/

• Feed Type: Search Results
• Description: Contains latest items for a search query
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/

• Feed Type: Custom Post Type
• Description: Includes latest items 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 promote your RSS feed. Place a ’subscribe to RSS’ link somewhere visible …

(Encourage visitors to syndicate your feeds!)

Keep in mind that other sites will only want to subscribe to your content if your information is useful, informative, or highly entertaining. In other words, focus on providing your visitors with high-quality information that will add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.

(Easily add someone else’s content and get others to syndicate your content online 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 🙂

RSS Resources:

• Download RSS Images – Visit a site like Iconspedia or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “RSS logo download”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS icons.
• RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization responsible for publishing the RSS specification, providing guidance to developers who create RSS applications and helping the general public to gain a better understanding of RSS.
• Wikipedia.org/RSS – General information about the benefits of using RSS.
• WordPress Codex: Feeds – Official WordPress documentation. Visit this site for additional information about WordPress RSS feeds.

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, this information has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To read more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website or blog please click on links to visit our related posts section.

***