No matter what your business sells or what industry you belong to, providing quality information to your site readers is important. For example, if your business provides travel-related services, you may want to include the latest information from government and foreign travel departments, such as news and updates on travel warnings, tips from consulates, etc.
The problem with creating this kind of information, however, is that it takes an enormous amount of effort and resources. You have to do a ton of data sorting, researching and organizing, fact-checking, writing and editing content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then continually make sure that this information is up-to-date. As you can imagine, this not only involves a huge amount of work but most of the information you are dealing with is completely beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is an easier way to keep your users up-to-date with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the simplest way to provide your blog subscribers with the latest information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – Useful Information
- RSS is short for Rich Site Summary, or, as is more commonly known, Really Simple Syndication. It is often referred to as a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
- Once a user subscribes to a website’s feed, they no longer have to manually check the source website for updated content. Instead, their browser will continually monitor the content and automatically keep subscribers updated.
- Feeds are also used to publish frequently updated information, such as blog entries, news, videos, etc., to which any user can then subscribe.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML (Extensible Markup Language) document that includes full or summarized text along with other metadata such as date of publishing, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then browse any updates posted on these websites using an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate content.
- There are different feed formats and these can be read by different feedreaders. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom (also called AtomPub or APP feeds and RDF feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure compatibility with different devices and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also allow you to combine several RSS feeds to display news and updates from different sources.
In this 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 content from other websites on your site via their RSS feed.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a very powerful and legitimate method used for sharing web content. Feeds provide online users with a simple and easy way to keep up with the latest information posted on sites and blogs they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at content syndication.
Global media and online newspapers rely on syndication to publish stories from news sources all around the world.
Syndication allows many online newspapers and many influential online media publications to deliver readers the latest news and fresh newsworthy content from around the planet without actually having to send additional reporting agencies all around the world …
(Most online newspapers and many popular media publications use syndication to publish newsworthy content from other news agencies around the globe.)
Syndication is used to share newsworthy content legitimately. online media publications syndicate information using feeds …
(Digital news agencies syndicate their news stories using feeds)
Most sites actually would like you to share their information. Syndicating content not only allows information to be shared, but it also drives visitors back to the site that originally created theoriginally created and published the content being syndicated. This creates new ways to drive traffic back to their site.
Most digital content publishing agencies and major sites will contain an RSS feed section (look for menu links that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “texas tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most leading online media publications will include an RSS feed section. Image: Sydney Morning Herald RSS )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link brings up a directory of RSS feeds for different content areas of the site …
(RSS feeds section. Source: nytimes.com)
These RSS feed items allow readers to source different sections of the site (e.g. business news, sports news, lifestyle magazine, etc.)
An RSS feed list can also contain subcategory feeds …
(RSS Feed section. Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: An RSS feed is just a URL. All you need to do to use feeds is to copy the URLs and paste these into software that can process the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Content Syndication – Benefits
Syndicating content from someone else’s website on your site has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s content additional exposure online, it also helps your site by freeing you up from having to create this 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 without having to create it, it’s worth keeping in mind that there are benefits in getting other sites to syndicate your content.
When other sites syndicate your RSS feed, this gives your business the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive new web traffic …
(Get users to syndicate your feed … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)
Your WordPress RSS Feed
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your latest posts, allowing other online users to easily syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on your theme, there are a number of ways to access your RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to display as part of your navigation menu, scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(You can access your WordPress RSS feed in the Entries RSS menu)
2) You can also find links or buttons on certain WordPress themes that allow your visitors to copy your RSS feed.
For example, in the screenshot below, a visitor can simply copy the feed URL by clicking on on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy feed URLs to your clipboard from “subscribe to RSS” buttons)
3) On many sites and again, depending on the theme you have installed, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Links, Keep In Touch, or Share toolbar …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Follow, Share, or Link To Us floating, slide-out, or fixed toolbar)
4) You can also view your RSS feed by simply typing your site’s URL into a web browser and adding “/feed” after the URL, e.g.:
- http://www.yourdomain.com/feed
- http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/feed (if your WordPress site installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up a page containing your site’s feed …
(Feed entries seen with Firefox)
Note that your feed content will display differently depending on the web browser you are using …
(Feed entries as seen on Google Chrome web browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
To specify how many posts you want to display in your RSS Feed page, go to your Reading Settings section and select the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(Reading Settings – Syndication items field)
Your feed will display the number of posts as you have specified section …
(The feed page 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
Another setting in the Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display articles as full text, or just as a summary …
(WP Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for each article in a RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts can affect how content in feeds will display)
If you need help using WordPress Post excerpts, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, all that’s required to view the content of a feed is to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into 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 search for an RSS feed button using any of the methods described earlier …
(Search for a ’subscribe to feed’ link or button. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL)
If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into an online feed reader …
(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 can be read by your visitors.
Adding Feeds To WordPress
In the example below, we are going to add content from other sites to yours.
How To Add Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you could easily display on your site the latest updates 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 such as news, social media updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to your sidebar …
(Add an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation area)
copy the feed URL from a website or blog containing content that you want to display on your site to your clipboard …
(Copy the URL of your feed to your clipboard)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into a new RSS widget …
(WP RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Refresh your web browser. The content from the RSS feed will now show in the sidebar (or wherever you have placed the RSS widget – e.g. footer) …
(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:
How To Add A Feed To Posts
Can content from RSS feeds be added to a post instead of the sidebar? Yes, it can!
You can do this using WordPress plugins. Just search inside the Plugins screen (Plugins > Add New) for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.
(RSS plugins for WordPress)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for instructions, or contact us if you need assistance with plugin configuration.
Here are some plugins you can check out that allow you to curate and add content from RSS feeds to your posts:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico)
WPeMatico is an auto blogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from specific RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and arrange feeds according to 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 extended functionality with premium extensions (add-ons).
For example, the Feed to Post extension allows you to import RSS feeds directly into WordPress posts or any other custom post type.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress)
The RSS Post Importer plugin can be used to syndicate, curate, import, merge and display full text feeds on your WordPress blog.
The plugin fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full article content of each item in your feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin For WordPress)
With POWr RSS, you can automatically combine and display content from a number of different RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS Feed plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust feed priority, use custom colors, fonts, borders, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in every language.
The premium version contains many additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes – WordPress Plugin)
The WP Pipes plugin 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, autoblogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter, export posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides versatile Atom/RSS syndication 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.
FeedWordPress can be used to create aggregator sites, or bring together all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, LinkedIn, Flickr, or other online services, in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog
(Autoblog – WordPress Plugin)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in your feed URL, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select the blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages
(RSS Includes Pages WP Plugin)
Install a plugin like RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types to include pages in your RSS feed in addition to posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).
For more details, go here:
WordPress RSS – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WordPress Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress makes available RSS feeds of your post comments in addition to giving online users access to feeds of your latest posts.
To access your comments feed, locate the ‘Meta’ section on your sidebar menu (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) and click on Comments RSS …
(WordPress Comments Feed)
Comments posted on your site by visitors and users display in the Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed entries viewed on Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on which web browser you use …
(Comments feed items as seen on Google Chrome)
Again, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL 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 WordPress site installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Using Feeds For Single Items
Being able to display an RSS feed for specific posts can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific posts to RSS directories, or you may have created a valuable resource that other online users will want to syndicate.
The formula for using an RSS feed for individual post items is shown below:
(Individual Post RSS Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the post URL, and add “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of your post address, WordPress will return the comments for your post, not the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in syndicating content from one or two post categories. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
WordPress allows you to create separate category feeds.
Just use the format shown below:
(WordPress category RSS feed format)
Select and copy the category URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the category URL …)
Append “feed” to the end of it …
(WP category feed format)
Your category feed will now only display content posted for this particular category …
(Category 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 – Create Your Own Feeds Directory
You can publish your own page of feeds on your site that allows readers to subscribe only to specific content, just like the larger websites do …
(Set Up A Feeds List)
Link an icon to your category (or specific post) feed URLs and then create a table or a list of all category feeds on a separate page …
(RSS image. Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
If you need help with inserting tables into WordPress content, refer to this tutorial:
RSS Feeds – Additional Notes
Feeds can be customized in several different ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows you to configure a number of different feed formats without code editing skills. Below are examples of some of the kinds of custom feed formats you can use and how to format your feeds …
(Different Custom Feeds You Can Create Using WordPress RSS)
Below are the different feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the image above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Includes your latest posts
- 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: Feed that contains single post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Feed that contains the latest comments made on specific post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – RSS feed containing the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/04/02/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Includes the latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/03/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Displays latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Includes the latest entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: RSS feed that displays latest post entries 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 your subscribe button image somewhere visible …
(Remember to make your RSS feeds visible your RSS feeds!)
Keep in mind that other website owners will only want to syndicate your content if you provide your subscribers with high-quality information that can add value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Add content to your site and get online users to share your content with RSS feeds!)
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 feed 🙂
Resources:
- Feed Images – Visit sites like Feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS logos”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS graphic elements.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information and links to resources about RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about RSS feeds.
- WordPress.org/RSS Feeds – Official WordPress documentation and reference repository. Go here to learn more about using feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to add someone else’s content to your site using 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 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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