No matter what your business sells or what industry you are a part of, you need to provide high-quality information on your site or blog that better educates, informs, or improves engagement with your readers. For example, if your business provides medical services, it’s not a bad idea to publish the latest information from the health department, such as news or updates on medical research, health and fitness advice, etc.
The problem with providing this type of information, however, is that it takes a huge amount of effort and resources. You have to sift through, research, and organize a lot of data, check your facts, write and edit 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 lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is entirely beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is a much simpler way to keep your site readers up-to-date with your information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - The simplest way to provide your readers with great information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
RSS – A Basic Overview
- RSS, which, according to some experts is short for RDF Site Summary, is more commonly known as Really Simple Syndication. It is often called a “feed” or “newsfeed”.
- After a user subscribes to an RSS feed, they no longer have to manually visit and check the website for content updates. Instead, their browser will continually monitor the content and keep feed subscribers up-to-date.
- RSS feeds are also used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog posts, news, video lists, etc., to which any user can choose to subscribe.
- RSS feeds can be viewed with programs called feedreaders, or feed aggregators. Aggregators are used to find new content published on websites and syndicate this content (and updates made to the content) to other sites.
- Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different feedreaders. 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 machines, feed readers, and programs.
- Many sites and software applications also allow you to combine different RSS feeds to aggregate news and updates from different sources.
In this in-depth article, we will show you 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 feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a very powerful and legitimate method used for sharing content online. RSS Feeds provide web users with a simple way to receive the latest information posted on websites they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at how content syndication is used.
Online newspapers and leading media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish newsworthy content from news sources around the world.
Syndication allows online newspapers to deliver readers the most recent news headlines and newsworthy stories from all over the planet without having to set up additional content writers in every place around the world …
(News reporting agencies and highly-visited online media publications rely on syndication to publish news and stories from news sources around the world.)
Syndication is a legitimate way of sharing newsworthy content with other sites. online media publications syndicate their stories using feeds …
(Online newspapers syndicate their stories using news feeds)
Most websites actually would like you to share their content. Content syndication not only allows information to be shared, but it also drives visitors back to the site that originally published the content being syndicated. This provides websites with additional opportunities to generate new web visitors.
Most news publishing agencies have an RSS feed section (look for links in the navigation menu that say ”RSS”, “Syndication”, or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “star tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many news reporting agencies and major content sites will contain a feed section. Image: Sydney Morning Herald )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section will bring up a list of different RSS feeds of the site …
(RSS Feeds. Source: NY Times)
Each of these feed items lets you access different areas of the website (e.g. technology news, travel news, science news, etc.)
An RSS feed directory can also contain further subcategory feeds …
(RSS Feed section. Image Source: Los Angeles Times RSS)
Note: A feed is simply a URL. To use a feed, all you need to do is copy the URL and paste it into an application that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Using Feeds
Adding content from someone else’s website on your website has some obvious benefits. It not only gives additional exposure online to someone else’s business, it also helps you by freeing you up from having to create this content …
(Using Feeds)
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 use YOUR content.
When other sites syndicate your content, this gives your business the opportunity to gain more exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Get users to syndicate content using your RSS feed … it will help to increase traffic!)
WordPress RSS
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on which theme you have installed, there are a number of ways to access your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to be displayed on the sidebar menu, you can scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(Access your WordPress RSS feed from the Meta section)
2) You can also find built-in links and buttons on certain themes that allow your visitors to copy your feed.
In the screenshot below, for example, a visitor can copy the RSS feed URL by clicking on on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy feed URLs to your clipboard from “subscribe” buttons)
3) On many sites and again, depending on your WordPress site’s theme, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Social Share, Follow Us, or Link To Us section …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Link To Us, Social Share, or Follow Us fixed, floating, or slide-out toolbar)
4) You can also view your feed by typing your site’s URL into a browser and adding “/feed” after the URL, e.g.:
- http://www.yourdomain.com/feed
- http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/feed (if your WordPress installation is in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up a page containing your WordPress RSS feed …
(RSS feed entries displayed on Firefox web browser)
Note that your feed page will display differently depending on the browser you use …
(RSS items displayed with a Google Chrome web browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
To specify how many items you would like to display in your RSS Feed page, go to your Reading Settings section and type in the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(Reading Settings – Number of syndication feed items field)
Your feed page will display as many recent posts as you have specified section …
(The feed will show as many recent posts as you have specified in the WordPress Reading Settings section)
Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed
Another setting in your Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display your posts as full text, or just a summary …
(Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content displays …
(Post excerpts affect how a feed will appear)
If you need help WordPress Post excerpts, see this tutorial:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, to view the content of an RSDS feed, you need 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 their RSS feed button …
(Search for an RSS feed link. Image source: http://www.yourcoffeeguru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL)
If you want, you can check what the feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image Source: Feedreader)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds and convert these into content that is readable by humans.
Adding Feeds To Your WP Site
In the example below, we’ll add content from other websites or blogs to your WordPress site.
How To Add A Feed To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is a part of, you can display on your site the latest content from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply importing content from their RSS 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 the WordPress sidebar navigation area)
First, Find a site that publishes content that you want to add to your sidebar and copy the RSS feed …
(Copy your feed URL)
Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(WP RSS Widget)
To learn more about using widgets, go here:
Refresh your web browser. The content can now be seen in the sidebar (or wherever the RSS widget has been placed) …
(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 RSS Feed Content To Your WordPress Posts
What if you want to add content from RSS feeds to posts instead of your sidebar?
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Just search on the WordPress plugin directory for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ screen – WordPress RSS plugins)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us if you need assistance configuring plugins.
The plugins below are useful for adding feed content to posts, or “autoblog” (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 allows you to publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds that you specify.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize feeds into campaigns and categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is an RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin with premium add-ons for additional functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post extension allows you to import RSS feeds directly into WP posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress)
RSS Post Importer allows you to import, curate, syndicate, merge and display full text feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) on your WordPress site.
RSS Post Importer fetches an RSS feed and publishes the full article content of each feed item as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed – WordPress Plugin)
The POWr RSS Feed plugin combines and displays content from multiple RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust feed size and spacing, use custom borders, colors, fonts, and more. It also has mobile-responsive design and supports text in all languages.
The premium plugin edition contains a number of 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:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes WordPress 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, auto blogging, auto post to Twitter/LinkedIn/Facebook, export posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides versatile syndication for WordPress.
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 FeedWordPress to create aggregator sites, or display all of your online activity in one place.
For more details, go here:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog 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, name your feed (for admin purposes) and select a blog to post content to.
For more details, go here:
RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types
(RSS Includes Pages WP Plugin)
The RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types plugin lets you display pages in your WordPress RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress displays RSS feeds of the latest comments posted on your site in addition to making RSS feeds of your latest posts available to online users.
You can see these comments by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ widget area of your sidebar menu (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) …
(Comments RSS)
Comments posted on your site by visitors and users display in your Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed content seen using Firefox)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on the web browser you use …
(RSS comments feed entries viewed on Google Chrome)
Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feedreader …
(Paste your URL of your comments feed into a feed reader to view the content. Image Source: Feedreader)
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 has been installed in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Creating Single Post Feeds
Being able to select an RSS feed for a single post item can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific items 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 an individual post is shown below:
(Individual Post RSS Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the post address, and add “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post Feed)
Note: By default, if you only add “/feed” to the end of a post address, WordPress will return the comments made on your post, not actual post content itself.
Tip #3 – Displaying Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only want to subscribe to content from a specific post category. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
If you publish content under many categories, you can easily provide a separate feed for each of these categories.
All you have to do is use the format below:
(Format for WordPress category feed)
Copy the selected category link address …
(Copy your category URL …)
Add “feed” to the end of it …
(Feed format for post categories)
The category RSS feed now only includes content published in that particular category …
(Category-specific 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 – Create A Page Of RSS Feeds
You can create your own directory of RSS feeds for visitors that allows readers to subscribe only to specific content, just like large websites …
(Publish An RSS Feeds List)
You can also link an icon to each feed and then create a table or a list of your feeds on a new page …
(RSS image. Image: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)
If you need help with adding tables to WordPress posts and pages, go here:
RSS Feeds – Additional Notes
RSS feeds can be customized in a number of ways, such as adding videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require code editing skills.
WordPress allows you to configure a number of feed types without touching code. Below are examples of some of the kinds of custom feeds you can use and how to format your feeds …
(WordPress RSS – Custom Feeds)
For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown in the diagram above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – RSS feed that contains your latest post entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Displays the latest comments published on your blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed for a single post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Feed for the latest comments made on individual posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes latest items in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/09/28/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/11/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Displays the latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Includes latest items for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Includes latest posts for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One more thing …
It’s a good idea to promote your feeds. Make sure you place a subscribe button somewhere visible …
(Encourage your visitors to subscribe to your RSS feeds!)
Keep in mind that other sites will only want to subscribe to your content if you provide your visitors with very high-quality information that can add value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Easily add someone else’s content and get other sites to syndicate your content online using 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 🙂
Additional Resources:
- RSS Feed Icons – Visit sites like iconspedia.com/search/rss or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS logos”, etc.) for sites that contain downloadable RSS graphics.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information about RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about using RSS.
- WordPress Codex: RSS Feeds – WordPress documentation. Go here for more information about using 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 using RSS feeds.
Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To read more about using the WordPress CMS software please see 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)