No matter what your business sells or what industry you are in, it’s important to provide high-quality information to your site or blog readers. For example, if your business provides health-related services, it’s not a bad idea to provide users with useful information from the health department, such as news or updates on medical research, health and fitness advice, etc.
To create and publish this type of information, however, is really time-consuming. You have to sift 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 ensure 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 beyond your control.
Fortunately, there is a simpler way to keep your users up-to-date with your information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS - The simplest way to provide your readers with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Does RSS Mean?
- RSS is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, or, as is more commonly known, Really Simple Syndication. It can also be 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 frequently updated information, such as blog posts, news headlines, audio lists, etc., to which any user can then subscribe.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML document that includes full or summarized text along with other metadata like date of publishing, feed author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on sites or blogs that publish feeds and then keep up with any updates posted on these sites using an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to automatically syndicate their web content.
- Feeds can be made available in different formats and read by different feed aggregators. 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 compatibility with different devices, feedreaders, and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also let you combine many RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from multiple sites.
This article explains where to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using RSS feeds, 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 method used for sharing content online. Feeds provide web users with an easy way to receive the latest information published on different sites.
First, let’s take a look at content syndication.
Online media publications rely on content syndication to publish news from other news agencies around the world.
Content syndication allows most news reporting agencies to deliver readers the most recent news headlines and fresh content from around the globe without actually having to hire more staff everywhere in the world …
(Most news reporting agencies use content syndication to publish stories from news sources all around the globe.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing newsworthy content. online media publications syndicate information using news feeds …
(Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing newsworthy content)
Most websites actually would like you to share their information. Syndicating content not only allows information to be shared, but it can also send visitors back to the original site that created and published the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.
Most news reporting agencies provide links to a feed section (look for links in their navigation menu that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “courier rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Most leading online media publications include an RSS feed section. Image Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section brings up a directory of different RSS feed sections …
(RSS Feeds. Image Source: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
Each of these RSS feeds allows you to access content from different sections of the site (e.g. technology news, sports news, editorials, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain further subcategory feeds …
(RSS Feed section. Image Source: 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 a program that can process the feed code into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Using RSS Feeds
Adding content from someone else’s site on your site has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s content additional exposure online, it also adds value to your site without you having to create the content …
(Syndicating Content Benefits Someone Else’s Business And Yours!)
While adding feeds from another site is a great way to add content to your site that you don’t have to create, it’s worth keeping in mind that you also want other sites to syndicate your content.
When other websites and blogs syndicate content using your feed, you have the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive more visitors …
(Try to get other websites to syndicate your RSS feed … it will help to increase traffic!)
WordPress Feed – About
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing other online users to syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.
Depending on your WordPress theme, there are a few ways to access your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to be displayed in a navigation menu, scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(Meta section)
2) You can also find built-in links or buttons on certain themes that let your visitors copy your RSS feed.
For example, in the screenshot below, a visitor can copy the feed URL by clicking on on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy RSS URLs to your clipboard from “subscribe” buttons)
3) On some sites and again, depending on your WordPress theme, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Share, Link To Us, or Keep In Touch toolbar …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Subscribe, Share, or Link To Us floating, slide-out, or fixed toolbar)
4) You can also view your WordPress 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 website has been installed in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up a page containing your RSS …
(RSS items as seen on Firefox)
Note that your feed content will display differently depending on the browser you use …
(RSS items seen on Google Chrome)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
You can specify how many posts you want to show in your RSS Feed section in the Reading Settings section. Enter the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(WordPress Reading Settings – Number of syndication feed items field)
The feed page will show as many recent posts as you have specified in the WP Reading Settings 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 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 your feed content displays …
(Post excerpts affect how feeds display)
If you need help using WordPress Post excerpts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, to view the content of an RSDS feed, you have to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that can translate feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s take a look at how this works.
First, go to a website whose feed you want to subscribe to and look for a ‘subscribe’ button or link …
(Search for a ‘subscribe’ button or link. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)
Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the feed URL to the clipboard)
If you want, you can check what the RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into a feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your feed into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image: Feedreader.com)
Like feedreaders, WordPress also has the ability to process XML/RSS feeds.
How To Add Feeds To Your WordPress Site
Let’s show you how to add content from other site’s RSS feeds to your site.
How To Add A Feed To Your WordPress Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is in, you could easily add to your site the latest content from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply adding their feed. You can use RSS feeds to 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 sourced from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu …
(Add content from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar)
copy the RSS feed from a website or blog that publishes content that you want to add to your site …
(Copy the feed URL)
Next, go to your Widgets section and paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(WordPress RSS Widget)
To learn more about using sidebar widgets, go here:
Refresh your web browser. The content from the RSS feed can now be seen on the sidebar (or wherever you have inserted the RSS widget) …
(RSS Feed Content Added To WordPress Sidebar Menu)
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 Content From RSS Feeds To WordPress Posts
Can content from an RSS feed be added to a post instead of a sidebar? It sure can!
You can easily do this using WordPress plugins. Just search inside your Plugins admin screen (Plugins > Add New) for RSS Aggregator, RSS feed to post, etc.
(‘Add Plugins’ screen – RSS plugins)
Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for full instructions, or contact us for assistance configuring plugins.
The plugins below are useful for adding feed content to posts, or “auto blog” (An auto blog 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 multiple RSS/Atom feeds.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and arrange feeds according to campaigns.
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 with extended functionality with a number of premium extensions (add-ons).
For example, the Feed to Post extension for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin lets you add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin)
The RSS Post Importer plugin lets you curate, import, syndicate, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress blog.
The plugin will fetch an RSS feed and publish the entire content of each feed item as a standalone post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed WP Plugin)
With POWr RSS Feed, you can combine and display content from various RSS feeds.
The POWr RSS plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust sizing and spacing of feeds, use custom fonts, borders, colors, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on any tablet, computer, or phone and supports text in all languages.
The premium version of POWr contains many additional features, such as the ability to display different feeds, manually accept or reject posts, and more.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes Plugin)
The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.
This plugin provides loads of functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, auto blogging, auto post to Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, 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-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.
You can use this plugin to create aggregator sites, or bring together all of your online activity (e.g. from your blog, Twitter, YouTube, or other online services, in one place.
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, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in the URL of your feed, 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 and Custom Post Types Plugin For WordPress)
By default, WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed. Install the RSS Includes Pages plugin if you would like to include pages in your RSS feed and not just posts.
For more details, go here:
Using WordPress RSS – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to giving online users access to feeds of your posts, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of your post comments.
You can access these 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)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors will appear in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items as seen with a Firefox web browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed items will display differently depending on which browser you use …
(Comments feed items seen on a Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check what the comments feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into an online feed reader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feedreader to view the content. Image: 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 WordPress installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Displaying RSS Feeds For Specific Post Items
Being able to select an RSS feed for single post items can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific items 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 a specific post is shown below:
(Feed For Specific Post Item)
To create the above feed, copy the post URI, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of a post URL, WordPress will return the comments associated with that post, not the content of the post itself.
Tip #3 – Category Feeds
Some your site users may only want to subscribe to content from a particular post category. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
If you publish content under various categories, WordPress allows you to offer visitors a separate feed for each post category.
Just use the format shown below:
(Feed format for post categories)
Copy the category URL to your clipboard …
(Copy the category link address …)
Now, add “feed” to the end of it …
(WP category RSS feed format)
The feed will now only include content assigned to that 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 – Provide Your Own RSS Feeds Directory
You can publish a page of feeds that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in specific categories, just like large websites …
(Set Up An RSS Feeds List)
All you need to do is link an image to each category feed and then create a table or a list of your 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 adding tables to WordPress, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:
WordPress RSS – Additional Notes
Feeds can be customized in various different ways, such as adding images and videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these feed customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows you to configure different feed types that do not require editing code. Here are some examples of feed formats you can display on your site and how to format the feeds …
(WordPress RSS – Feed Formats)
Here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed in the table 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 includes the latest comments left on your blog
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed containing a specific post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-blog-post/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Feed containing the latest comments made on specific posts
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Contains the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2014/04/16/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Includes latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2010/05/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Contains latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2017/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Contains the latest items for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: RSS feed containing latest entries 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 RSS feed. Make sure you place a subscribe link somewhere visible …
(Remember to make your feeds visible your RSS feeds!)
Keep in mind that online users will only want to subscribe to your content if your information is useful, informative, or highly engaging. In other words, you need to provide high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their users.
(Add someone else’s content and get visitors to syndicate your content using WordPress and 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 RSS feed 🙂
RSS – Additional Resources:
- RSS Graphics – Visit Iconspedia or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “RSS images”, etc.) for sites that allow you to download RSS images and icons.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information and resources about RSS.
- Wikipedia/RSS – Learn more about the history and benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex: RSS Feeds – 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 syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to add someone else’s content to your site using RSS feeds.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To read more about the benefits of using WordPress please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.
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"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com