No matter what what industry you belong to, providing high-value information on your site or blog is essential. For example, if you provide travel-related services, it’s a good idea to publish the latest information from government and foreign travel departments, such as news or updates on travel warnings, tips from consulates, etc.
To create and publish this type of information, however, requires a lot of work and expertise. You have to filter through, gather, and organize a ton 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 kept up-to-date. As you can imagine, this is not only a huge amount of work but most of the information you are dealing with is entirely beyond your control.
Thankfully, there is a much easier way to keep your site visitors up-to-date with your information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is one of the easiest ways to provide your blog subscribers with up-to-date information)
The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS
What Is RSS?
- RSS is short for Rich Site Summary, or, as is more commonly referred to, Really Simple Syndication. It can also be called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- RSS allows content publishers to automatically syndicate their content so that their site readers can read it without having to keep revisiting their site to check for updates.
- RSS feeds are typically used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as new blog entries, news headlines, audio lists, etc., to which users can then subscribe.
- RSS feeds can be viewed using a software-based tool called an RSS reader, or aggregator. Feed readers are used to find content on all different kinds of topics and distribute this content (and any updates made to the content) to other online properties.
- Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different feed aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom feeds and RDF (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 multiple RSS feeds to receive news and updates from multiple sources.
In this guide, we will explain where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using RSS, and how to display content from other sites on your site via RSS feeds.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a very powerful way of sharing content online. RSS Feeds provide an easy way for online users to receive the latest information posted on sites they are interested in.
First, let’s take a look at how syndication is used.
Global media publications rely heavily on syndication to publish content from news sources all around the world.
Syndication allows online newspapers to deliver readers the most recent news items from all around the planet without actually having to employ more reporting agencies everywhere in the world …
(News reporting agencies and many leading online media publications rely on syndication to publish content from other news agencies around the globe.)
Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing information with other sites. Global media publications syndicate their newsworthy content using news feeds …
(Content syndication is used by content agencies to share newsworthy content with other news publications)
Most websites actually would like you to share their content. Syndicating content not only allows information 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.
Leading news reporting agencies will include 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”, “courier rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …
(Many news reporting agencies and major sites have an RSS feed section. Image Source: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS feeds link brings up a list of RSS feeds for different content areas of the site …
(RSS feeds list. Image Source: nytimes.com RSS feeds)
gives you access to content from different sections of the website (e.g. business news, arts news, editorials, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain feed subcategories …
(An RSS feed list can also contain subcategories. Image Source: Los Angeles Times RSS)
Note: A feed is only a URL. All that’s required to use the feed is to 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 someone else’s content to your website has some obvious benefits. It not only gives someone else’s website additional exposure online, it also helps you by freeing you up from having to create the content …
(Content Syndication Has Many Benefits!)
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 there are benefits in getting other websites to syndicate your content.
When other websites syndicate content using your RSS feed, you have the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive new web traffic …
(Look for ways to get other websites to syndicate content using your RSS feed … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)
WordPress RSS Feed – Overview
WordPress automatically publishes a feed of all your posts, allowing other online users to easily syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on the WordPress theme you have installed, there are a few ways to access your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme displays the Meta widget in a navigation menu …
(The feed page will display the number of 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 your Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display articles as full text, or a summary …
(WP Reading Settings – Show ‘Full Text’ or ‘Summary’ for each article in a RSS feed)
Post Excerpts can also affect how your feed content displays …
(Post excerpts can affect how feeds will display)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on using excerpts in WordPress Posts, go here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned earlier, all you have to do to view the content of a feed is to copy the feed’s URL to your clipboard and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that reads and translates feeds into readable content for humans.
Let’s see how this works.
First, find a website or blog and look for an RSS feed icon …
(Search for an RSS feed link. 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 the feed content by pasting the feed URL into a feedreader …
(Paste your feed URL into a feedreader to view the feed content. Image Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds and convert these into readable content.
How To Add Feeds To Your WordPress Site
In the example below, we are going to add RSS content from another website or blog to your WordPress site.
How To Add RSS Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is in, you can easily display on your site the latest news from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by adding their feed. You can use feeds to display a range of information on your WordPress site such as news, Facebook updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.
Let’s add RSS content to your sidebar …
(Add content from an RSS feed to your sidebar)
First, Find a site that publishes content that you would like to add to your site and copy the feed URL to your clipboard …
(Copy your feed URL to your clipboard)
Next, go to your WordPress Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets and paste the feed into an RSS widget …
(RSS Widget)
To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:
Refresh your browser. The content from the RSS feed should now appear on your sidebar …
(RSS Feed Content Added To 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 An RSS Feed To Your WordPress Posts
Can content from RSS feeds be added to posts instead of your sidebar? It sure can!
You can do this using WordPress plugins. Just search on WordPress.org plugin repository for RSS Post, RSS feed to post, etc.
(RSS plugins)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for complete instructions, or contact us for help configuring plugins.
Here are a number of auto blogging tools that allow you to automatically create new with feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico Plugin For WordPress)
WPeMatico is an auto blogging plugin that lets you publish posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds that you choose.
You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize feeds according to campaigns.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator – WordPress Plugin)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging plugin for WordPress with additional functionality with a number of premium add-ons.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin is a popular, feature-filled importer that lets you autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into your posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer Plugin For WordPress)
RSS Post Importer allows you to syndicate, curate, import, merge and display full text feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) on your WordPress website or blog.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the entire content of each feed item as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed)
With POWr RSS Feed, you can combine and display content from various content using RSS feeds.
This plugin also lets you display images, videos, and article content, adjust feed size and spacing, use custom fonts, colors, backgrounds, and more. It is also mobile responsive and supports text in all languages.
The premium version contains many additional features.
For more details, go here:
WP Pipes
(WP Pipes WP Plugin)
WP Pipes 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, autoblogging, auto post to LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook, export WordPress posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and more!
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress – WordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress is a flexible syndication plugin for WordPress site content.
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.
You can use this FeedWordPress to create aggregator site (sites that combine posts from multiple sources), or display 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 in minutes, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Simply copy and paste in the URL of your feed, name your feed (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 Plugin)
By default, WordPress only posts posts in your RSS feed. Use RSS Includes Pages and Custom Post Types to include pages in your RSS feed in addition to posts.
For more details, go here:
Using WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to making RSS feeds of your latest posts available to online users, WordPress also displays RSS feeds of comments posted on your site.
You can access these by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ widget area …
(Comments Feed)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors and users will appear in your Comments RSS page …
(RSS comments feed content viewed with a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed content will display differently depending on the web browser you use …
(RSS comments feed entries viewed on a Google Chrome browser)
Again, you can check the feed content 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. Image Source: 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 website has been installed in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Using RSS Feeds For Individual Post Items
Being able to display an RSS feed for a specific post 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 using an RSS feed for a specific post item is shown below:
(Specific Post RSS Feed)
To create the above feed, copy the URI of your post, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.
(Single Post RSS Feed)
Note: By default, if you only add “/feed” to the end of the web address of your post, WordPress will return the comments made on your post, not actual post content itself.
Tip #3 – Using Category RSS Feeds
Some your site users may only want to syndicate content from a specific category. They may not want to subscribe to all of your site’s content.
With WordPress, you can easily create category feeds.
All you have to do is use the format below:
(WP category feed format)
Copy the selected category link address …
(Copy the category URL …)
Append the word “feed” to the end of it …
(Format for WP category RSS feed)
Your feed will now only include content posted for 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 – Publish A Page Of RSS Feeds
You can set up an RSS feeds page that allows readers to subscribe only to content in the categories they are interested in, just like large online publishers …
(Provide Your Own Feeds Page)
You can link an image to a category feed and then create a table or a list of all your category feeds on a new page …
(RSS button graphic. 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, see this tutorial:
WordPress RSS – Notes
RSS feeds can be customized in a number of ways, such as adding images and videos to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows you to configure a number of feed formats without touching code. Here are some examples of feed formats you can use …
(WordPress RSS – Custom Feeds)
For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples shown 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 – Feed that displays the latest comments left on your site
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: Feed that includes individual items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: Feed that displays the latest comments made on specific items
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Feed containing the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/11/11/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Displays latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/12/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Feed displaying the latest entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/feed/
- Feed Type: Search Results
- Description: Displays the latest entries for a search query
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
- Feed Type: Custom Post Type
- Description: Contains latest post entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One last thing …
Remember to let your visitors know that they can subscribe to your feed. Make sure you place your ’subscribe to RSS’ button in a visible location …
(Promote your RSS feeds!)
Keep in mind that online users will only subscribe to your content if your content is useful, educational, or highly engaging. In other words, focus on providing your subscribers with high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Easily add great content to your site and get visitors to syndicate your content with 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 – Additional Resources:
- RSS Feed Icons – Visit www.iconspedia.com/search/rss or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss logo download”, etc.) for sites that contain downloadable RSS images.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board Go here if you want to gain a better understanding of RSS.
- Wikipedia.org/RSS – Learn more about using RSS.
- WordPress Codex: RSS Feeds – Official WordPress documentation and reference. Visit this site for additional information about using WordPress RSS feeds.
Congratulations! Now you know where your RSS feed is located, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to add content from other sites to your site via 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 using WordPress please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)