No matter what your business sells or what industry you are in, you need to provide quality information to your site or blog readers. For example, if you provide medical services, it’s a good idea to publish information from the health department, such as news and updates on medical research, health and fitness tips, etc.
The problem with creating this kind of information, however, is that it is very time-consuming. 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 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.
Thankfully, there is a much simpler way to keep your site readers up-to-date with great information.
It’s called RSS …
(RSS is the simplest way to provide your subscribers with the latest 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 to, Really Simple Syndication. It it is also called a “feed” or “web feed”.
- After users subscribe to an RSS feed, they no longer have to physically visit and check the source website for content updates. Instead, their browser constantly monitors the site and keeps feed subscribers up-to-date.
- RSS feeds are also used to publish information that is frequently updated, such as blog post items, news, videos, etc., to which users can then subscribe.
- Essentially, an RSS feed is a structured XML (XML = Extensible Markup Language) document that includes either full or summarized text along with other metadata like published date, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then browse updates posted on these sites through a feedreader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate their web content automatically.
- There are different kinds of feeds, read by different feedreaders. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom (also called AtomPub or APP 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 devices and programs.
- Many sites and software tools also allow you to combine many RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from various sites.
In this in-depth article, we will explain how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to add content from other websites and blogs to your site using their RSS feed.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a really powerful and legitimate way of sharing content online. RSS Feeds provide online users with a simple way to stay up-to-date with the latest information posted on different websites and blogs.
First, let’s look at how content syndication is used.
Global media and online newspapers use content syndication to publish stories from news agencies all around the world.
Content syndication allows news reporting agencies to deliver readers the latest news headlines and content of general interest from around the planet without having to post more news writers everywhere in the world …
(Online newspapers and leading media publications rely heavily on content syndication to publish stories from news sources around the planet.)
Syndication is used to share content legitimately with other sites. online media publications syndicate newsworthy content using news feeds …
(Content syndication is used by global media publications to share newsworthy content with other news publications)
Most sites actually want you to share their content. Content syndication not only allows high-quality information to be shared, but it also drives 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 online newspapers and major sites provide links to an RSS feed section (look for navigation 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 content publishers and leading online media publications will include an RSS feed section. Image: smh.com.au )
Clicking on a site’s RSS links section brings up a list of different RSS feeds …
(RSS feeds directory. Image: nytimes.com)
These feeds give you access to different areas of the site (e.g. technology news, entertainment news, health news, etc.)
Feed sections can also contain further feed subdirectories …
(RSS Feed section. Image Source: latimes.com feeds)
Note: An RSS feed is just a URL. To use a feed, all that’s required is to copy the URL and paste it into software that can process the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.
Content Syndication – Benefits
Adding content from someone else’s site on your website has some obvious benefits. It not only gives additional exposure online to someone else’s site, it also helps you by freeing you up from having to create this content …
(Using Feeds - 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 you also want other sites to syndicate your content.
When other websites syndicate your feed, you have the opportunity to get increased exposure online and drive new web traffic …
(Consider trying to get users to syndicate content using your feed … it will help to increase your web traffic!)
WordPress RSS Feed – About
By default, WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their websites.
Depending on the WordPress theme you have installed, there are a number of ways to get your WordPress RSS feed:
1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to be displayed in your navigation menu, you can scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …
(Meta section – Entries RSS)
2) You can also find built-in links or buttons on certain themes that let your visitors copy your RSS feed.
In the screenshot below, for example, a visitor can simply copy the feed URL by clicking on on the Subscribe to RSS link …
(Copy RSS links to your clipboard from “subscribe to RSS” buttons)
3) On some websites and again, depending on the WordPress theme you have installed, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Link To Us, Social Share, or Follow toolbar …
(Look for an RSS button in a a Follow Us, Links, or Social Share toolbar)
4) You can also view your RSS 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 site installation is in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)
Using any of the above methods will bring up your RSS feed page …
(RSS items viewed on a Firefox browser)
Note that your feed items will display differently depending on the browser you are using …
(Feed entries viewed with a Google Chrome browser)
Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed
You can specify how many entries you would like displayed in your Feeds page in the Reading Settings section. Type the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
(Reading Settings – Syndication feed items)
Your feed page will display the number of 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 the Reading Settings section that affects your RSS feed is whether to display your posts as full text, or a summary …
(Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’: ‘Full text’ or ‘Summary’)
Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed appears …
(Post excerpts can affect how your feeds will appear)
We have created a detailed tutorial about Post excerpts here:
View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds
As mentioned previously, all you need to do to view the content of an RSS feed is to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that reads and translates feeds into readable content.
Let’s see how this works.
First, find a website whose content you want to subscribe to and search for a ’subscribe to 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 RSS feed contains by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …
(Paste the URL of your feed into a feedreader to view the feed content. Source: http://feedreader.com/online)
Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS/XML feeds and convert these into readable content.
Adding Feeds To WordPress Sites
In the example below, we’ll add content from other websites to your WordPress site.
Adding Feeds To Your Sidebar
As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry you are in, you can easily display on your site the latest content from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry simply by importing their RSS feed. You can easily 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 from an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar navigation menu …
(Add an RSS feed to the WordPress sidebar)
copy the feed URL from a website containing content that you would like to add to your site …
(Copy your feed URL to the 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:
Load your site in your web browser. The content from the RSS feed should now appear on your sidebar …
(RSS Feed 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 Feed Content To Posts
Can you add content from RSS feeds to a post instead of the sidebar? You sure can!
You can do this using WordPress plugins. Just search inside the Plugins admin screen for RSS feed, RSS feed to post, etc.
(’Add Plugins’ search results)
Note: These plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for setup instructions, or contact us if you need help with plugin configuration.
Here are a number of autoblogging tools that allow you to create posts with RSS feeds:
WPeMatico
(WPeMatico)
WPeMatico is an autoblogging 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 categories.
For more details, go here:
WP RSS Aggregator
(WP RSS Aggregator)
WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and autoblogging WordPress plugin with premium add-ons for extended functionality.
For example, the Feed to Post add-on for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin is a feature-rich importer that allows you to autoblog by importing RSS feeds directly into WP posts.
For more details, go here:
RSS Post Importer
(RSS Post Importer WP Plugin)
RSS Post Importer can be used to syndicate, curate, import, merge and display full text feeds on your WordPress website or blog.
RSS Post Importer will fetch an RSS feed and publish the full article content of every item in the feed as a separate post.
For more details, go here:
Powr RSS Feed
(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)
The POWr RSS Feed plugin allows you to automatically combine content from a number of different RSS feeds.
The plugin also lets you display videos, images, and article content, adjust the priority of different feeds, use custom colors, backgrounds, fonts, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on all tablets, computers, and phones and supports text in every language.
The premium edition of POWr contains a number of 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 For WordPress)
The WP Pipes plugin is a powerful data migration plugin that allows you to create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and other sources.
This plugin provides loads of powerful functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to Twitter/LinkedIn/Facebook, export posts as iTunes podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to a new level.
For more details, go here:
FeedWordPress
(FeedWordPress Plugin)
FeedWordPress provides flexible Atom/RSS syndication for WordPress-generated 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.
FeedWordPress can be used to create aggregator site (sites that bring together posts from many 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:
Autoblog by WPMUDev
(Autoblog)
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up very quickly, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Just 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 and Custom Post Types Plugin For WordPress)
Install a plugin like RSS Includes Pages to include pages in your WordPress RSS feed and not just posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed).
For more details, go here:
Using WordPress RSS – Useful Tips
Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds
WordPress makes available RSS feeds of comments posted on your site in addition to making RSS feeds of your posts available to online users.
You can inspect these comments by clicking on Comments RSS in your ‘Meta’ widget (note: your theme may not be configured to display this widget) …
(Comments RSS)
All the comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in your Comments RSS page …
(Comments feed items viewed with a Firefox browser)
Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on which browser you use …
(RSS comments feed items displayed using a Google Chrome web browser)
Again, you can check what the comments feed contains by pasting the URL of the feed into a feedreader …
(Paste your feed URL 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 site is located in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)
Tip #2 – Accessing Feeds For Specific Posts
Being able to use an RSS feed for an individual post item 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 making an RSS feed for a single post item is shown below:
(Feed For Specific Post)
To create the above feed, copy the URL 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 the post content itself.
Tip #3 – Using Category RSS Feeds
Some your site visitors may only be interested in subscribing to content about specific categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.
If your website contains content published under different categories, you can easily provide a separate RSS feed for each of your categories.
All you need to do is use the format below:
(Use this format for WordPress post categories RSS feed)
Copy the selected category URL …
(Select and copy your category URL …)
Add “feed” to the end of it …
(WP post categories RSS feed format)
The RSS feed now only includes content published in 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 – Publish A Feeds List
You can set up your own list of feeds that allows your readers to subscribe to specific categories, just like the larger authoritative sites do …
(Set Up A Feeds Directory)
You can link an RSS icon like the one shown below to each feed and then create a table or a list of your feeds on a new page …
(RSS image. Image Source: public-domain-photos.com)
To learn more about creating tables in WordPress, see this step-by-step tutorial:
RSS Feeds – Notes
You can customize RSS in several different ways, such as adding videos and images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require editing code.
WordPress allows several RSS feed configurations that do not require code editing skills. Here are some examples of feeds you can use …
(WordPress RSS – Custom Feeds)
For your convenience, here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed in the table above:
- Feed Type: All Posts
- Description: Content feed – Includes your latest entries
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
- Feed Type: All Comments
- Description: Comments feed – Contains the latest comments posted on your site
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts
- Description: RSS feed that displays a specific post
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
- Description: RSS Feed containing the latest comments made on a post entry
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/post-title/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Day – Includes the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2012/05/26/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Month – Contains latest post entries in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/06/feed/
- Feed Type: Archives
- Description: Year – Includes the latest posts in each archive
- Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2016/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: RSS feed that contains 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 let your site users know that they can subscribe to your feed. Place a subscribe button or link somewhere visible …
(Encourage visitors to syndicate your feeds!)
Finally, keep in mind that online users will only subscribe to your content if the information that you publish on your site is useful, informative, or highly engaging. In other words, provide high-quality information that can add value to their sites and benefit their visitors.
(Easily add content to your site and get visitors to syndicate your content online using 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 feed 🙂
RSS – Resources:
- Feed Buttons – Visit feedicons.com or search online (e.g. “free rss icons”, “rss logo”, etc.) for sites that contain downloadable RSS graphics.
- RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board is an independent organization with three primary duties: 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 – Learn more about the history and benefits of using RSS feeds.
- WordPress Codex: Feeds – Official WordPress documentation and reference site. Go here for more information about using RSS feeds in WordPress.
Congratulations! Now you know how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to display content from other sites on your site using RSS feeds.
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you improve your business online. To read more about using WordPress for a business web site please see our related posts section.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group