It can be difficult to keep up with the content on all your favorite websites. Even when using bookmarks, it is very time-consuming to visit websites one after another to see the latest updates.
This is where RSS Feeds come in handy. A one-time subscription to a website’s RSS Feed allows you to automatically receive all updates published subsequently.
Depending on your feed reader app, you may even be able to receive notifications via email or on your mobile device. Plus, there are WordPress RSS Feed plugins that allow you to aggregate all of that content into your own site.
In this article, we’ll discuss what RSS is and why it’s important. Then we’ll look at how RSS Feeds work in WordPress. We’ll show you how to enable or disable them, see how to check if they’re working or not, and introduce some plugins that add new functionality.
Let’s get started!
What is RSS (and why is it important)?
RSS Feeds (Really Simple Syndication) allow websites and blogs to publish their latest content in XML format. This can contain the entire article or a summary, as well as metadata such as the date and author.
The RSS feed allows anyone who subscribes to it to aggregate content from your website along with many other sites.
You can compare the process to subscribing to YouTube channels and receiving notifications of updates to the latest content from each channel in one place.
Google shut down its popular FeedBurner service in 2012, which might make some people think that RSS Feeds are dead. But in fact, there are plenty of great feed readers out there like Feedly or The Old Reader .
Feedly is available for the web, iOS, Android, and Kindle. Old Reader is also available for the web, and while it doesn’t have a native app, its users have germany email list created several using its API.
Feeds can be used for many purposes besides just keeping up to date, such as importing content from one site to another and many more:
- Searching for product and service 4 Useful WordPress categories in online stores.
- Monitoring exchange rates and stock prices.
- Use podcast-only RSS Feeds to push audio content to different listening platforms.
- Adding the latest coupons or discount offers from various online stores.
- Many bloggers and influencers use RSS Feeds to stay up to date. When they find a good one, they share or link to your post from their blog or social media profiles.
- RSS Feeds can help Google crawl your site more frequently.
- RSS Feeds can bring more visitors to your website . When someone subscribes to your news feed, they will stumble upon all of your blog posts in their feed. If they see a good one, they will visit your website to read it in detail or make 7 superpowers for web developers a comment.
- Automate an email marketing campaign . MailChimp , for example, has an RSS-to-email campaign that it will automatically send to your subscribers when you publish new messages.
- You can also use your RSS feed to post an update to your social media profiles whenever a new post is published. Almost all popular post scheduling and social media management tools offer RSS feed integration.
- You can submit your RSS feed to RSS directories or content aggregation websites.
- You can also create a page or section on your website with content aggregated from external feeds.
- You can automate publishing new syndicated content to your site.
As an additional example, one way australia cell numbers we 4 Useful WordPress utilize RSS Feeds here at Kinsta is by using Slack’s free RSS Feeds app . We use Slack every day to communicate with our remote team members.
By automating RSS feeds, we can easily monitor new content being published on the web, as well as new software releases.
Does WordPress have RSS feeds (how do you find them)?
WordPress generates many types of built-in RSS feeds for your site. As mentioned above, this is usually done in XML format, and a document is created each time new content is published.