What is an RSS Feed and How to Set it up on Your WordPress Site (4 Ways)

If you have a WordPress website, RSS is an out-of-the-box feature automatically available to all users. Readers can subscribe to your RSS feed to receive website updates and follow comment threads. 

You can also display your RSS feed of WordPress blog on your site to make it easier for users to subscribe and create an RSS aggregator to show related content from around the web.

Below, you’ll learn how to add an RSS feed to WordPress using a few different methods and steps to remove an RSS feed if you no longer want this feature active on your site.

Let’s jump in!

What is an RSS Feed?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a feature of websites and blogs that will notify readers whenever a new article is published, or a comment is posted.

RSS feeds were very popular in the early 2000s. But even though they’re not as popular as they once were, they are still widely used. In fact, over 36 million websites are currently using RSS. 

Plus, the rising popularity of podcasts ensures that RSS as a technology stays in use since you need to utilize RSS to distribute your podcast episode feed to popular platforms like Spotify, Apple, and YouTube. 

On a website level, RSS feeds are most commonly used to get updates from your favorite websites. Readers can use an RSS feed reader, which brings all the feeds from different sites together in an easy-to-read format. 

How do RSS Feeds Work?

RSS feeds publish your content in a structured XML document, similar to a sitemap. The feed usually contains the article title, summary, date, author, category, and more. This XML document is what an RSS feed reader will fetch to pull recent article data. 

WordPress has built-in support for RSS feeds. You can also disable RSS feeds. However, they can be a valuable function of your site for some of your readers. 

Since it’s built into WordPress, displaying your site’s RSS feed is easy. All you need to do is add “/feed” to the end of your website URL. It will look something like this, “yoursite.com/feed”.

Here is an example of what an RSS feed in WordPress looks like. 

Benefits of RSS Feeds

Although RSS isn’t as widely used as it once was, a portion of your visitors still prefer to subscribe to your website updates via RSS.

Here are some of the main benefits of adding RSS feeds to WordPress:

• It lets readers subscribe to your site content via RSS feed and can offer an improved reading experience 
• It lets you create an RSS aggregator on your site to curate industry news, post content from various sources, curate job postings, and more (plugin only)
• Some RSS subscribers prefer to share your content via RSS, helping to grow your reach and audience.

How to Add RSS Feed to WordPress

As mentioned above, WordPress already has an RSS feed integrated into your website. This makes it very easy to make your RSS feed more accessible to your visitors. 

For example, you can display your RSS feed WordPress on different areas of your site to make it easier to subscribe. 

Some of the most common ways to do this are via the site editor, a widget, or a plugin. 

Accessing Your WordPress RSS Feed Settings

Before you learn how to add your RSS feed to your site, let’s show you how to customize your RSS settings. First, navigate to “Settings>Reading” in your WordPress dashboard. 

Here, you can set the number of posts that you want to display in your feed. By default, WordPress will show your last ten posts. 

You can also choose whether you want the article excerpt to show or the entire article. Usually, you’ll want to select post excerpt, so readers see a post excerpt, not your entire article. 

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to add your RSS feed to WordPress.

Method 1. Add Your WordPress RSS Feed with the Site Editor

Depending on your theme, you can add your RSS feed to WordPress directly from your site editor. To do this, navigate to “Appearance>Editor” and then click on “Templates”. Next, you will see the list of available page templates, select “Single Posts” to edit the blog page template.

Now, you can add the RSS feed wherever you want on the page. Note that if you edit the blog page template, your RSS feed will appear on every blog post you publish.

Here we will add the RSS block by typing “/RSS” to add a new block. Then, all you need to do is add your website URL to showcase your RSS feed.

Once you click “Apply”, you’ll have two different options to customize the appearance of your feed. You can modify the number of items to display and choose whether you want to display the author, date, and summary.

Here’s how it looks in real-time:

With this method, you can add the RSS feed to any block section of your website, including individual pages and posts. 

Method 2. Add Your WordPress RSS Feed Via Site Widgets

If you’re using WordPress theme that has widget support, then you can embed your RSS feed into your site using widgets.

First, navigate to “Appearance>Widgets” and select the area of your site where you want to add the widget. For this example, we’ll add our RSS feed to the footer widget area.

Click on the widget area, then click the ‘+’ button and select the “RSS” block. After that, click “Apply” and then “Update” on the Widget page to save your changes. 

Now, your RSS feed will be live in the selected widget area. 

Method 3. Let Users Subscribe to Your RSS Feed WordPress With an RSS Feed Button

RSS feed readers let users easily subscribe to updates on different websites. The most popular and widely used feed reader is Feedly. You can use this tool to generate HTML, which displays your feed along with a subscribe button. Then, all you need to do is embed the code directly into your WordPress site.

First, navigate to Feedly. On this page, you’ll need to select your button design, add the URL to your RSS feed, and then copy the HTML code.

After that, you can head back to your WordPress dashboard and add the code using a WordPress block within a page or post, or using a widget to add it to your site’s sidebar, footer, or other widget area.

Simply navigate to the area where you want to add the block and add the “Custom HTML” block.

Note that this code adds a subscribe button. So you might want to add it below an existing RSS feed. Here is how the Feedbly RSS feed button will look like on your website.

Method 4. Add Your RSS Feed WordPress Using an RSS Feed WordPress Plugin

All of the methods above let you add your RSS feed to your site without any plugins. Now, we’ll show you how to use a WordPress plugin to add your RSS feed.

One of the top RSS feed WordPress plugins is RSS Aggregator. It lets you import RSS feeds from your website and additional sites, customize the layout, auto-discover feeds, and more. 

A premium version of the plugin supports scheduled publishing, importing images, custom content, display templates, and more. However, we will be using the free version for the tutorial below. 

The first thing you need to do is navigate to “Plugins>Add New Plugin” and then search for “RSS Aggregator”. After that, click “Install Now” and “Activate”.

Once the plugin is active, you’ll be taken to the plugin setup screen. First, you’ll need to enter the RSS URL you want to display. 

Then, you’ll be given a shortcode that you can copy and paste into your site, or you can have the plugin create a new page to display your RSS feed. 

One great feature of this plugin is the ability to add RSS feeds from multiple sources to create an aggregator. This can be useful if you want to display news from multiple sources or create a job board.

To do this, navigate to “RSS Aggregator>Feed Sources” and then click the “Add New Feed Source” button.

If you click on each individual feed you’ve added you can customize your feed options including, how often the feeds will be updated, the number of feed items you want to import, and even pause feeds. 

By default, the plugin will show a list of links. However, there are a few customization options available within the plugin dashboard. To access a higher level of RSS feed customization, then you’ll need to upgrade to the premium version of the plugin.

Here’s an example of what your RSS feed could look like:

How to Disable Your RSS Feed WordPress

WordPress automatically generates an RSS feed and it’s an integrated part of WordPress. However, if you want to completely remove RSS functionality from your website, then you can do this by adding code to your WordPress site. 

Note that is method is more advanced. One of the easiest ways to add code to WordPress is by using a plugin called Code Snippets. This plugin lets you add code to WordPress without modifying your theme’s functions.php file.

First, you need to go to “Plugins>Add New Plugin”, then search for “Code Snippets” and click “Install Now”. After that, click “Activate” and the plugin will be active on your website.

Next, go to “Snippet >Add New”. For the title, add “Remove RSS” or something that’ll help you remember what this custom function does. Then, add the code snippet below in the “PHP Functions” field. You can also view the entire code snippet on the RankMath website.

// Disable RSS Feeds
function disable_rss_feeds() {
    wp_die( __( 'No feed available, please visit the <a href="'. esc_url( home_url( '/' ) ) .'">homepage</a>!' ) );
}
add_action('do_feed', 'disable_rss_feeds', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rdf', 'disable_rss_feeds', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rss', 'disable_rss_feeds', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rss2', 'disable_rss_feeds', 1);
add_action('do_feed_atom', 'disable_rss_feeds', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rss2_comments', 'disable_rss_feeds', 1);
add_action('do_feed_atom_comments', 'disable_rss_feeds', 1);

// Remove RSS feed links from header
remove_action('wp_head', 'feed_links', 2);
remove_action('wp_head', 'feed_links_extra', 3);

Once you’re finished, make sure to click the “Activate” button to make this code snippet live. Now, the RSS feed will be disabled, redirect to your site homepage, and remove any RSS feed references from your site header. 

Troubleshooting Common RSS Feed WordPress Problems

Sometimes, you might encounter an issue where you’re experiencing errors with your RSS feed. Usually, these errors will be caused by formatting issues. The easiest way to find these issues is to use a tool like the W3C Feed Validator. 

First, copy your existing RSS feed URL, then use the tool at the link above and paste your link into the box.

The RSS feed validator will analyze your feed and show you any errors or warnings that are causing issues. You’ll also get a breakdown of any errors so you can fix them and get your feed working again. 

RSS Feed WordPress FAQs

Closing Thoughts: RSS Feed WordPress

As you’ve learned, RSS feeds don’t have the same popularity as they once did, but for some readers, making it easy to subscribe to your site via RSS helps to support their preferred reading experience. 

Learning to add RSS to WordPress lets you add custom RSS feeds and even create an RSS aggregator, which lets you showcase related content from around the web. 

Now, over to you. Have you added an RSS feed to your WordPress site? What’s your preferred method of adding RSS to WordPress? Please share in the comments below.