What is RSS?

Video Transcript

This class is going to cover RSS feeds. So first thing is, what’s an RSS feed? Well, an RSS or Really Simply Syndication, is an XML-based format of a website’s content. See, it allows for visitors to keep tabs on their favorite websites’ newly-posted content without having to revisit each of those sites just to see if they have anything new.

And an RSS feed, as it’s called, is just one part of the equation. The other part is the RSS Feed Reader. See, the RSS Feed Reader is a program that acts kind of like a website that is continually updated only with the stuff that you want to know about. Meaning you get the RSS feed URL and you add it to the Feed Reader, and that’s it. From then on, whenever that site adds new content, it’s going to show up in your Feed Reader. So all you have to do is just have your Feed Reader open in your browser, kind of pinned in your browser, and just visit it on a regular basis. And you’re going to get in touch with all the content that’s being newly added to all the sites on the internet that you are interested in.

Let me show you what I’m talking about. For example, first up on our site we scroll down the default meta area. We’ve got two types of RSS feeds. The entries, which is basically what I’m talking about here. And comments. If you click on the link for entries RSS, all the posts on our site are going to be displayed here. And some of those Feed Reader’s that I’m going to show you here in just a second, will take this URL … That’s your domain name/feed … And add this to their site.

For example, if we just take the domain name and go to one of our Feed Reader’s that I’m demonstrating in this class … That’s Inoreader and Feedly.com … And there’s a whole lot more than just these two. But these are two of the powerhouses out there. But if we just add this to the search box up here, give it a second, it goes to the site, sees what it’s about, and pulls in that feed URL automatically.

So it gives us these choices to add feeds from that URL, or to simply save that URL as a web page. Well, we would want to save it as a feed. And with this particular Feed Reader as well as Feedly, they have both the free version, which is great in and of itself, but the paid or premium version has a whole lot more bells and whistles. For example, with Inoreader’s premium version you’re able to put together what’s called rules. That if, say for example, you have a thousand some odd new posts coming into your Feed Reader every day based on the different feeds that you subscribe to, well maybe out of those thousand some odd articles a day, only five of those articles contain exactly what you’re looking for.

Well, those rules allows this Feed Reader to automatically search through all of those thousand some odd articles looking for just those key words or whatever you set up in those rules, so all that you’re going to be seeing in your feed are just the content that you’re interested in from those different sites. So it’s kind of like my own personal online newspaper that contains new stuff that I want to learn about. And just that.

Now, while this is an awesome tool for information junkies like myself, how does this relate to our WordPress sites? Well, WordPress automatically generates an RSS feed for our sites.

So every time that we create a new post or add to an existing post or page, our site automatically sends this new stuff to the Feed Reader’s for everyone that has subscribed to our RSS feed. And again, that’s that URL that I was talking about here: domain/feed.

Now we can configure how those Feed Reader’s see our content as they pull it in. And we do that by logging into our admin area, coming over to settings and going to reading. And we briefly touched on this section in an earlier video, but it is here that we can adjust what our site’s RSS feed produces for everyone that subscribes and sees our posts in their RSS Feed Reader. Namely, the number of new items that are going to be displayed. And the default setting of 10 is just fine, but you can adjust that up or down.

But this is the most important item I want to point out. And that is for each article in a feed, by default it’s showing the full text. I suggest that you only show the summary. This way, for the person reading this on their RSS Feed Reader, they only get a taste of what your new post or page is about, and to get the rest they’ll need to click the link that’s automatically generated for your site on that Feed Reader. Which brings them back to your site so that they can check out the entirety of that content. And of course, this is going to increase the traffic to your site. Which is a good thing.

Now the WordPress Codex does have some information on RSS feeds, and you can learn more about that at codex.wordpress.org/wordpress_feeds. And don’t forget the capitalization in the underscore. So definitely pay this page a visit and check some of this information out.

Now in closing, there is one last RSS item that I want to mention. And that is adding an RSS aggregator to your site. Now depending upon what you use your WordPress site for, this might be something to look more into.

I myself do not use it, but I do want to bring it up in case you find the need for it. Now what this does is automatically pull new content into your site from other peoples’ sites. For example, you can add, activate and configure a plug-in, like WPP RSS Aggregator, and fresh content from the sites that you add to this aggregator will automatically post to your site.

Now again, this may not be for you or your site, but it is a good way to supplement the content that you’re posting on your site to give your visitors more of what they want. So if it sounds interesting, definitely spend a minute and check it out.

Well, that’s going to bring us to the end of this class on what is and how to use an RSS feed for your WordPress site. Thanks for checking it out and you have a great day.