How to Add an RSS Feed to Your WordPress Blog

Posted on October 23rd, 2015

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication,” and it is a convenient way to display live information from other blogs or websites. WordPress comes with a built-in RSS widget, so you won’t need to install any additional plugins to add an RSS feed to your blog, and neither will you need to get involved in any coding.

 

  1. In your WordPress administrator dashboard, click on the “Appearance” tab followed by “Widgets”.
  2. Scroll down to find the RSS widget and drag it into your preferred widget area in the column to the right. The available widget areas will vary depending on the theme which you currently have activated on your blog.
  3. Click on the RSS widget now located in the widget area to enter the RSS feed information. Enter the URL for the RSS feed you want to display on your blog. You should be able to find this information from the blog or website you want to add the RSS feed for by looking for the standard RSS icon or a link called something like “subscribe” or “RSS feed”.
  4. With WordPress feeds, you can enter any of four possible URLS as shown below, replacing “wordpressblog” with the domain name of the website you want to add:

    http://wordpressblog.com/?feed=rss

    http://wordpressblog.com/?feed=rss2

    http://wordpressblog.com/?feed=rdf

    http://wordpressblog.com/?feed=atom

  5. Customize the remaining options as required to enter a title for the RSS feed (typically the name of the blog or website which the RSS feed belongs to), choose how many items to display, display the author’s name or display the publication date. Click “Save” to save your changes. The RSS feed will now appear on your blog. Using the above method, you can add as many RSS feeds as you like to your blog by using multiple instances of the RSS widget.

Note that the WordPress RSS widget does not support RSS feeds with URLS which start with “https” rather than “http”. You may be able to solve this problem by using a free tool such as FeedBurner.

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