What is RSS Feed?
RSS(Really Simple Syndication) you can also specify it as Rich Site Summary.It is a way of sharing news and information between websites and web pages. It is an open standard that allows bloggers to publish their latest entries in feeds. It is supported by most blogging platforms.
RSS is a technology that makes it easier for anyone to create a feed reader. It is a standard way of exchanging information between different sites. You can easily share links to news, videos, pictures, and other things with your friends and family through RSS feeds.
This article explains how you can use RSS feeds to display any RSS feed (including the RSS feeds of any website or blog) on your WordPress blog.
Benefits of RSS Feed
Here are some of the advantages of using the RSS feed display plugin:
1. It allows you to display your own RSS feed or a link to another blog.
2. It allows you to set a custom title and description for the feed.
3. It allows you to display several different posts at the same time on your blog.
4. It allows you to display multiple feeds at once, as well as different columns for each feed.
5. It has built-in support for the RSS 2.0 standard.
6. It doesn’t require any additional work on your part to get it working.
7. It does not use any database or programming languages that require special knowledge to install or maintain.
8. You can easily customize your RSS feed display to look however you want.
9. RSS feed displays are easy to install and remove.
10. Your readers can subscribe to the RSS feed display using their favorite RSS reader.
11. The RSS display is completely customizable with options for the feed title, description, image.
Why Display Any RSS Feed on Your WordPress Blog?
Many website owners who use WordPress like to display their RSS feeds on the top or side bar of their blog. But there is no clear reason why you need to do that. There are two main reasons for this.
1. You may want to have more exposure for your blog. If you have more visitors, you will get more feed subscribers. And, with more feed subscribers, you can earn more affiliate revenue. If you want to make money from blogging, you need to attract more feed subscribers. You can achieve this by displaying your RSS feed.
2. You may think it’s better to keep your feed out of the way. You may not want to show visitors of your blog that you are offering feed subscriptions to other websites. That’s what you can do with the RSS feed widget on WordPress. You can hide your feed subscription link from your WordPress website. You can always add your feed subscription link to your RSS feed.
Then your blogs RSS feed is just the websites address with feed that is added at the end.
Display Any RSS Feed from Dashboard
You can easily display an RSS feed on your wordpress blog using its built-in wordpress widget. Just move on to Appearance>>Widgets and then click the button ‘Blue block inserter’ which is at the top of screen.
Then you have to locate the RSS widget and drag it to the sidebar. Once done you have just type or paste the RSS feed you would like to display.
Just added this blog feed as
This is how the RSS widget looks like
Note: The built in RSS widget comes only with the basic features. If you wish extra features, then its a good idea to use a plugin.
Display Any RSS Feed With a Plugin
One of the best wordpress RSS feed plugin is WP RSS Aggregator. With the help of this plugin you can display RSS feeds on your wordpress blog, and if you go on for premium version then you can easily turn your wordpress blog into content aggregator without using single line of code.
First and foremost install and activate the free WP RSS Aggregator plugin from the wordpress repository.
Once the plugin is activated, you have to add your first RSS feed URL.
For instance we will add https://wpblogx.com/feed/. Once entered click the ‘Next’ button.
Then in the next page, you will able view all the latest RSS feed items that you have linked to. Then click on the ‘Create Draft Page’ button inorder to add your feed to a new page draft, or you can even use the shortcode to add the feed to any page, post, or widget area.
Here we will click the ‘Create Draft Page’ button. Now the page is automatically created, and the text button will be changed as ‘Preview the Page’.
Then you can click on the button to preview the RSS feed on your website.
In the page you will able to see the list of links to the latest three posts in the feed, that includes information about the source, and when the post was published.
Now when you go for its premium addons, the has ultimate features. The premium lets you create separate posts for each RSS item and also you can import the full text of each post. Allows keyword filtering of RSS items, ability to categorize each items, and then auto-blogging, etc.
Using auto-blogging, its important to use it carefully. Because copying the content from other websites may lead to copyright violations.
Display Social Media Feeds with a Plugin
Its a great way to i ncrease your followers. You will be able to enrich your content, improve your social engagement, etc. One of the leading wordpress plugin for social media feeds is Smash Ballon which is used all over the world.
One notable feature is that its actually a combination of plugins that helps you to create and display feeds from Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
Display any RSS Feed Using Code
Using the below code you can display any RSS feed on your blog. You have to just copy and paste the below code, inorder to do so, you have to create a custom page.
12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728 | <h2><?php _e( ‘Latest news from Other Blog:’, ‘my-text-domain’ ); ?></h2> <?php // Get RSS Feed(s)include_once( ABSPATH . WPINC . ‘/feed.php’ ); // Get a SimplePie feed object from the specified feed source.$rss = fetch_feed( ‘https://www.wpblogx.com/feed/’ );if ( ! is_wp_error( $rss ) ) : // Checks that the object is created correctly // Figure out how many total items there are, but limit it to 5. $maxitems = $rss->get_item_quantity( 5 ); // Build an array of all the items, starting with element 0 (first element). $rss_items = $rss->get_items( 0, $maxitems );endif;?> <ul> <?php if ( $maxitems == 0 ) : ?> <li><?php _e( ‘No items’, ‘my-text-domain’ ); ?></li> <?php else : ?> <?php // Loop through each feed item and display each item as a hyperlink. ?> <?php foreach ( $rss_items as $item ) : ?> <li> <a href=”<?php echo esc_url( $item->get_permalink() ); ?>” title=”<?php printf( __( ‘Posted %s’, ‘my-text-domain’ ), $item->get_date(‘j F Y | g:i a’) ); ?>”> <?php echo esc_html( $item->get_title() ); ?> </a> </li> <?php endforeach; ?> <?php endif; ?></ul> |
Note: If you wish to customize the code, you can move on to Line 1 to change the title, Line 5 to change the feeds URL, Line 8 to change number of items to display, and another line as required.
Hope you got an idea about How to Display Any RSS Feed on Your WordPress Blog. If you have any queries or suggestions please feel free to comment.