- What is RSS feed and why does your site need it?
- How to add an RSS feed to a WordPress site?
- Which WordPress news feed plugin to choose
- Must-Have WordPress Plugins
Best wordpress rss feed plugins collection! Your WordPress website wants awesome plugins like McGregor wants the Champion belt. Certainly, a WP site can exist with its basic settings, but plugins can totally transform its form and functionality, impressing users and increasing its traffic. Probably, you have already installed several cool plugins that have become a perfect solution for your project. Check out a WordPress news feed plugin, as it is a brilliant solution for the news web resources, blogs, and even online shops.
Do you want to send your subscribers vivid and beautiful previews of your updates via news feed or email, so the users can click an interesting and attractive preview of your article and go to your website to read the full version? Do you want to increase your traffic and save the target audience of your blog? Well, RSS feed technology is just what you need. Yes, it is a bit rusty, but it really works and its popularity is growing currently. So why not use it?
What is RSS feed and why does your site need it?
RSS is a generated XML file with the website data. The technology contains metadata divided into one or several channels. The decoding of the abbreviation depends on the RRS protocol version.
The three most popular versions are:
- RSS 0.9x – Rich Site Summary (for simple publications)
- RSS 0.9 & 1.0 - RDF Site Summary (for applications where RDF is needed)
- RSS 2.x – Really Simple Syndication (for common usage publications)
Initially, RSS was developed for news publishing. After a successful usage by Netscape company, the technology rapidly gained its popularity among the major news websites like BBC, Wired, CNN, CNET, Forbes, enabling them to inform, publish or broadcast regular updates of their web content. Currently, RSS is used for various sections of sites, including online shops for newsletters with information about new products.
Actually, the technology is straightforward: when there is an update, the script starts up the news feed for your users. RSS structures all information, dividing it into blocks and enabling the users to view the heading of your article, its first few lines or its short annotation in web feeds, without visiting the site. That is a great solution for web users, as they do not need to search and visit sites repeatedly to get to know if there are some updates of the articles or videos. They do not also need to add these web resources to their favorites, as they can simply make a subscription to receive notifications.
However, more than ten years ago the popularity of this technology started to decrease after the appearance of the news system algorithms and social media feeds, whose results are based on the number of likes and personalized recommendations. It would seem that just a few people use Favorites of their browsers now and the algorithms have learned to read the users’ thoughts—but do you really believe that? Are you sure that using by search engines you really get some needed, essential and fresh information among crazy amounts of web resources? The world community is beginning to take seriously the role of social media algorithms in spreading misinformation. Therefore, now we should draw our attention to such reliable and partially forgotten technologies like RSS feed.
An undisputable advantage of the RSS is that a lot of internet users create their own RSS base in their browsers. Thus, they mostly do not use searching systems to get information for specialized requests. In one feed they will read all publications of their favorite sites. Their own compilation is a guarantee that an interesting web resource will not be lost. And for the owners of the news resources, this is a wonderful opportunity to keep their target audience. Thus, a lot of bloggers put an RSS icon prominently on their blogs to show their care about their ranking. With WordPress news feed plugins, the users will be able even to read the articles from the RSS feed offline, share your content in social media and leave feedback.
How to add an RSS feed to a WordPress site
The WordPress philosophy enables you to enjoy and easily manage your own beautiful and multifunctional website without having to fool around with coding. Therefore, you can easily use your own RSS feed. All WordPress websites have already got a standard RSS tool by default. Copy the URL of your website, paste it into a new browser tab and just add /feed/.
https://your_website/feed/
You will see your website feed in the browser. If you want to adjust your feed, you need to get to the dashboard of your WP website and to enter Settings. There, point the number of feeds in the field Syndication feed show the most recent. In the field For each article in a feed show chooses Full text or Summary. It’s better to show a summary. Don’t forget to press Save changes.
Use WordPress news RSS plugins for your convenience; it's easy to maintain your subscriber statistics and receive a wide choice of WordPress RSS feed settings. Choose the best plugin from our list. All of them have free versions, and most likely that will be enough for you. Though, if you doubt, see the settings included in the premium packages of these plugins.
Which WordPress news feed plugin to choose
WordPress news feed plugin - WP RSS Aggregator
This is the basic WordPress feed RSS plugin. It is pretty in adjustment and usage. You can set an unlimited number of sources and not have to worry about the loading speed. Moreover, you can set an interval for your updates, the option to show or not to show the news source, customize your news feed using shortcodes, import video and podcasts from other sources and install a playable YouTube video. However, this WordPress news feed plugin is not compatible with JOSN sources.
WordPress news feed plugin - RSSImport
You can use this WordPress RSS feed plugin in the form of a shortcode, a widget or as a PHP-function. To use it as a widget, you need to get to the menu of your dashboard. Then find Appearance/Widgets/ and drag-and-drop the RSS widget to the location on the website where you need it. Customize the style of your visual using a wide choice of settings without CSS.
WordPress news feed plugin - RSS Aggregator by Feedzy
This WordPress RSS plugin also operates with the help of shortcodes, so that you can add your RSS feeds directly from the dashboard of your WP site. It is easy to install and adjust. With the help of the plugin, you can customize the visual of your news feed to the maximum, including usage of your own images and logo without CSS. By the way, with Freedzy you can use RSS feeds as the widget. You can also set a filter to your posts by keywords so that you can display the articles on specific topics and make a combination of them. Freedzy WordPress RSS feed plugin supports any additional libraries without decreasing the website performance.
WordPress news feed plugin - Featured Images in RSS for Mailchimp & Other Email
Nobody doubts that visual content plays an essential role in any website currently. Forget about the limited settings for featured images of your RSS feed by default. With this WordPress RSS plugin, you can set any dimensions of your images and their positions. Take control over your visual content, creating a unique design for your news feed.
WordPress news feed plugin - Category Specific RSS feed Subscription
If your web resource deals with several different topics, this plugin is exactly what you need. With the help of it, your users will see the menu, which consists of several variants of an RSS feed newsletter. This allows your users to choose the interesting topic of your updates, and numerous uninteresting newsletters will not get on their nerves. Make categories for your feed and create up to eight different RSS tags. By the way, you can add shortcodes to your messages.
Best wordpress rss feed plugins:
| Plugin | Ratings | Number of installations |
| WP RSS Aggregator | 4.4/5 | 60 000 + |
| RSSImport | 4.7/5 | 10 000 + |
| RSS Aggregator by Feedzy | 4.7/5 | 40 000 + |
| Category Specific RSS feed Subscription | 4.9/5 | 9 000 + |
| Featured Images in RSS for Mailchimp & Other Email | 4.4/5 | 30 000 + |
RSS is not new, but still an effective and popular technology, which will help you increase the traffic of your website. Find more awesome plugins from TemplateMonster marketplace to extend the functionality of your website, or subscribe to get plugins with a huge discount.
Must-Have WordPress Plugins
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