RSS feeds, which stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication, are files that are generated based on a code language called What, and RSS feeds are brief content of what has been published on the site, for example, any new content that is published is stored in the form of a title + a short description + a link to the article or content.
RSS feeds help site visitors around the world quickly view new content that has been published on the sites that the visitor follows, as he can download the site’s RSS feed and browse it to see the latest developments that have been published on the site in a brief manner, where he can see the title, short description, and link. Which leads to detailed content.
What do RSS feeds look like?
In the past, RSS feeds used to appear in a primitive form and were difficult for the average user to understand and read. They looked like this, consisting of a set of codes written in XML:
Now, many programs and services have appeared that display RSS feeds in an organized, organized and easy-to-understand manner.
The following image shows the RSS feeds for the WordPress site , which, as you can see, appear in RSS readers in a short form containing the summaries of each article published on the site in the form of (article title + a brief description of it + a link to access the full content of the article). As you can see, it can contain some other information, such as the name of the article’s author, the reading time, and other details that vary from one RSS version to another.
Benefits of RSS feeds
Let me tell you that RSS feeds are a service for creating files that contain the content of the site that has been published in a short form, and it benefits all site owners who wish to create brief summaries of the content of their site to display in front of visitors to facilitate displaying the site content to them periodically, and the content is also followed up on social media platforms.
On the other hand, the service benefits visitors who want to read and view the latest articles and new content published on their favorite sites, but they do not have time to view all the content published within the articles, but they quickly read the titles and short description of each article, as well as the link to the article to go to it and read. Detailed content whenever they want.
Therefore, the RSS service is useful to both the website owner and website visitors as well. It benefits the site owner by sending and delivering his site’s updated content on an ongoing basis to readers who want to see these updates, and thus the site owner benefits from the visits that come to him repeatedly from readers of the RSS feeds without him promoting or paying sums of money to obtain these visits.
RSS is also useful to many website owners, regardless of their specializations and the type of content that is published on them. Here are some types of websites that can benefit from providing RSS services:
- News Websites: RSS can help news website owners get as many interested visitors as possible because visitors follow news frequently.
- Employment sites: Employment sites have very large lists of people who want to see the best job nominations for them on an ongoing basis, and thus the RSS service facilitates the follow-up process for people looking for job opportunities.
- Educational blogs: Educational blogs can benefit from providing RSS services as well for people interested in reviewing the latest educational articles and news that benefit their skills and experience.
Therefore, for all sites that have followers interested in the content you provide, it is appropriate to provide an RSS service so that these visitors can follow the content of those sites smoothly and continuously.
How do RSS feeds work on websites?
The theory of how RSS feeds work is easy and uncomplicated, and here are the most important points that explain to you how RSS works within the site:
- The RSS system is essentially XML files that are generated within the server on which the site is located.
- Articles or updates published on the site are stored as (title + short description + link)
- There are many versions of RSS feeds and each version has advantages over the other
- The website’s RSS feeds are updated on a regular basis, perhaps every hour, every day, or every week, and the update rate varies depending on the service provider and the version of RSS used.
- RSS feeds can be created manually, or through a specialized program
- The reader can view the content of the RSS feeds and read them using one of the programs used to read them, which we will talk about within the article.
How does a visitor subscribe to the RSS service?
Subscribing to the RSS service is very easy for the visitor, as when the visitor goes to the desired site, he will search for the RSS icon or perhaps the famous icon logo like this.
The visitor clicks on the icon (provided that the site has already generated RSS files), thus converting the visitor to confirming the subscription to the RSS feeds using his favorite program:
The image above shows the confirmation box for subscribing to RSS feeds for a site, which provides options for the visitor so that he can choose from them regarding his favorite program or service for reading RSS feeds. There are many free services and programs for subscribing to RSS feeds and reading them continuously.
Among the most famous services for reading RSS feeds, for example, are the Feedly website and the Newsblur website, and there is also the RSS reader extension in the Google Chrome browser, which is used to read feeds.
Once the visitor clicks on his favorite service to read RSS feeds, he will be able to log into his personal account on that service, and read all the feeds of the sites he follows.
Experience subscribing to the RSS service for WordPress in Arabic
We will mention a simple example that shows you how to subscribe to the RSS service for a WordPress website in Arabic, which you will always find provides you with high-quality content that contributes to increasing your informational knowledge about WordPress.
You can access one of the services for reading RSS feeds, let it be, for example, the Feedly service . Then once you enter the service link, you will be asked for the link of the site you want to subscribe to its RSS feeds. Here we have entered the link to the WordPress website in Arabic (www.wpar.net) as you see. In the following picture.
After writing the site link, the RSS feeds provided by the site will appear in front of you, which you can subscribe to by clicking the Follow button :
Immediately after subscribing to the feed, you will notice that the feeds appear continuously in your account with every update made to them:
Generate RSS service for WordPress website owners
WordPress generates RSS feeds by default without your intervention. You can go to the following path to view the RSS feeds for any WordPress site: https://www.examle.com/feed/ l with www.example.com replaced with your site link.
How to add an RSS icon to a WordPress website
In WordPress, you can easily add an RSS feed icon to your site easily, as you can access the WordPress control panel << Appearance << Widgets :
As you will notice, you will find an RSS widget that you click on to choose the designated place or part within your site in which you would like to display the RSS icon.
Y]ohg will then ask you for your RSS feed data
Add a link to the RSS feed of your WordPress site, which we explained previously, and also give it an optional label K. Then you can choose to show additional details such as “display item content” or “display writer’s name” and display publication date.
Then, after you finish customizing the data, click Save to make the RSS icon appear inside your site.
You can also customize the feeds icon to display only the feeds of a specific category or internal section on your site. For example, if we want to obtain the RSS link for the “Explanations for Beginners” section of the WordPress website in Arabic, we can access the desired section.
We will find that the link looks like this:
To obtain RSS feeds for this subsection only, the word Feed can be written directly after the category link, in this format:
Add-ons to better customize RSS feeds
There are many WordPress plugins that can be used to add additional features and customize the look and presentation of your site’s RSS feeds in a more professional way. Here are the most popular plugins used to customize RSS feeds within WordPress.
1. Add RSS feed
It is a free add-on that can be used to create RSS feeds for your site and customize their appearance the way you want. You can control the content of the feeds and show or hide some details in them. You can also control the sizes of images and the way they are displayed within the RSS feeds on your site.
Immediately after installing the plugin, you will find an icon that appears in the WordPress control panel toolbar with the name of the plugin. You can access it and customize the settings for the feeds as you wish.
2- Add RSS style
It is also a free addition and easy to use to customize the look and feel of the RSS feeds on your site instead of appearing in the traditional way that we referred to at the beginning of the article. The addition enables you to modify the appearance of the feeds in terms of adding and showing images in front of each feed. You can also add buttons to share the feeds on Social media platforms, so that your site readers can share the feeds on their social media accounts.
Conclusion
If you are a WordPress website owner, creating and customizing RSS feeds on your site for visitors is considered a very easy matter, as I followed in the article. Therefore, it is certainly useful to create and customize RSS feeds for visitors to your site, because there are many visitors who want to view the content of the post on an ongoing basis. They do not have a lot of time to log in each time and detail the new content that has been published on the site. Rather, they only log in to their RSS feed reader and quickly review the content updates, to select some pages from them to read completely in the browser. Therefore, you, as a website owner, provide a better user experience by using this service that we recommend to you
