Beginners Guide to RSS

Your site already has RSS feeds included with it — assuming you are using the stock wordpress install. Look in your root folder (or wherever your main wordpress files are) and you’ll see a group of files with names like wp-atom.php, wp-rss2.php and wp-commentsrss.php.

The trick is making sure there are visible links to these feeds somewhere on your site. The url for those feeds vary by feed, but they are usually something like feed://yoursite.com/feed/atom/.

More information on feeds is available in the Codex.

Some browsers, such as Safari and Firefox, will also “autodiscover” feeds, meaning that if you are viewing a site that has a feed, even if there is no visible link to that feed in the website, a little icon will show up next to the url in the address bar. Most WP themes include the code for autodiscovery in the header file, but just to make sure your’s has it, check out this page.

I didn’t see your reply before going ahead and creating a feed.xml page using some advice on a random website I found.

I’d be greatful if you could check out my https://www.rapnews.co.uk site and see the rss button and see how it works.

In my understanding, now i have the feed.xml page I can get my blog listed on various directories etc, as well as having other sites syndicate my feed?

All new to this as you can tell!

I clicked on the icon, which displays the XML. That doesn’t give your viewers a chance to subscribe, although a computer would be able to do so.

I use Feedburner, which works really well. You enter the URL of your site and then Feedburner will “burn a feed” for you. After that, you can customize the feed so that it is more readable than just vanilla XML, which is more designed for computers than human beings. You place the HTML “chicklets” for popular feed readers like My Yahoo, My AOL, Newsgator, Bloglines, etc., etc. on your site and then your readers can subscribe with the feed readers they use.

I also use Feedblitz, which lets your viewers subscribe by email. Don’t forget about these people – they’re likely to be most of your viewers!

Check out my Stupid WordPress Tricks site as an example.

i’ve somehow realised that there are already 3 feeds aside from the xml thing i set up, so i deleted the xml and am going with the existing 2.0 feed. it seems that wordpress automatically update this feed so i dont have to maintain anything in the future?

“it seems that wordpress automatically update this feed so i dont have to maintain anything in the future?“

It does. See this Codex article for more on feeds in WordPress:

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/WordPress_Feeds

thanks. looks like im all sorted now. i have linked the rss logo to the wordpress generated feed. i have added my site to some blog directories ??

thanks

Similar beginners question …

I have the found all the php files of this type, and tried them. All return a blank page.

https://example.com/wp-rss.php
https://example.com/wp-rss2.php
https://example.com/wp-rdf.php
https://example.com/wp-atom.php

Or you can access them like this:

https://example.com/?feed=rss
https://example.com/?feed=rss2
https://example.com/?feed=rdf
https://example.com/?feed=atom

In my case
https://www.psybertron.org/wp-rss2.php
https://www.psybertron.org/?feed=rss2

Return a blank page – what am I missing.
I have my DreamHost hosted WP blog configured for “last 10 posts” in the feed – by I can’t find the output at the URL expected.

I’m not sure why that’s happening, but you might try re-uploading all the feed files from a stock wordpress install

psybertron, I see your feeds just fine. Fix?

Yep, now I see them too.

I’m having a problem with two of my feeds not showing up on Bloglines. Any ideas?