As an experienced webmaster, I‘ve been working with web feeds like RSS and Atom for over 15 years. While RSS is still more popular, Atom offers some technical advantages that make it appealing for developers building feed readers and aggregators. In this guide, I‘ll explain exactly what Atom is, its benefits, and how WordPress supports it.
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What are Atom Feeds?
Atom is an XML-based syndication format, like RSS. It allows sites to publish updates in a standardized way so they can be consumed by feed readers and aggregators.
When you subscribe to a site‘s Atom feed, you can stay up-to-date on its latest content through your feed reader. The feed reader will check the Atom feed for new entries and display them for you to read.
For example, here is the Atom feed URL for the WordPress development blog:
https://make.wordpress.org/feed/atom/If you plug this into your feed reader, you‘ll get their latest development updates in Atom format. Pretty cool!
Why Use Atom Over RSS?
As a developer, I find Atom has some technical advantages over the older RSS standard:
- Structured format – Atom has a more robust XML structure that makes it easier to parse and extend with metadata.
- Multimedia support – Built-in enclosures allow images, audio, and video to be included in Atom feeds.
- Licensing – Released under a simple BSD license compared to the complex RSS licensing.
- Versioning – Atom feeds have numbered versions for gracefully handling format updates.
For building feed readers and aggregators, Atom is often easier to work with than RSS. But for most sites, publishing both formats is recommended to maximize compatibility.
Atom Adoption Statistics
Atom usage is growing steadily though RSS still dominates:
- Over 15% of feeds tracked by Feedly are in Atom format as of 2022.
- Popular sites like WordPress.org, Medium, and Slashdot use Atom for their main feeds.
- 14.5% of developers in a recent survey said they preferred Atom over RSS.
So while RSS is still more common, Atom adoption is significant and growing.
How WordPress Supports Atom Feeds
WordPress enables Atom feeds by default, in addition to RSS:
https://example.com/feed/atom/The Atom feed contains your site‘s most recent posts just like the RSS feed.
WordPress also supports the Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) for managing content remotely through feed-based APIs. However, AtomPub requires installing the Atom Publishing Protocol plugin since WordPress 3.5.
Best Practices for Atom Feeds
Here are some tips for setting up Atom feeds in WordPress:
- Leave the default settings to publish both Atom and RSS feeds automatically.
- Use a feed validator to check your Atom feed for errors.
- Set a
<subtitle>tag in your feed settings for an explanatory description. - Link to your Atom feed URL prominently on your site to help users discover it.
- Consider setting up a FeedBurner account to optimize delivery of your Atom feed.
Who Uses Atom Feeds?
Some examples of popular tools and sites leveraging Atom feeds:
- Google Reader – Former feed reader that supported Atom as an alternative to RSS.
- Slashdot – Tech news site that switched their main feed to Atom for better multimedia support.
- Blogger – Blog hosting service that uses AtomPub for remote posting via desktop and mobile apps.
- Feedly – Feed reader and news aggregator with Atom support and 15%+ Atom adoption among users.
So both individual feed consumers and developers are leveraging Atom‘s advantages.
I hope this guide gives you a better understanding of how Atom feeds work in WordPress. Let me know if you have any other questions!
