How to Display Any RSS Feed on Your WordPress Site: An Expert Guide

As an experienced WordPress user, you may have heard about RSS feeds. But what exactly are they, and why should you display RSS feeds on your WordPress site?

In this beginner-friendly guide, I‘ll explain what RSS feeds are, why they are useful, and provide several methods to display any RSS feed on your WordPress site.

What is an RSS Feed?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) allows sites to share their latest content in a structured and standardized way. It‘s kind of like an automatically updating changelog or table of contents for a website.

When a site publishes new content, it sends out an RSS feed with details about the new posts or pages. As a user, you can subscribe to these RSS feeds to get notified of new content.

RSS has been around since the early 2000s. And while not as popular as social media for content discovery today, it still has many dedicated users.

Key Stats:

• Over 100 million websites have RSS feeds
• Feedly, a popular RSS reader app, has 15 million users
• RSS used by financial institutions to track market news
• 70% of developers use RSS feeds daily

So RSS may seem old school, but it‘s still actively used today in many industries.

Why Display RSS Feeds on Your WordPress Site?

Here are some of the benefits of displaying RSS feeds on your WordPress site:

• Curate content – Share posts from other sites your audience would find interesting. For example, an interior design site can display RSS feeds from home decor blogs.

• Increase engagement – Give visitors more content to read on your site.

• Provide news & updates – Display timely information from authority sites in your niche. For example, a sports site showing ESPN feeds.

• Save time – Automatically pull in content instead of manually writing posts.

• Attract backlinks – Sites often link back when you share their content.

• Monetize – Auto-displaying feeds from authority sites related to your niche is a popular method of monetizing sites through display ads.

Now let‘s go over some different ways you can display RSS feeds in WordPress.

1. Using the Built-in RSS Widget

Every WordPress site includes a default RSS widget that you can use to display feeds. Here‘s how it works:

The RSS widget pulls content from an RSS feed and displays it in a list format on your site. To use it:

1. Go to the Widgets section in your WordPress dashboard.

2. Find the RSS widget and drag it into a widgetized area like your sidebar.

3. In the widget settings, paste in the RSS feed URL of the site you want to display. For example:

https://www.example.com/feed/

4. The default widget will now show the latest 5 headlines from that RSS feed on your site.

You can optionally set a title and choose the number of posts to display. But other than that, you have no customization options.

Pros:

• Very quick and easy to set up.

• Built into WordPress so no plugins required.

Cons:

• Very limited features and design options.

• Does not show thumbnails, summaries, author info, etc.

So the RSS widget is good for simple feeds, but for more flexibility, a dedicated plugin is recommended.

2. Using an RSS Plugin

Plugins like WP RSS Aggregator provide more powerful options for displaying RSS feeds in WordPress.

WP RSS Aggregator imports full content from RSS feeds and lets you customize the design. Here‘s how it works:

1. Install and activate the WP RSS Aggregator plugin.

2. Go to RSS Aggregator > Add New to add your first feed.

3. Enter the RSS feed URL and any other settings you want.

4. Use the shortcode provided to display that feed anywhere on your site.

The free version shows the latest posts from a feed. But premium add-ons let you extend its capabilities further:

• Full Text Importer – Imports the full content from feed posts instead of just the excerpt.

• AutoBlogging – Automatically reposts new items from an RSS feed as regular WordPress posts. Very useful for auto blogging and content curation sites.

• Categories – Adds categories to imported posts so you can organize them.

• Keywords – Filters feed posts by keywords to only show relevant content.

In addition to WP RSS Aggregator, there are also many free RSS plugins like Simple Feed Reader and RSS Widget available.

Pros:

• Full customization over layout, design, and options.

• Ability to extend with premium add-ons.

• Mix and match multiple feeds.

Cons:

• More setup and configuration required compared to the RSS widget.

3. Displaying Social Media Feeds

Beyond regular RSS feeds, dedicated social media plugins make it easy to display feeds from platforms like:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• YouTube

For example, to display an Instagram feed in WordPress, you can use the Smash Balloon Instagram Feed plugin.

Just install the plugin, connect your Instagram account, and use the provided shortcode to embed your Instagram content anywhere on your site.

Most social media plugins have free versions with basic features and paid versions with more advanced options. The benefit of social media feeds is they also allow your site visitors to interact and engage with your content.

4. Using Code to Display Feeds

You can also manually code RSS feeds into your WordPress site using PHP and functions like fetch_feed().

Here is a simple example:

<?php

// Get RSS Feed  
include_once( ABSPATH . WPINC . ‘/feed.php‘ );

$feed = fetch_feed(‘https://www.example.com/feed/‘); 

// Get max 5 items
$maxitems = $feed->get_item_quantity(5);

// Get feed items array
$items = $feed->get_items(0, $maxitems);

// Loop through items
foreach( $items as $item ){

  // Display feed item details
  echo ‘<p>‘ . $item->get_title() . ‘</p>‘;
  echo ‘<span>‘ . $item->get_date() . ‘</span>‘;

}

?>

This allows for complete customization over the design and output using HTML, CSS, and PHP. But coding skills are required.

Pros:

• 100% customizable output and design.

• Utilize WordPress coding best practices.

Cons:

• Requires PHP, HTML, CSS, and WordPress coding knowledge.

• More complex setup.

So in summary, here are the key pros and cons of each RSS feed display method:

Method	Pros	Cons
RSS Widget	Easy setup, built into WordPress	Very limited features and design options
RSS Plugin	More customization, premium add-ons	More configuration required
Social Media Plugin	Allow social engagement, free and paid versions	Can only display feeds from specific platforms
Custom Code	Complete design control, utilize best practices	Requires strong coding skills

I hope this guide gives you a good overview of the different options to display any RSS feed in WordPress. Let me know if you have any other questions!