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Discovering the Many WordPress RSS Options

RSS feeds come in different flavors, including RSS 0.92, RDF/RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom. The differences among them lie within the base code that makes up the functionality of the syndication feed. What’s important is that WordPress supports all versions of RSS, which means that anyone can subscribe to your RSS feed with any type of feed reader available.

WordPress is very intuitive, and RSS feeds are a shining example of a feature that WordPress automates. WordPress has a built-in feed generator that works behind the scenes to create feeds. This feed generator creates feeds from your posts, comments, and even categories.

The RSS feed for your blog posts is autodiscoverable, almost all RSS feed readers and even some browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer 8, and Safari, for example) automatically detect the RSS feed URL for a WordPress blog.

URLs for Built-In WordPress Feeds
Feed Type Example Feed URL
RSS 0.92 http://yourdomain.com/wp-rss.php or
http://yourdomain.com/?feed=rss
RDF/RSS 1.0 http://yourdomain.com/wp-rss2.php or
http://yourdomain.com/?feed=rdf
RSS 2.0 http://yourdomain.com/wp-rss2.php or
http://yourdomain.com/?feed=rss2
Atom http://yourdomain.com/wp-atom.php or
http://yourdomain.com/?feed=atom
Comments RSS http://yourdomain.com/?feed=rss&p=50
p stands for post, and 50 is the post ID. You can find the post ID in the Administration panel by clicking the Manage tab. The post ID is listed immediately to the left of the post title.
Category RSS http://yourdomain.com/wp-rss2.php?cat=50
cat stands for category, and 50 is the category ID. You can find the category ID in the Administration panel by clicking the Manage tab and then the Categories subtab. The category ID is listed immediately to the left of the category title.

If you’re using custom permalinks, you can simply add /feed to the end of any URL on your WordPress blog to find the RSS feed. Some of your links look similar to these:

  • http://yourdomain.com/feed: Your main RSS feed

  • http:// yourdomain.com/comments/feed: Your comments RSS feed

  • http:// yourdomain.com/tag/tag-name/feed: RSS feed for a tag

  • http:// yourdomain.com/category/cat-name/feed: RSS feed for a category

Try adding /feed with any URL on your site. You get the RSS feed for that page.

RSS feeds are important parts of delivering content from your WordPress blog to your readers. RSS feeds are expected these days, so the fact that WordPress has taken care of the feeds for you, is compliant with all RSS formats, and offers so many internal feeds gives the software a huge advantage over any of the other blog-software platforms.

If you intend to use the Atom publishing protocol, you need to enable it manually because it’s disabled by default. Choose Settings→Writing in your Dashboard, and then select the two check boxes in the Remote Publishing section to enable Atom publishing in WordPress.

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