Best WordPress RSS Feed Plugins

As a content creator, you might have come across the term RSS feed. What is it? Do you need it? Well, you’ll learn the answers to these questions, as well as some of the best WordPress RSS feed plugins.

RSS is short for Really Simple Syndication where you can access a website’s content and read it in a standard format. It has been around since 1999. Most content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla, offer a method to allow you to give your readers an option to read your website’s content using a RSS aggregator tool.

With an aggregator tool, you can add as many RSS feeds as you wish from as many websites, and read it. In a way, it’s kind of like curating your own personal reading content. When your favorite website publishes new content, and their RSS feed option is enabled, your RSS reader will pick that new article up. The standard format used by a RSS reader allows you to read the site on any device, whether desktop, tablet, or smartphone.

The actual RSS feed is a bunch of code called XML, but there are readers that will display that content in an organized and simple format for anyone to see. This Extensible Markup Language, or XML format displays content without your website’s branding, but it gives your readers an accessible way to get your content on the fly.

And just to be straight, even if you don’t have a content management system, you can manually build your own XML file if you wish people to access your website’s content via a RSS reader like Feedly, NewsBlur, or Inoreader.

With WordPress, you can also import content using RSS, especially if you wish to curate content. Some WordPress RSS feed plugins will help pull in content from sites you like, and publish some articles. Other WordPress RSS feed plugins can help you pull in content from your own social media handles, like posts and images, and you can display them on a page or a widget.

Might seem like extra work to make sure your RSS feed allows people to subscribe and read your stuff, but here are a couple main reasons why you need it:

• Easy access for readers on the go.
• Assures that content can be seen on any device.

Easy access for readers on the go.

Your readers and fans prefer specific methods in reading your content, than others. Some will like to listen to a podcast, some like video, some like to read from their inbox, and some like reading directly from your blog. However, for the reader that is on the go and reads quite a lot of blogs, an rss reader is what they usually choose.

Assures that content can be seen on any device.

Web accessibility is important. How you use the Internet, may be a bit different from others who have issues with their eyes, ears, or other physical problems. RSS feeds can be downloaded into RSS readers, and are far easier on the end-user, whether or not they have a disability.

WordPress RSS feed plugins tap into the RSS feed that your website generates, and pulls in images, texts, or other content that you wish to display. You can do this either from your own website or from others. The website file is called an XML file and things like RSS readers can decipher and place your content in an easily readable format.

WordPress RSS feed plugins can be used for a lot of different purposes. Here’s just a few WordPress RSS feed plugins that could be useful:

1. WP RSS Aggregator
2. Smash Balloon Social Feed Photo
3. Smash Balloon Social Post Feed
4. Featured Images in RSS
5. Super RSS Reader
6. Feeds for YouTube
7. WPeMatico RSS Feed Fetcher
8. WordPress RSS Feed Retriever

1. WP RSS Aggregator

WP RSS Aggregator helps you turn your website into more than just a blog, but also a news hub. You can curate your content to include articles from other newsworthy websites, and become a go-to place for a specific type of news niche, or a wide variety of topics. You can pull in text, links, and images to your site using WP RSS Aggregator.

2. Smash Balloon Social Feed Photo

Smash Balloon Social Feed Photo deals with Instagram and allows you to display on your website some of the pics you post from that platform. The plugin has some simple custom display options so you can fit your Instagram pics in a sidebar, or somewhere within the design of your theme or content.

3. Smash Balloon Social Post Feed

4. Featured Images in RSS

Featured Images in RSS gives you the ability to display images in your WordPress featured images in your RSS feeds. In return, this plugin even helps you display those images in your email newsletters like MailChimp.com and feed readers like Feedly.

5. Super RSS Reader

Super RSS Reader contains options for you to display RSS feeds in a widget. You can even display several tabs in a widget, where each tab is an RSS feed from another website, or parts of your own.

6. Feeds for YouTube

Love using YouTube? Want to display content from your YouTube feed or others? Well, then Feeds for YouTube WordPress plugin is for you. You can display videos in a grid format or regular post-like method. You can pull in multiple feeds as well, and make your own curated video content.

7. WPeMatico RSS Feed Fetcher

WPeMatico RSS Feed Fetcher is another RSS aggregator, or what some bloggers called an autoblogging tool. Just add an RSS feed URL from your favorite websites, and the plugin will retrieve content from it.

8. WordPress RSS Feed Retriever

WordPress RSS Feed Retriever says it’s the fastest WordPress RSS feed plugin. It’s designed to pull in content from other websites’ feeds, without using too many resources, but also performing quickly. This can be good, especially if you’re curating content from quite a few websites, but also need to make sure your site’s performance doesn’t lag.

Now that you know about RSS feeds, is it enabled on your site? If so, then try out any of these WordPress RSS feed plugins. You’ll not only be able to bring in dynamic content, but attract more readers.