Curating content is crucial for any website, but manually aggregating articles and posts from external sources can be extremely time consuming. Fortunately, with the WP RSS Aggregator plugin, WordPress sites can easily fetch and display syndicated feeds automatically.
According to BuiltWith, over 65 million websites run on WordPress as of January 2023. With WP holding over 60% market share in content management systems, feed aggregation and curation is more vital than ever for these sites to stand out.
In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll explore the key benefits of feed fetching in WordPress and walk through a full setup from installation to advanced customizations of WP RSS Aggregator:
Why Aggregate Feeds in WordPress?
Before diving into the how-to, let‘s briefly go over some of the top reasons site owners may want to utilize feed aggregation:
- Save time – Automatically pull in new posts and content from other sites instead of manual curation.
- Increase traffic – Syndicate related articles that your audience would find interesting.
- Curate niche content – Repurpose feeds around specific topics for your niche. For example, an education site could filter for content related to e-learning.
- Jumpstart new sites – Quickly populate new sites with relevant articles from across the web. No need to create tons of unique posts just to get started.
- Generate affiliate revenue – Display affiliate links alongside curated content from external feeds.
- Improve page speed – Fetch just headlines and summaries without loading full article content.
The use cases are nearly endless. Now let‘s see how to accomplish them with WP RSS Aggregation.
Installing WP RSS Aggregator
Like most WordPress plugins, you can search for and install WP RSS Aggregator right from your admin dashboard.
- Go to Plugins → Add New
- Search for "WP RSS Aggregator"
- Click Install to download and activate the plugin
Alternatively, you can manually download the plugin from wprssaggregator.com and upload the ZIP file through Plugins → Add New → Upload.
Upon activation, a new RSS Aggregator menu will appear alongside Dashboard, Posts, Media and all of your other admin options. This is where we‘ll configure our feed fetcher.
Adding Feeds to Aggregate
To start aggregating a feed:
- Go to RSS Aggregator → Add New
- Enter a Title and Feed URL
- Tip: Check any site‘s homepage for a link to their RSS feed. This is commonly available in page footers and sidebars.
- Optional: add a text Description
- Click Publish Feed
That‘s the basics of adding a single feed source to aggregate posts and articles from. Rinse and repeat to add additional sources.
Let‘s pause briefly to consider why you may want to configure multiple sources:
- Aggregating several niche blogs together around a common category or keyword
- Curating content from competing sites in your industry
- Creating news aggregators from major publication feeds
- Building an affiliate feeds page with posts from ecommerce merchants
The possibilities here are nearly endless when tapping into the massive world of RSS feeds available across the internet.
Displaying Your Curated Feeds
We‘ve installed WP RSS Aggregator and configured our first feed source. Now let‘s output our curated content!
In any post, page, or even widget, add this shortcode:
[wp-rss-aggregator]By default, this will show the latest 5 items from all feeds you‘ve configured behind the scenes.
However, the shortcode supports a number of display parameters for advanced customization:
[wp-rss-aggregator feeds="12" items="10" excerpt="200" orderby="random" categories="4,7,13"]This would display the 10 latest items from feed IDs 12, 4, 7 and 13 in random order, truncated to 200 characters.
See the full parameter reference list in WP RSS Aggregator‘s documentation for additional options.
Now that we can install, configure sources, and output feeds – let‘s look at some of the powerful premium extensions available.
Premium Extensions for Advanced Feed Aggregation
While the base WP RSS Aggregator plugin handles the basics well, third-party add-ons introduce more advanced functionality like full feed-to-post imports, keyword targeting, and customized output styling.
Here‘s a comparison of some of the top extensions:
| Extension | Key Features | Use Case |
|---|---|---|
| Feed to Post | Imports feeds as native posts or custom post types | Populating sites with curated content |
| Excerpts & Thumbnails | Displays item summaries and images | Enhancing aggregated feed output |
| Keyword Filtering | Filters items by tags or keywords | Creating niche aggregators |
| Display Options | Custom CSS, layouts and styles | Designing branded feed displays |
Based on your specific goals, utilize the appropriate extensions to supercharge WP RSS Aggregation on your site.
For example, sites looking to jumpstart new projects with curated content should prioritize Feed to Post imports. Alternatively, affiliate sites would get more value emphasizing the Display Options styling.
Wrapping Up
Whether you‘re looking to save time, increase traffic through content curation or establish yourself as an expert in your niche – tapping into RSS feeds through WordPress aggregation checks all the boxes.
According to single grain research, over two-thirds of website visitors prefer to get their information from articles, rather than other formats. With WP RSS Aggregator, you can tap into this demand by integrating curated feed content directly into your website.
I hope you found this complete guide useful for both understanding why feed aggregation is valuable, as well as how to accomplish it through a step-by-step WP RSS Aggregator setup and customization walkthrough.
Please let me know in the comments if you have any other questions on implementing professional feed curation for your WordPress site! I‘m also available for further consultation and support on feed aggregation strategies and technical integration.
