Blog Herald Feeds and Customizing Your WordPress Blog Feeds

Lorelle VanFossen

Apr. 12, 2007
3 min read

The Blog Herald features over 20 categories of post articles. Wouldn’t you like to keep up with the news from Blog Herald only about Blogging? Or only about Social Media? Want to go pro? What about tracking the news and tips from the Professional Blogging category? Like my WordPress Wednesday news and want to track those and other WordPress news and tips? There is a lot of news coming out about China from the new China blogging expert, Minic Rivera, worth following. Or just the news about blogging?

Maybe you want to only follow what Minic Rivera has to say on the Blog Herald. Or you have another favorite contributor like Tony Hung, J. Angelo Racoma, Derek van Vliet, Andy Merrett, Liz Strauss, or me?

While the Blog Herald might not list every one of these as a feed, all are available via feeds directly to your favorite feed reader.

Turning WordPress Blog Categories Into Feeds

WordPress, the blogging platform upon which Blog Herald and many blogs on the web are built upon, and WordPress.com blogs come with feeds built-in. Most WordPress blogs feature full blog feeds or comment feeds. You can also promote category feeds.

While you can redirect your feeds through FeedBurner or other feed services, let’s look at what the built-in feeds have to offer for WordPress blogs. The following are your basic feed links for WordPress for those using permalinks, though your version might be worded slightly different:

WordPress Full Blog Feed: http://example.com/feed/
WordPress Blog Comments Feed: http://example.wordpress.com/comments/feed/
WordPress Categories: http://example.com/category/category-name/feed/
WordPress Tag/Categories: http://example.wordpress.com/tag/tag-category-name/feed/
WordPress Author Feed: http://example.com/author/name/feed/

The feed links for WordPress blogs not using permalinks will be variations on:

WordPress Full Blog Feed: http://example.com/?feed=rss2
WordPress Blog Comments Feed: http://example.com/?feed=comments-rss2
WordPress Categories: http://example.com/wp-rss2.php?cat=4 (category ID number)
WordPress Author Feed: http://example.com/wp-rss2.php?author=2 (author ID number)

For more information on the feeds available on your WordPress blog, see the WordPress Codex on WordPress Feeds.

While full blog and comment feeds are auto-discoverable on most WordPress blogs, category feeds must be added. You can add those links in the head of your WordPress Theme or add the category feed links anywhere else on your blog to promote them and make them easier to find.

To add them to your WordPress blog so they are automatically discovered, add the following to head of your WordPress Theme header.php template file, adding a separate link for each category feed you want automatically found by feed readers:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0" href="http://example.com/category/category-name/feed/" />

You can add category-specific feeds to your WordPress Theme’s header, sidebar blogroll, or even in the footer, or even to your blogroll easily, using:

http://example.com/category/category-name/feed/ OR http://example.wordpress.com/tag/tag-category-name/feed/

You can see the feed here for the Blog Herald Blogging category.

Some WordPress Themes include feed links next to the list of categories in the sidebar or header. They come in the text version (RSS) and orange RSS image version .

To add the text link to your category template tag in your WordPress Theme (full version only), change the category template tag parameters to:

In older versions of WordPress, you would use:

<?php wp_list_cats('sort_column=name&feed=RSS'); ?>

In WordPress 2.1x, you would use:

<?php wp_list_categories('sortby=name&feed=RSS'); ?>

To use the RSS feed graphic with your category list, change the category template tag parameters to:

In older versions of WordPress, you would use:

<?php wp_list_cats('sort_column=name&feed_image=http://example.com/images/rss.gif'); ?>

In WordPress 2.1.x, you would use:

<?php wp_list_categories('sortby=name&feed_image=http://example.com/images/rss.gif'); ?>

For a list of feeds outside of your category template tag list, and for manually created custom feeds, such as category or search feeds, or even to mention a feed right inside of your post content, you can add the feed graphic directly to your feed links.

<a href="http://example.com/category/category-name/feed/" title="Category Name feed">Category Name <img src="http://example.com/images/rss.gif" alt="RSS Feed" title="RSS Feed" /></a>

Blog Herald Category Feeds

The various category feeds available from the Blog Herald include:

Some popular contributors to the Blog Herald can also be tracked through their own feeds:

Check the Blog Herald Archives and Site Map for more of your favorite categories or authors and create your own feeds directly to the content you want.

Other Customized Feed Methods for WordPress Blogs

You can learn more about customizing your WordPress blog feeds from other articles I’ve written on feeds in WordPress:

Lorelle VanFossen blogs about blogging and WordPress on Lorelle on WordPress.

Lorelle VanFossen

The author of Lorelle on WordPress and the fast-selling book, Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging, as well as several other blogs, Lorelle VanFossen has been blogging for over 15 years, covering blogging, WordPress, travel, nature and travel photography, web design, web theory and development extensively as web technologies developed.