- Do you have a site with lots of categories?
- Do you think that some of your readers are only really interested in one of your categories?
- It is quite possible that you will get more subscribers to your site if you offer a tailored RSS feed for one or more of your featured or special-interest categories.
Case Study: A Niche within a Niche
Our site Beyond 2012 HQ has several categories relating to the Year 2012 and beyond.
- There are many predictions and prophecies for the year 2012 – fortelling of change, possibly even the end of the world as we know it.
- Topics range from the end of the Mayan calendar and global warming to spiritual ascension and survivalism.
It is quite possible that somebody interested in survivalism (that is surviving a disaster by preparing with emergency kits and survival training) will not be interested in spiritual ascension.
One group of readers thinks the worst and is buying freeze-dried food and the other is meditating daily to connect with their spiritual guides to get assistance with the transation to the 4th or 5th dimension.
If the survivalist keeps getting emails and entries in their reader about topics they are not intersted in, they will quickly unsubscribe and may never return to your site. After all, no matter how ‘good’ your site it, people forget which sites they go to – even if it was one they liked.
Solution: Creating separate RSS feeds for individual categories
A very simple 2 step solution…
Step 1:
First you’ll need to know the “id” of the category you are interested in. Here is an image showing you how to do this.
- If you need to see a larger image – click on the image and return to the post using the “Back” button.
Step 2:
Create the following line of code to use with a text or image link
http://yourURL/?feed=rss2&cat=id
The “id” is the number found in step 1 above.
For example – the customized feed link for the Tips & Tricks category on Thesis Theme HQ – the category this post belongs to – is…
http://thesisthemehq.com/?feed=rss2&cat=11
When you click on the below link (that uses the above code), you are taken to your RSS page – I use Google Reader
Click here to subscribe to the RSS feed for Tips & Tricks on Thesis Theme HQ
Inspiration for this post: My Web Solutions – WordPress Category RSS feed
Add a Comment
I can understand your way of thinking of trying to make it available for specific categories, but I would rather like to encourage my users/readers to subscribe to my full rss feed.
They might miss something information that they are looking for. You never know. I subscribe to rss feed via email and then check which posts I want to read and comment on.
George Serradinho´s last blog ..Funny: Yoga for Drunks
How would you set this up so that the multiple feeds were available on one page?
Great Tip!
Chethan´s last blog ..Facebook: Account Temporarily Unavailable! Affects Millions of Users
Thanks to this site… even at the first try is so confusing but at the end i make it.. i’m happy to visit this site again and look for new post… on the archive box.
I’m using this technique to create an RSS feed for a specific category in my blog to upload to itunes. Unfortunately the feed brought in every post instead of just the category, have things changed with the newer versions of Wordpress?
I can’t comment on WP 3.0 yet. Waiting for Thesis 1.8 before I upgrade. Stay tuned.