If we talk about some of the best and most popular WordPress plugins WP RSS Aggregator will definitely reserve it’s spot in the list, high quality coding, more than 78k downloads, talks about the success story of this amazing plugin.

Imports and aggregates multiple RSS Feeds using SimplePie. Outputs feeds sorted by date (latest first). WP RSS Aggregator is the most comprehensive and elegant RSS feed solution for WordPress.

Created by Jean Galea of WP Mayor WP RSS Aggregator deserves your attention, in this post today we will discuss about this plugin and how it can help you.

You want to create a news Aggregator site like Alltop or just want to Aggregate news and blog posts from different sources to read at one place, WP RSS Aggregator plugin can do the job for you.

In order to know more about this plugin, we gave a test run of the WP RSS Aggregator plugin and also attached the video demo by the plugin creator above.

How to Install WP RSS Aggregator

Go to your plugin installation dashboard and find WP RSS Aggregator and just install and activate the first option you get

Once WP RSS Aggregator is activated, you will get the plugin option on your dashboard or you can directly go to the settings page from the plugin itself.

It is like adding a custom post type on WordPress, some of the default options available under this plugin are the all feed sources to check all the available feeds, the option to add a new feed, settings page, import export and debugging option.

How to add a new feed on WP RSS Aggregator

To add a new feed item on your Aggregator site, go to RSS Aggregator- Add New option and write the feed address on the URL section, here we are trying to get the feed items for our site Indexwp.com so the feed address is “http://indexwp.com/feed” you also have the option to write title, description of the feed & validate the feed address.

Once you are done with writing feed address, title and description just publish the feed like any other WordPress post.

You can check the preview under feed preview section of the page.

How to Display the Feeds on a Page/Post

Displaying the feed results imported by WP RSS Aggregator plugin is really easy, just create a new page or post and paste this shortcode “[wp-rss-aggregator]“.

We have created a page called Aggregator on our default WordPress site created with default WordPress theme and pasted the code, check the result of the shortcode below

If you want to pause a particular feed item, you can do that, just go to RSS Aggregator- All feed sources and click on the green button against the feed you want to pause.

The WP RSS Aggregator Settings

WP RSS Aggregator has a detailed settings page of all required and important settings you may need to run this plugin smoothly.

Some of the important settings available are

• Limit feed items by age- Enter the maximum age of feed items to be stored in the database. Feed items older than the specified age will be deleted everyday at midnight. Leave empty for no limit.
• Limit feed items per feed- Enter the maximum number of feeds to import per feed source; enter 0 for unlimited feed items
• Feed processing interval- The duration, how frequently system should process the feed items
• Show source- You can choose to show the feed item source or not show
• Link sources- You have the option to link to the sources
• Source link open behavior- Now this is a very important option, you can choose where the source should open, same window, new window or Lightbox, I would prefer new window just to reduce bounce rate
• Set links as nofollow- You have the option to Nofollow the links (“Nofollow” provides a way for webmasters to tell search engines “Don’t follow links on this page” or “Don’t follow this specific link.”)
• Show date- You have the option to show date, also choose the format of the date

Support: Now this is something which will make this plugin stand out, WP RSS Aggregator plugin has awesome support through HelpScout, once you get the plugin installed and the add-ons, you are sure to get support if you need that extra help.

Take WP RSS Aggregator to Next Level

The default WP RSS Aggregator works perfectly with the amount of setting it provides, now what if you want to take your Aggregator site to the next level.

WP RSS Aggregator developer has provided some really cool add-ons to make your Aggregator site stand out

Feed to Post: Allows you to import feed items into posts or any other custom post type that you have created. Takes WP RSS Aggregator to a whole new level of flexibility.

Keyword Filtering: Import feeds that contain specific keywords in either the title or their content. Control what gets imported to your blog. You can use keywords, keyphrases and categories.

Excerpts & Thumbnails: Adds the ability to display thumbnails and excerpts. Perfect for adding some life and color to your feed item display. For more flexibility Feed to Post is a better option

Categories: Assign categories to your feed sources. Then display a particular category or multiple categories on a post or page via shortcodes.

Advanced Feeds Bundle: This is a bundle of the add-ons we recommend you use to build anything custom with imported feeds.

Simple Feeds Bundle:This is a bundle of some of the add-ons used to create a simple and attractive feed display. All together

The output from the aggregator with the Excerpts & Thumbnails add-on installed.

With the Excerpts & Thumbnails add-on installed.

Conclusion: A great plugin, if you want to create an Aggregator site real quick this plugin is probably the best option to go for, just install the plugin, bring some of the best add-ons such as Excerpts & Thumbnails add-on, that’s it your site is ready.

Do share your take on the plugin and experience using the comment section.