Customize RSS feed for WordPress.com hosted site

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  jlee238781695 · Member · Aug 21, 2018 at 2:17 pm

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  Hello,

  I’m trying to decide whether I should host my site on my server or use WordPress.com, and one of the things I’d like to do is customize the RSS feed to have it a description field. Is it possible to do so if I were to host the site in WordPress.com? If so, it would be great if you could point me to the documentation / provide me a short instruction.

  Thank you so much!
  Joheun

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  christinamccomiskey · Member · Aug 21, 2018 at 2:24 pm

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  Hi, here is a link that has a step by step instruction on how to create a customized RSS feed.
  https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-create-custom-rss-feeds-in-wordpress/
  I hope this helps!

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  jlee238781695 · Member · Aug 21, 2018 at 5:09 pm

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  Hi Christina,

  Thanks for the link! I guess it’s clear how to customize it as long as I’m hosting the site on my own web server, but what I’m unsure is if I can follow those steps when I use the Business plan from WordPress.com.

  Any other insights are appreciated!

  Thanks!
  Joheun

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  justjennifer · Member · Aug 21, 2018 at 5:18 pm

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  Hi there, I’ve gone ahead and tagged this thread for Staff assistance. Thanks for your patience while they get back to you.

  More about the Business plan in general: https://en.support.wordpress.com/business-plan/

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  justjennifer · Member · Aug 21, 2018 at 5:20 pm

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  @christinamccomiskey Support documentation for sites hosted on WordPressdotcom can be found on our Support site at https://en.support.wordpress.com/ Thanks.

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  kokkieh · Staff · Aug 22, 2018 at 6:09 am

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  Hi there,

  On WordPress.com customizing your RSS feed is only possible on our Business Plan where you can use a code snippets plugin to add the necessary code to your site’s functions.php file.

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  jlee238781695 · Member · Aug 23, 2018 at 4:46 pm

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  Hello,

  Thanks for the response! So it sounds like we could modify any .php files as long as we use the Business plan & the code snippets plugin – is that correct?

  The recommendation was to modify the feed-rss2.php file for the custom RSS feed, and there would be quite a few modifications that we would need to make to the other files that are part of WordPress. Just wanted to make sure that we would be able to achieve everything through the Business plan & plugins.

  Thank you so much!
  Joheun

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  kokkieh · Staff · Aug 24, 2018 at 6:20 am

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  So it sounds like we could modify any .php files as long as we use the Business plan & the code snippets plugin – is that correct?

  No. First, adding code with a code snippet plugin does not actually modify any file on your site. It just runs that code as if the code was included in your theme’s functions.php file.

  Second, the code snippet plugins I see on the first page if searching the WordPress.org plugin repository all only affect functions.php, and I know there are similar plugins that affect your theme’s header.php and footer.php files, but I don’t know of anything that can be used to modify any php file on your site, and if there exists such a plugin it will very likely not be compatible with WordPress.com.

  If you need to be able to modify any file for your site, then our Business Plan is not the best fit for you. You’d need to be with host that offers FTP access in that case. There are some options that you can consider here:

  Hosting

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  jlee238781695 · Member · Aug 24, 2018 at 6:09 pm

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  I see – great to know! Thank you for the clarification and recommendation!