UW Theme Classic - Embedding RSS feeds

These instructions can be used to place an RSS feed into a UW Theme page in WordPress. RSS Feeds are a way of delivering external news content to your website in a way that keeps them regularly updated. The UW WordPress Theme can use RSS feeds, however it does require you to use a 'shortcode' to import that into a text block on a page.

Important

This document outlines steps related to UW Theme Classic. This theme will be decommissioned in WiscWeb at the end of December 2026. At that time, this documentation will go away. If you are looking for how to do this process in the new theme, please visit the UW Theme 2.0 website.

Steps

  1. Navigate to the page you'd like to add your RSS Feed to.

  2. Add in a Text Block by clicking on the "Add Page Element" button and selecting "Text Block" from the list.

    To add a new text block, select the Add Page Element option and choose "Text Block."

  3. In the Text Block, either in Visual or Text mode, paste in the following code:

    [uw-rss-feed url="https://urlgoeshere.com" title="Title of RSS Feed" description="Description of RSS Feed" more-link="https://urlgoeshere.com" max-posts="x"]

    A screenshot of a Text Block in the UW Theme. Within the description, the image shows an RSS shortcode example.

  4. Change the URL text (between the two quotation marks) to be the URL of the RSS Feed. This URL will likely end in .rss or something similar.

    Another screenshot of a Text Block in the UW Theme. This one highlights the URL portion of the shortcode, to indicate what needs to change.

  5. Change the Title text (between the two quotation marks) to the title that you want displayed above the RSS feed

    Another screenshot of a Text Block in the UW Theme. This one highlights the title of the shortcode, to indicate what can be modified.

  6. Change the Description text (between the two quotation marks) to a short description of what the RSS feed is and what kind of information it is pulling in.

    Another screenshot of a Text Block in the UW Theme. This one highlights the description portion of the shortcode, to indicate what can be modified.

  7. Change the More Link text (between the two quotation marks) to the URL of the main webpage where the feed can be found.

    Another screenshot of a Text Block in the UW Theme. This one highlights the "more link" portion of the shortcode, to indicate what can be modified.

  8. Change the max-posts text (between the two quotation marks) to the number of articles you would like to display. We recommend no more than 10, but please note that the max-posts option has a maximum value of 15.

    Another screenshot of a Text Block in the UW Theme. This one highlights the "max posts" portion of the shortcode, to indicate what can be modified.

  9. Update your page when ready.

Considerations

  • In some cases, when using a site that doesn't have a traditional .rss URL, you may need to add a /feed/ to the end of a URL.

Adding a feed from UW-Madison news

  1.  When you are trying to use a news feed from UW-Madison News, you would first find the category or tag that you want to create a feed for.

  2. Do this by clicking on a menu Category option, such as Science & Technology.

  3. Once you have that page loaded (e.g., http://news.wisc.edu/science-technology/) type in the word feed after the slash at the end of the URL (e.g., http://news.wisc.edu/science-technology/feed/) and hit enter. 

    1. Note: You could also do the same for a tag (e.g., http://news.wisc.edu/tag/science/feed/) 
  4. This will show some code on the screen. Copy the URL value in the browser.



  5. This is the URL that you will use for a feed from UW-Madison News to display on your page, using the steps above.

Keywords:
RSS feeds, newsfeeds, news feeds, WordPress, UW Theme, news, blog, link, embed, add 
Doc ID:
76702
Owned by:
Jenna K. in UW Theme Classic
Created:
2017-09-21
Updated:
2025-09-17
Sites:
DoIT Help Desk, UW Theme Classic