How To: Setting Up Auto-Discovery for Your WordPress Feeds

Have you ever noticed that many next generation web browsers will often detect a blog’s feed by displaying a feed icon on the right side of the address bar?  This is something many estabalished sites have taken the time to set up to encourage feed subscribers, but something that most WordPress themes don’t do by default.  

In order to instruct next generation web browsers to automatically detect your WordPress blog’s feed(s), you’ll simply need to do is make a quick modification to your header.php file and add the following code:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?> RSS Feed" href="<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>" />

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?> RSS Comments Feed" href="<?php bloginfo('comments_rss2_url'); ?>" />

If your theme already has the first code in place for the RSS Feed, then you’ll just need to paste the second set of code in to display your RSS Comments Feed.  You can also swap out the PHP code and instead use your Feedburner feed address if you’d like.

If you aren’t sure if you should bother to do this or not, never underestimate the power of suggestion.  It is an unobtrusive way to promote your RSS Feed and Comments Feed while not using up any valuable screen real estate.