RSS feeds have been a part of the internet for quite some time now. They can be very useful if you’re a developer or blogger, but they aren’t always necessary for everyone. If you don’t know what an RSS feed is or why it’s important, let me explain:
What are RSS Feeds and Why Disable Them?
RSS Feeds are used to publish updates from your website, as well as send updates to your subscribers. They can also be used to send updates to search engines and social media platforms like Facebook.
If you have a multi-author blog, then it’s likely that several people will contribute content for the website. If someone publishes an article or blog post on the site, then their name will appear in the RSS feed of that post (for example: “by John Doe”). Each time someone publishes a new article or blog post on the site, it can be added to an RSS Feed so that other websites and readers can subscribe and view each of these updates in real time.
Using a Plugin
If you’re not a coder, or if you need to be able to update your website quickly, then installing a plugin is probably your best option. , we are going to use a plugin called “Disable Feeds.”
- Go to Plugins
- Search for Disable Feeds
- Install And Activate it
Note: This plugin is a bit old, but it still works. You may need to go directly to the page for the plugin and download it manually. If you don’t want to complete this method, feel free to use method 2 below.
How to use Disable Feed Plugin:
After activating the plugin, you can tweak settings at any time by going to Settings > Reading on the left-hand admin panel.
At the bottom, you will find a Setting to redirect visitors toward similar content. This means that if a visitor clicked on a category feed, they will end up on the category page instead.
Using Code
The second way to disable a WordPress RSS feed is to use code.
Here’s how to get started with the code. First, back up your site and use a child theme, so you won’t lose your changes if you update your theme. Then, copy the following code into your child theme’s functions.php file.
function itsme_disable_feed() {
wp_die( __( 'No feed available, please visit the <a href="'. esc_url( home_url( '/' ) ) .'">homepage</a>!' ) );
}
add_action('do_feed', 'itsme_disable_feed', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rdf', 'itsme_disable_feed', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rss', 'itsme_disable_feed', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rss2', 'itsme_disable_feed', 1);
add_action('do_feed_atom', 'itsme_disable_feed', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rss2_comments', 'itsme_disable_feed', 1);
add_action('do_feed_atom_comments', 'itsme_disable_feed', 1);Now if a person visits an RSS feed on your site, for example, domain.com/feed, they will see the following message.
Conclusion
WordPress is a very powerful software with many great features. One of those features is the ability to display RSS feeds on your site. If you are using a WordPress theme that has this built-in then you might want to disable it so that it doesn’t show up in your feed list. This article will help you do just that! We’ll cover how to disable them using code through an ftp client or by installing a plugin from the WordPress repository.