Turn on an RSS feed in Drupal

What is an RSS feed?

RSS is a special list of your newest posts. It is written so that computers can read it easily. People use a feed reader app to follow many sites in one place. When you post something new, it appears in their reader. It works like a newspaper subscription.

Drupal is a program for building websites. Drupal 8, 9 and newer can make a feed with its Views feature. A view is a saved list of content that you can show in different ways.

Steps

1. Log in to Drupal as an administrator.
2. Click Extend in the top bar.
3. Check that the Views and Views UI modules are ticked. A module is an add-on that gives Drupal a feature. Install them if they are not.
4. Click Structure, then Views.
5. Find the view named Frontpage.
6. If it is disabled, click the arrow beside Edit and choose Enable.
7. Open your site address with /rss.xml at the end. This is the feed that comes with the Frontpage view.

If you see a page of text with items, the feed works. It lists posts that are marked to show on the front page.

Add a subscribe button

1. Click Structure, then Block layout.
2. Pick a region, such as Footer, and click Place block.
3. Find Syndicate in the list and click Place block.
4. Click Save block, then Save blocks at the bottom.

Visitors will now see a small feed icon that links to your feed.

Make a feed for another list

You can add a feed to any view. Open the view, click Add and choose Feed. Set a path such as blog/feed. Under Format, keep RSS Feed. Click Save.

Not working?

• Clear the cache from Configuration, Development, Performance.
• Check that your posts have Promoted to front page ticked.

Quick recap

• RSS lets people follow your posts in a reader app.
• Enable the Frontpage view in Structure, Views.
• Your feed is at /rss.xml.
• Place the Syndicate block to show a feed icon.