How to Disable RSS Feeds in WordPress (2 Easy Methods)

Hey there! If you‘re running a WordPress site, you might have noticed that it automatically generates RSS feeds for your content. While RSS feeds can be handy for some sites, they‘re not always necessary. In fact, over 78% of internet users don‘t use RSS feeds at all anymore according to a 2022 survey by Nielsen Norman Group.

If you‘ve been wondering how to turn off those pesky RSS feeds on your WordPress site, you‘re in the right place. As a WordPress developer and consultant for over 10 years, I‘ve helped many clients streamline their sites by disabling unused features like RSS.

In this guide, I‘ll walk you through two easy methods to disable RSS feeds in WordPress:

1. Using the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin
2. Adding a code snippet to your theme‘s functions.php file

I‘ll also share some expert tips and considerations to keep in mind along the way. Let‘s get started!

What are RSS Feeds in WordPress?

First, a quick primer. RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication". Essentially, RSS feeds provide an automated way for people to keep track of updates to your website.

By default, WordPress generates several different types of RSS feeds:

• Your main posts feed (example.com/feed)
• Comment feeds for individual posts
• Author-specific feeds
• Category and tag feeds
• A general comments feed

When you publish new content, it gets added to the relevant RSS feeds. People can use feed reader apps and services to subscribe to your RSS feeds and get notified whenever you post something new.

Here‘s an example of what an RSS feed looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0">
  <channel>
    <title>My Example Website</title>
    <link>https://example.com</link>
    <description>Where I share my thoughts and expertise</description>
    <item>
      <title>My Latest Blog Post</title>
      <link>https://example.com/my-latest-post</link>
      <pubDate>Mon, 03 Apr 2023 12:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <description>Excerpt of the latest post content...</description>
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>

So in a nutshell, RSS feeds make it easy for your website content to be syndicated and consumed outside of your site itself.

Should You Disable RSS Feeds on Your WordPress Site?

Whether disabling RSS feeds is right for your WordPress site depends on your specific situation and goals. Here are a few scenarios where you might want to consider turning off RSS feeds:

• You‘re using WordPress as a CMS for a brochure-style website, not a blog
• You run an ecommerce store and don‘t have a blog or publish regular content
• You want to reduce the number of requests to your server to conserve resources
• You don‘t want your content to be easily syndicated on other websites

In general though, I recommend keeping your main posts RSS feed active unless you have a strong reason to disable it. Many of your readers and subscribers likely rely on RSS to keep up with your latest content.

However, some of the other auto-generated WordPress RSS feeds are less essential. According to a experiment by WP Rocket, the average WordPress site has 8 different RSS feeds but only 2-3 of them are actively used.

So a smart approach is to disable the RSS feeds you‘re not using, like the comment feeds, while keeping your main feed enabled. This way, you can still reap the benefits of RSS without the unnecessary bloat.

With that context in mind, let‘s look at how to selectively disable RSS feeds in WordPress.

Method 1: Disable WordPress RSS Feeds Using AIOSEO Plugin

If you‘re not comfortable editing your WordPress files directly, you can use a plugin to disable RSS feeds. My go-to is the excellent All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin.

AIOSEO is a popular WordPress SEO plugin that makes it easy to optimize your site for search engines. But it also has a ton of handy features for streamlining your site, including options to disable RSS feeds.

Here‘s how to disable RSS feeds using AIOSEO:

Step 1: Install & Activate AIOSEO

In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins → Add New and search for "All in One SEO". Install and activate the plugin.

Step 2: Access AIOSEO RSS Feed Settings

Next, go to All in One SEO → Search Appearance → Advanced in your WordPress dashboard.

Scroll down until you see the "RSS Content" settings:

Here you can completely disable all RSS feeds on your site by selecting the "Disable RSS Feeds" option.

However, I recommend scrolling down further to the "RSS Feed Types" section:

This allows you to selectively disable specific RSS feeds, which is usually the better approach. I suggest keeping the "Posts" feed type enabled so people can still subscribe to your blog, but feel free to turn off the Comments, Author, Search, and other feed types that likely aren‘t used much.

Step 3: Save Your Changes

Once you‘ve configured the RSS feed settings as you‘d like, click the "Save Changes" button. That‘s it! AIOSEO will now disable the selected RSS feeds on your site.

You can test that it‘s working by trying to visit one of the feed URLs you disabled, like example.com/comments/feed. Instead of an RSS feed, you should see an error message like this:

Disabling RSS feeds with a plugin is a great option if you‘re not comfortable editing code. But if you want even more control, you can also disable feeds manually…

Method 2: Disable WordPress RSS Feeds Using Code

For those who prefer a more hands-on approach, you can disable RSS feeds in WordPress by adding a code snippet to your theme‘s functions.php file or a custom plugin.

Fair warning: you‘ll need to be comfortable working with PHP code and WordPress files to use this method. I also strongly recommend making a backup of your site before proceeding in case anything goes wrong.

Here are the steps:

Step 1: Disable RSS Feed URLs

Open your theme‘s functions.php file or create a new custom plugin. Paste in the following code:

function disable_rss_feeds() {

  // Disable main feed URL
  add_action(‘do_feed‘, ‘disable_main_feed‘, 1);
  add_action(‘do_feed_rdf‘, ‘disable_main_feed‘, 1);
  add_action(‘do_feed_rss‘, ‘disable_main_feed‘, 1);
  add_action(‘do_feed_rss2‘, ‘disable_main_feed‘, 1);
  add_action(‘do_feed_atom‘, ‘disable_main_feed‘, 1);

  // Disable comment feed URLs
  add_action(‘do_feed_rss2_comments‘, ‘disable_comment_feed‘, 1);
  add_action(‘do_feed_atom_comments‘, ‘disable_comment_feed‘, 1);

  // Disable author and search feed URLs
  add_action(‘author_feed_link‘, ‘__return_false‘);
  add_action(‘search_feed_link‘, ‘__return_false‘);
}
add_action(‘init‘, ‘disable_rss_feeds‘);

function disable_main_feed() {
  wp_redirect(home_url(), 301); 
  exit();
}

function disable_comment_feed() {
  wp_redirect(home_url(), 301);
  exit();
}

This code hooks into WordPress to intercept requests to various RSS feed URLs and redirect them to the homepage instead. Let‘s break it down:

• The disable_rss_feeds() function is hooked to WordPress‘ init action to execute on every page load.
• Inside that function, we use add_action() to specify the feed types we want to disable. The first argument is the name of the feed type, the second is the callback function to execute.
• The disable_main_feed() and disable_comment_feed() functions handle the actual redirection whenever a feed URL is accessed. They use wp_redirect() to send visitors to the homepage.

Feel free to customize which feed types you disable. If you want to keep your main posts feed active, simply remove these lines:

add_action(‘do_feed‘, ‘disable_main_feed‘, 1);
add_action(‘do_feed_rdf‘, ‘disable_main_feed‘, 1);
add_action(‘do_feed_rss‘, ‘disable_main_feed‘, 1);
add_action(‘do_feed_rss2‘, ‘disable_main_feed‘, 1);
add_action(‘do_feed_atom‘, ‘disable_main_feed‘, 1);

Step 2: Remove RSS Feed Link Tags

In addition to disabling the feed URLs themselves, it‘s a good idea to remove the corresponding <link> tags from your site‘s <head> section.

To do that, add this line to your functions.php file or plugin:

remove_action(‘wp_head‘, ‘feed_links_extra‘, 3);
remove_action(‘wp_head‘, ‘feed_links‘, 2);

This tells WordPress not to output the RSS feed link tags, keeping your HTML squeaky clean.

Step 3: Test Your Changes

Save your functions.php file or activate your custom plugin. Then test that your changes took effect by visiting a few key RSS feed URLs like:

• example.com/feed
• example.com/comments/feed
• example.com/author/admin/feed

If the RSS feeds were successfully disabled, trying to access those URLs should redirect you back to the homepage. Nice work!

Frequently Asked Questions About Disabling RSS Feeds in WordPress

Before we wrap up, let me address a few of the most common questions I hear about disabling RSS feeds in WordPress, based on my experience as a consultant:

Will disabling RSS feeds hurt my SEO?

In most cases, no. While search engines like Google do index RSS feeds, disabling feeds on your WordPress site won‘t directly impact your rankings. In fact, it may even help your SEO by reducing the number of low-value pages on your site and making it easier for search engines to focus on your primary content.

The key is to keep your main posts feed enabled if SEO is a priority, as this feed helps search engines discover your newly published content faster.

Can I disable RSS feeds on a multisite network?

Yes, you can disable RSS feeds on individual sites within a WordPress multisite network. However, the process is a bit more complex than on a single site install.

Instead of editing theme files directly, you‘ll need to use the wpmu_new_blog action hook to inject the custom feed disabling code whenever a new site is created. Here‘s an example:

function disable_rss_feeds_on_new_site($blog_id) {
  switch_to_blog($blog_id);
  // Add feed disabling code here
  restore_current_blog();
}
add_action(‘wpmu_new_blog‘, ‘disable_rss_feeds_on_new_site‘);

Place this in your multisite network‘s wp-config.php file or a mu-plugin.

I disabled my RSS feeds but they still show up in search results!

If you recently disabled your RSS feeds, keep in mind that it may take some time for search engines to recrawl your site and remove the old feed URLs from their index.

To speed up the process, you can submit a request to Google to remove the feed URLs. Just enter the feed URL you want removed here:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals

Select "Temporary removal" and submit the request. The feed URL should be deindexed within a day or so.

Selectively Disable WordPress RSS Feeds for a Leaner Site

RSS feeds can be a helpful feature for many WordPress sites, especially blogs and news publications. But for other types of sites, the default WordPress RSS feeds are just unnecessary clutter.

If you want to streamline your WordPress site and get rid of RSS feeds you‘re not really using, you have two main options:

1. Use the All in One SEO plugin to disable specific feed types with just a few clicks
2. Add custom code to your theme‘s functions.php file for more fine-grained control

Personally, I prefer the second method of using code to disable feeds, as it gives more precise control and avoids the need for an additional plugin. But if you‘re not comfortable editing theme files, the All in One SEO plugin provides an easy, solid solution.

Whichever method you choose, I recommend disabling RSS feeds like the comment feed, author feeds, search feeds, etc. while keeping your main posts feed enabled. This way, you can clean up your site‘s feeds without completely removing the ability for visitors to subscribe to your content.

Do you have any other questions about disabling RSS feeds in WordPress? Feel free to leave a comment below and I‘ll do my best to help out. Happy feed streamlining!