Disable WordPress RSS feed: step-by-step guide

In this guide, we’ll explore the practical steps to effectively disable RSS feeds in WordPress, a useful tactic for those looking to streamline their site’s syndication links.

Whether for security, performance, or customization reasons, turning off RSS feeds can significantly enhance your WordPress site’s functionality.

Join us as we walk you through the process, ensuring a smooth and efficient experience.

Table of Contents

• Why disable WordPress RSS feed?
• Tip: remove WordPress feeds via code
  • How to turn off WordPress feed content via code
  • Remove WordPress RSS Feed Links
• Conclusion

Why disable WordPress RSS feed?

There are several compelling reasons to disable your WordPress RSS feed:

• Protecting your content from being automatically copied, indexed by search engines, and then penalized for duplicate content.
• Enhancing site security by removing a potential vulnerability that could be exploited by hackers.
• Ensuring that your audience accesses content directly through your website, which is particularly important for e-commerce platforms where direct interaction is crucial.
• Preventing content scraping by bots designed to harvest content from WordPress feeds, thereby safeguarding your original work.
• Securing your SEO efforts by ensuring that search engines index your content first, not the copied versions. This preserves the integrity and originality of your content, maintaining its rightful place on your own site.

Tip: remove WordPress feeds via code

While there are numerous WordPress plugins available to disable RSS feeds, we recommend turning off WordPress feeds through coding due to the simplicity of the process.

Keeping it simple has a weight in WP. Overloading the website with additional plugins can negatively impact performance and security, which are crucial reasons to disable the WordPress RSS feed. If speed and security are priorities for you, as they are for us, it’s best to maintain your WordPress site with the minimum number of active plugins.

Therefore, utilize coding as much as possible: beyond managed hosting, our mission is to guide you through easy and secure tweaks to gain control over your WordPress installation. The fewer components your site has, the more stable, secure, and reliable it becomes.

To enable you to disable the WordPress RSS feed without jeopardizing your live website, we provide a dedicated development server.

If you don’t have a development WordPress server, signup at wetopi, it’s FREE.

How to turn off WordPress feed content via code

First of all you have to locate your child theme’s functions.php file. This is the only file you’ll need to edit to disable the feeds.

One way to access and edit the configuration files is by connecting to the server by sftp (Secure FTP), or SSH

The code to disable WordPress RSS feed:

function disable_all_feeds() {
   wp_die(__('This WordPress does not have Feeds.'));
}
 
add_action('do_feed', 'disable_all_feeds', 1);

add_action('do_feed_rdf', 'disable_all_feeds', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rss', 'disable_all_feeds', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rss2', 'disable_all_feeds', 1);
add_action('do_feed_atom', 'disable_all_feeds', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rss2_comments', 'disable_all_feeds', 1);
add_action('do_feed_atom_comments', 'disable_all_feeds', 1);

With this first block of code, you will disable all the feed formats that WordPress provides. With this simple piece of code, when a user or crawler wants to load your WordPress feed e.g. https://yoursite.com/feed, it will get a HTTP 500 error with the message: “This WordPress does not have Feeds.”

Remove WordPress RSS Feed Links

The previous code removed the content from the feeds, but WordPress continues to add links to the RSS feeds in your page headers.

To deletethe feed links, you have to add the following code in functions.php:

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

Conclusion

Turning off WordPress RSS feeds can be a strategic move to enhance your website’s security, protect your content, and ensure that your SEO efforts are directed towards your original site.

This guide has walked you through the reasons for disabling RSS feeds, how to do it without the need for additional plugins, and the steps to remove feed content and links directly through code.

By prioritizing simplicity and security, you can maintain a leaner, more secure WordPress installation.

Remember! if the process seems daunting or if you’re worried about affecting your live site, Wetopi offers a free dedicated development server to safely implement these changes.

Whether you’re a seasoned developer or a WordPress novice, these insights and tools empower you to take control of your website’s functionality and security, keeping your content safe and your site running smoothly.

We are techies passionate about WordPress. With wetopi, a Managed WordPress Hosting, we want to minimize the friction that every professional faces when working and hosting WordPress projects.

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