Create the Blog of All Blogs to Rule the Foodie World

Do you like reading cookbooks the way most people read novels? Are you constantly posting pictures of your food to Instagram? Does your RSS reader update you on the latest recipes? If you’re nodding in agreement then chances are that you’re a foodie.

Launching your own food blog is pretty simple and perhaps you’re already running one. Being a foodie, there’s so much more you can offer your viewership – recipes, baking techniques, food presentation tips, and whatnot. Why not create a blog to rule the entire foodie world?

In this post, we’ll show you how you can create your own food aggregation site with the WP RSS Aggregator plugin to deliver more value to your site’s viewership. By the time you’re through with this tutorial, you’ll have your very own one-stop food network.

Let’s cover some basics before we begin!

Why You Should Create a Food Aggregation Site

Sharing your take on food with the world is reason enough to start a food blog. But there are only so many areas you can tackle when it comes to food. After all, food blogs are more than just platforms that help you decide what you should cook for dinner.

A content curation site focused on compiling the latest in food collects and publishes everything from new recipes and ingredients to presentation techniques that serve as a source of inspiration for all kinds of foodie adventures. Here’s why you should create a food aggregation site:

• Helps establish credibility. Importing recipes and the latest in cooking techniques from high-authority websites gives your brand credibility and your audience a reason to visit your site. Top-quality content imported from multiple sources and published on a single platform is (almost) always research-driven and backed by positive reviews.
• Serves as a source of inspiration. Food blogs promote creativity in readers and serve as a source of inspiration for food enthusiasts. A platform that imports food-related content from several different sources is a great way to revitalize force by bringing in new members.
• Improves your brand identity. By curating food content from selected websites, you can establish a strong following that relates to your food personality. To further enhance your brand image, you can add your own clever comments to inject personality into each post.

Those of you who don’t have enough time to publish original content to keep up with the readers’ demands should definitely take to content curation. Despite common belief, content curation actually helps improve search engine optimization by providing more pathways into your site – as long as you remember to credit the original source!

WP RSS Aggregator for Content Curation

WP RSS Aggregator is one of the best RSS feed importer plugins for WordPress sites. The WP RSS Aggregator plugin also works as an auto-blogging platform that can be used to import, merge, and display both RSS and Atom feeds directly to your site from multiple sources. Shortcode integration makes it easy for users to publish the feeds that were imported in different layouts.

The core plugin is available free for downloading and features basic aggregation functionality. When you’re ready to take things up a notch, you can purchase any of its eight premium add-ons to leverage the advanced features.

How to Curate a One-Stop Food Blog With WP RSS Aggregator

Creating a one-stop food blog with WP RSS Aggregator is simple and straightforward. In this section, we’ll show you how you can create your own food curation site from scratch. We’ll assume that you already have a self-hosted WordPress website set up.

Installing and Configuring WP RSS Aggregator

As we mentioned above, the core plugin is available free for download from the WordPress plugin repository. To get started, log in to your WordPress website’s dashboard and navigate to Plugins > Add New. Search for WP RSS Aggregator, install, and activate the plugin.

We’ll be using the Feed to Post add-on to import the feed items directly as WordPress posts from their respective RSS feeds. We recommend that you purchase this add-on and install it to your WordPress site. Once you’ve activated it, remember to activate its license by heading over to RSS Aggregator > Settings > Licenses from the WordPress dashboard.

Once that’s done, navigate to the General tab to configure the plugin’s settings. You can use the settings we’ve configured in the screenshot below or modify them based on your own preferences.

We’ve set the age limit of the imported posts at 4 weeks which means that items that exceed this age limit will automatically be deleted. Additionally, the feed processing interval is set to once every 2 hours which denotes the frequency at which new feeds are fetched.

Next, navigate to the Feed to Post tab to configure the settings for each imported post.

We’ve set the Post Type to Posts, ticked the Canonical Link box, selected the Author in the feed to be the Author for imported items, and set the First image in post content to be displayed as the Featured image. You can configure the remaining settings based on your own preferences.

Adding the Feed Sources

Now that we’ve configured the plugin’s and the Feed to Post add-on’s settings, it’s time to add the feed sources you want to import content from.

Step 1: Navigate to RSS Aggregator > Add New.

Step 2: Add in the new feed source’s title.

Step 3: Enter the Feed Source Details:

• The URL determines the feed source.
• Limit allows you to specify how many posts you’d like to import at a time.
• Select Link to enclosure if you’d like the feed items to link to the URL in the enclosure tag.
• Tick the Unique titles only box if you only want to display feed items with unique titles.

Step 4: Validate the feed source by clicking the Validate feed link.

Step 5: Click the Publish Feed button to continue.

That’s it! You’ve added a feed source. In order to add more feed sources to import content from, all you have to do is repeat Step 1 to Step 5.

Now that everything is ready to go, the feed sources will fetch the latest content every few hours (based on the settings you configured) and your food curation site will continue getting updates as long as the WP RSS Aggregator plugin is up and running.

Launching Your Food Curation Site

By now you should have some items imported from the feed sources. Go ahead and make sure they’ve imported correctly before you publish them to your site. Here’s what it should look like when it’s all ready to go:

Once you publish the posts to your food curation site, it should look something like this:

Curating a Food Blog With the Simple Feeds Bundle

WP RSS Aggregator offers a Simple Feeds Bundle that includes the Excerpts & Thumbnails, Categories, and Keyword Filtering add-ons. This bundle is ideal for curating a simple feed item display for your food blog. Here’s how you can get started with the Simple Feeds Bundle.

Configure the Add-Ons’ Settings

By navigating to RSS Aggregator > Settings > Excerpts, you can configure the excerpt’s settings.

We’ve configured the Thumbnails settings as follows:

You can also configure Keyword Filtering settings by navigating to RSS Aggregator > Settings > Keyword Filtering and Categories by navigating to RSS Aggregator > Categories.

Import Feed Items

Start off by adding the feed sources following the steps given above. Once you’re done with that, navigate to RSS Aggregator > Feed Items from the WordPress dashboard. It should look something like this:

Now, head over to the page or post where you’d like to publish the feed items. Add the following shortcode in the text editor of the page or post. Click the Publish button when you’re done.

Preview

Here’s a preview of the food curation site created with WP RSS Aggregator’s Simple Feeds Bundle:

Some Popular Food Curation Sites

Here are some food curation sites you can visit for more inspiration!

FoodPress

FoodPress is the go-to destination for the hottest dishes from WordPress.com bloggers. It features snippets of posts of food-related tag pages like food, recipes, baking, cocktails, and more.

foodgawker

foodgawker is a curated photo gallery that allows users to visually search new recipes, techniques, and ingredients. The posts are submitted by food bloggers from all around the world.

Food Curated

Food Curated is a platform through which Liza Mosquito de Guia combines food and storytelling to curate a truly amazing site.

Wrapping It Up

Creating a one-stop WordPress site to rule the foodie world is pretty easy when you have the right tools to help you get started. We showed you how you can kick things off with the WP RSS Aggregator plugin in a few simple steps. Be sure to try it out on your own and share your food curation site with us!

Were you able to curate your own foodie blog? We’d love to hear all about your experience so let us know by commenting below!