Embed Reddit Feeds in WordPress Website: The Definitive Guide


Published at tips tricks by Elle Holder on 31st Dec 2021

What is Reddit, and why would you want to embed Reddit feeds in WordPress site? I’m sure you know what Reddit is, and you likely use it regularly. But what is its purpose, and why is it so popular? And what advantage could there be to a Reddit/WordPress union?

If your website serves a business purpose, Reddit could be a good way to increase involvement, which could increase revenue.

Table of Contents

1. Reddit and its History
2. The Advantage of a Reddit/WordPress Combo
3. Setting Up a WordPress Site
4. Ways to Embed Reddit Feeds in WordPress
      WP RSS Aggregator
      EmbedPress

1. Reddit and its History

Reddit Logo

Reddit is my go-to place when I’m looking for information on a certain product or service. For example, if I’m looking for a new hosting company, backup software, or a specific SEO tool, I would look to the appropriate Reddit community for conversations around that product or service.

The site hosts a huge and ever-growing collection of communities that share an interest in a specific topic. Community members, known as Reddit users, can post to the community as well as vote—either up or down—on the posts of others.

Launched in 2005, the idea behind it was for something the creators called “the front page of the internet.” And for any serious Reddit users today, you know that Reddit has what’s known as the front page.

Getting to the front page of Reddit is something a lot of users aspire to, but it’s tough to achieve.

The most up-to-date data I could find is about 3 years old, so assume these numbers are too low. In order to hit the front page of Reddit, your post needs to get about 4,000 upvotes in less than 6 consecutive hours. So for those wanting to make the front page, they’d need to share something that thrills the community.

The front page stays fresh, as Reddit uses an algorithm to move older posts down the page. So it’s not just a matter of the most votes that will pin you to the top of the front page.

The biggest way that Reddit differs from other social media platforms is its breakdown of communities. According to Oberlo, a Shopify company, as of January 2021, Reddit has 52 million active daily users, with the majority of its users in the United States.

And those communities that we mentioned above? To the Redditor, they are called subreddits. And there are 2.8 million subreddits or individual communities, although according to a 2019 statistic, only about 130,000 are active.

What does all that mean to you and your website? There are very real advantages to a Reddit/WordPress integration.

2. The Advantage of a Reddit/WordPress Combo

“Content is King.” That’s the title of an essay Bill Gates wrote and published on the Microsoft website back in 1996, and we’re still repeating the phrase today. But what did it mean to him back then? Do we still mean the same thing today? And what does that have to do with the benefits of a Reddit/WordPress combination?

Well, what did he say? He started his essay saying this. “Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the internet . . .”, and went on to say, “One of the exciting things about the Internet is that anyone with a PC and a modem can publish whatever content they can create.”

Bill Gates - Microsoft

Back in 1996 when Bill Gates wrote this, the internet was still young.  Google didn’t exist yet, AOL was still a thing, and online marketing had just been born.

Neil Patel surveyed online marketers and business owners to find out what if they believed that content was still king. Nearly half of the responders—47.9% of them—said they believed that readers and Google still want content. 26.2% said they believed more content meant a higher position in the SERPs.

As far as Google wanting content, we don’t need to question that. There’s proof right there on page one of the SERPs. A study done by Backlinko in 2020 looked at 11.8 million search results to find the factors that landed sites on Google’s page 1.

One important finding is the word count. The average word count for pages to rank on page 1 is 1,447 words.

Google thinks content is important.

What does all that have to do with a Reddit/WordPress combo? Well, as pointed out above, Reddit is full of more content than you could imagine. And while you might be aware that linking your site to Reddit and adding your content there, you may never have thought about how the reverse could be beneficial too.

Finding Reddits that relate and using them to supplement your content is a great idea. It could also drive more viewers and possibly engagement your way.

For example, let’s say you have a site about WordPress development. It would make sense for you to add a Reddit that’s WordPress-centric to your site. But you don’t just want to add any feed. It’s a good idea to choose which one would be the best for you.

Reddit has several WordPress related subreddits. To name a few

  • /r/WordPress
  • /r/WordPress_Themes
  • /r/WordPressPluggins
  • /r/WebDev
  • /r/ProWordPress

Let’s use the WordPress_Themes subreddit as an example.

With 7,313 readers, it might seem like an active subreddit. But digging a little deeper into the new posts in the sub, you’ll see things are a little dead. As of this writing, the newest post is 3 hours old. Then the next few are 8, 16, and 21 days old.

That’s not a busy subreddit, and it’s unlikely it will impact your site.

Subreddit WordPress Themes

How about another example? This time let’s examine /r/WordPress.

This subreddit has about 146K readers. But not only is it bigger than the themes sub, but it’s also much busier. There are 4 new posts in the last hour.

Subreddit WordPress

This is the type of subreddit you might what to use to add Reddit to your WordPress site.

And for those of you who don’t have sites about WordPress, finding relevant feeds and their addresses is very easy. Simply search Reddit for subs on your topic. When you find some that are active, all you need to do in most cases is add .rss to the end of the URL.

For example, the WordPress subreddit’s feed address is:

Reddit Feed URL

3. Setting Up a WordPress Site

Most of you here will already have a WP site. However, I do realize that some might still be in the research stage of determining the benefits of Reddit or WordPress individually. For you, I’m adding a quick tutorial on how to set up WordPress and prepare for your Reddit/WordPress integration.

And please note for the sake of this article I’m only referencing and using WordPress.org, not WordPress.com.

Get WordPress

Head over to WordPress.org and click on the Get WordPress button. From there, scroll down and click the download button for the most current release of WordPress.

Alternatively, many web hosts offer a one-click installation of WordPress.

Softaculous App Installer

Head to your web host’s cPanel and scroll down to check for a section called Softaculous Apps Installer. If it’s there, WordPress will be one of the first install options. Choose it and you’ll be walked through a quick WordPress install.

Now you’re ready to add Reddit to WordPress.

4. Ways to Embed Reddit Feeds in WordPress

If you want to embed Reddit feeds in WordPress, one of the most common ways is to use an RSS feed aggregator.

If you’re not familiar with aggregators and RSS feeds, here’s a quick primer.

What is an RSS Feed?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or RDF Site Summary, depending on who you’re asking.

Basically, RSS is nothing more than an XML text file. If a site—like Reddit—chooses to, they can create one of these files which will contain whatever articles or content on their site they wish to syndicate. The newest titles will show at the top of the feed, and the publisher has the option to just add a link to the title and description of the content, the entire content, or just a snippet of the content.

Depending on the method of syndication used, site owners also have the option of publishing their feed as soon as new content is available—which is the most common and sensible practice—or delaying it for a set time.

If you take a look at this XML file above, you’ll quickly realize it isn’t meant to be read, even though the page does contain all the necessary information. A full page would have the full post, comments, and anything else the site owner wanted to syndicate.

To read the content, an RSS reader is necessary. A reader will offer different options. You can have a single view that aggregates on the syndicated content you have subscribed to—perhaps embed reddit feeds in WordPress site—or you can browse everything individually.

Here are a few aggregator options.

1. WP RSS Aggregator 

WP RSS Aggregator

From the Add Plugin section in your WordPress dashboard, find, install, and activate WP RSS Aggregator. You’ll need this or something similar in order to display Reddit on WordPress.

Once you have it activated, take a look at the settings page and choose the options that suit you best.  You have options on setting things like a time limit on items you import, or even the total number of imported Reddits for your WordPress site.

WP RSS Aggregator Settings

Once that’s done, you need to head over to Reddit to find a feed URL to add to the aggregator plugin.

When you have your choice, find the Feed Sources menu item under the plugin in your WordPress dashboard.

WP RSS Aggregator Feed Sources

Add your URL and then in the right sidebar, hit publish. If everything worked as it should, you’ll see a preview of your feed right under the publish button.

Feed Preview

If everything looks right, it’s time to add your feed to your post.

You can add your feed to a new or existing post, so create or edit your post and put your cursor where you want to add it. Once there—and I’m assuming you’re using the Gutenberg Block Editor—click the plus bottom to add a block.

Add Feed to Post

From there, you’re going to need to find the WP RSS Aggregator selection to add.

Browse All to Add Feed

Once you have selected that to add to the block, your feed will be available on your post. You can preview to make sure it all looks right, or just go ahead and publish it.

And now you have Reddit on your WordPress site.

However, adding a feed isn’t the only choice to achieve a Reddit/WordPress integration on your site.

You can also embed Reddit.

2. EmbedPress

EmbedPress

As the name suggests, instead of adding a feed to your site, you can embed posts directly.

Head to the Add New Plugin’s section in your WordPress dashboard and then search for EmbedPress. Then install and activate it.

Install EmbedPress

Now you need to choose a post from Reddit for WordPress. Let’s use a post from the same subreddit we used above as an example. But this time, we’re using the share function on Reddit, not a URL.

I choose a post and then select the share link beneath it. A box opens with a link. Copy that link.

Share Button

Back in WP, create a new post or edit an existing one. Simply paste your link from Reddit to a WordPress post. EmbedPress goes to work immediately, and within seconds, you have the Reddit post added to your WP post. Now all you need to do is publish it.

Wrapping Up

There are several good reasons to create a Reddit/WordPress integration on your site. And there are several ways to achieve it also. But the two mentioned above are the quickest and easiest. And for many, the best part will be that they didn’t need to add any code. All modifications are handled by plugins.

Having said that, I still think it’s a good idea to take backups of your site before making any changes and additions, so if you’re not using already using backup software on your WordPress site, it’s time to start. You might even want to consider using a WordPress management tool like WPBlazer, that could handle those backups and so much more.