(Widget) RSS Icon Widget

As with most of the plugins we build, the RSS Icon Widget was built out of necessity. One of our clients wanted to have a link to their RSS feed in the sidebar on their site. The built-in WordPress text widget could have worked for us to drop in some HTML code. However, that wasn’t a very elegant solution because the client would have had to edit HTML if they ever wanted to make a change to the link. We looked through the WordPress.org plugin directory but didn’t find anything else that would serve the purpose. Because the functionality of this widget could be used by anyone, we decided to release it to the public.

Building RSS Icon Widget

The basic functionality of the plugin was relatively simple. The user would add the widget into a widget area, configure the link text, choose a color for the link with a color picker, choose an icon size to be displayed next to the link, and finally, enter the link to the feed. We leveraged the official icon set from feedicons.com as it’s widely recognized to indicate an RSS feed.

New Functionality

For a long time, the widget did only one thing and it did it well. Recently, a user asked us if it would be possible to have a dynamic RSS link that would show up and point to the specific RSS archive being displayed. For example, say you were browsing a category called “Cats” on a blog and you wanted to get the RSS feed for just that category. WordPress has that feed, so why not make that available to your visitors? It was a fairly simple addition to the plugin, so we added it!

Going Forward

If this sounds like something you could use on your site, you can download the official version (for free) on the WordPress plugin directory. If there’s anything you’d like to see us add to this plugin, please let us know. We’re always open to suggestions.