How to Embed Any External RSS Feed on Your WordPress Site Without Plugins

As experienced WordPress developers, we've often needed to display RSS feeds from external sites—like another blog or news source—directly on a WordPress page. The great news? WordPress has a built-in fetch_feed() function that handles this natively, no plugins required. This approach is reliable, lightweight, and lets you turn your site into a seamless news aggregator.

Here's how to do it: Add the following PHP code to any template file, such as a custom page template (via Appearance > Theme Editor or a child theme).

<?php
// Include WordPress RSS fetcher
include_once(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/feed.php');

// Replace with your RSS feed URL
$rss = fetch_feed('https://example.com/feed.xml');
$maxitems = $rss->get_item_quantity(5); // Limit to 5 items
$rss_items = $rss->get_items(0, $maxitems);
?>

<ul>
<?php if ($maxitems == 0) : ?>
  <li>No items.</li>
<?php else : ?>
  <?php foreach ($rss_items as $item) : ?>
    <li>
      <a href="<?php echo $item->get_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php echo esc_html($item->get_title()); ?>"><?php echo esc_html($item->get_title()); ?></a>
    </li>
  <?php endforeach; ?>
<?php endif; ?>
</ul>

Update the feed URL, item count, and add CSS for styling. This code is production-ready and follows WordPress best practices for security and performance.

Source: WordPress Codex