How to Allow Users to Subscribe to Categories in WordPress

We’ve all been there – a reader emails asking if they can subscribe to just your ‘WordPress Tutorials’ or ‘Recipe Roundups.’ They love your content but want more control over the topics they see in their feed reader.

While WordPress automatically creates RSS feeds for each category, it doesn’t exactly make it obvious how to subscribe to them. What’s worse, it was tricky for us to find a simple plugin to solve this problem.

That’s why we’ve put together this guide. We’ll show you how to easily add category-specific RSS subscription options to your WordPress site using just a bit of code and the beginner-friendly WPCode plugin.

Why Allow Users to Subscribe to Categories in WordPress?

Categories allow you to group your blog posts into different topics and sections. This can help visitors find interesting and relevant content, while also improving the visitor experience.

For example, if you have a travel blog, then you might create categories such as Accommodation, Itineraries, and Safety Tips.

WordPress automatically creates an RSS feed for each category page on your blog. In this way, visitors can subscribe to your content and get a notification every time you publish a new blog post they may be interested in.

For more information, please see our complete guide on how to use RSS in WordPress.

That said, let’s see how you can allow users to subscribe to individual categories on your WordPress website.

How to Let Users Subscribe to Categories in WordPress With WPCode

This tutorial requires you to add code to your WordPress website.

Often, tutorials will ask you to edit your theme files, but this can cause all kinds of common WordPress errors. In the worst-case scenario, it may even make your website inaccessible.

For that reason, we recommend using WPCode. It is the best code snippets plugin for WordPress that allows you to add custom CSS, PHP, HTML, and more to your website without putting your site at risk.

First, you will need to install and activate the free WPCode plugin. For more information, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once the plugin is activated, go to Code Snippets » Add Snippet.

Here, you will see all the ready-made WPCode snippets you can add to your site.

Simply hover your mouse over the ‘Add Your Custom Code (New Snippet)’ option and click the ‘Use snippet’ button when it appears.

Now, you can choose one of the methods below to allow users to subscribe to categories in WordPress. Feel free to use these quick links to skip to your desired method:

Method 1: Add an RSS Subscribe Link to the WordPress Category Pages

One solution is to add a ‘Subscribe’ link to your site’s category pages. These are the pages that show all the posts within a specific category.

For example, www.example.com/category/wordpress would list all the posts in the ‘WordPress’ category.

After choosing the custom code option in WPCode, you need to type in a title for the code snippet. This is just for your reference, so you can use anything you want.

Then, open the ‘Code Type’ dropdown and choose ‘PHP Snippet’.

With that done, simply paste the following into the code editor:

$category = get_category( get_query_var('cat') );
if ( ! empty( $category ) ) {
echo '<div class="category-feed default-max-width"><p><a href="' . get_category_feed_link( $category->cat_ID ) . '" title="Subscribe to this category" rel="nofollow">Subscribe</a></p></div>';
}

This code snippet will dynamically generate a ‘Subscribe’ button for the current category page, allowing users to subscribe to the category’s RSS feed.

With that done, scroll to the ‘Insertion’ box and select ‘Auto Insert’ if it isn’t already selected.

You can then open the ‘Location’ dropdown and choose ‘Before Post’ in the Categories, Archives, Tags, Taxonomies section.

Then, insert ‘1’ in ‘before post number.’ This ensures the Subscribe link shows after the category title and before your first post in the category across your blog.

To show the link on category pages only, scroll to the ‘Smart Conditional Logic’ section.

Here, click on the ‘Enable Logic’ slider.

You can now open the ‘Conditions’ dropdown and select ‘Show’.

After that, open the next set of dropdown menus and select ‘Taxonomy Page’, ‘Is’, and ‘Category’. This will add the code to your category pages only.

With that done, it’s time to make the snippet live by scrolling to the top of the screen.

You can now click on the ‘Inactive’ toggle so it changes to ‘Active’, and then click on the ‘Save Snippet’ button.

Now, if you visit any category page, you will see the new ‘Subscribe’ link live.

This is what it looked like on our demo WordPress blog:

Method 2: Add an RSS Icon to the WordPress Category Pages

Another option is to add an RSS icon to the category pages. This may grab the visitor’s attention more than a plain link.

To add an RSS icon to your WordPress category pages, you will need to start by uploading the icon you want to use. You can use any icon you want, but you can find a logo in the PNG format over at the official RSS website.

Once you have a logo, simply upload the file to the WordPress media library. You will then need to get the image URL, as you will be using it in the next step.

With that done, create a new PHP code snippet in WPCode by following the same process described above. However, this time, paste the following snippet into the WPCode editor:

$category = get_category( get_query_var('cat') );
if ( ! empty( $category ) ) {
    echo '<div class="category-feed default-max-width"><a href="' . get_category_feed_link( $category->cat_ID ) . '" title="Subscribe to this category" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/rss-icon.png" width="32" height="32" alt="Subscribe" /></a></div>';
}

This code snippet does the same thing as the previous method, but it adds a button with an RSS icon for the current category page. You’ll need to replace the http://example.com URL with the link to the RSS icon you uploaded in the previous step.

Once again, set the code to run on category pages only and then publish it by following the same process described above.

Now, if you visit any category page, you will see the RSS icon live.

Method 3: Add Multiple Subscription Options for Categories in WordPress

Most people who use an RSS reader will already have installed the service’s browser extension so that they can easily add new feeds. However, you can often encourage them to subscribe by adding the icons for these different services.

As an example, we will show you how to add buttons for Feedly and Inoreader, but you can use the same steps to add any other services you like.

To start, you will need to add the icons for the services you want to show. You can often find suitable icons on the service’s website or by doing a quick Google search.

For each RSS icon, you will need to make a note of its URL inside the WordPress media library.

With that done, simply create a new PHP snippet by following the same process described above with WPCode. However, this time, you will need to add the following code:

$category = get_category( get_query_var('cat') );

if ( ! empty( $category ) ) {
    echo '<div class="category-feed default-max-width"><p>Subscribe via: <a href="' . get_category_feed_link( $category->cat_ID ) . '" title="Subscribe to this category" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://localhost:10003/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/rss-icon.png" width="32" height="32" alt="Subscribe" /></a>
    
    <a href="http://www.feedly.com/i/subscription/feed/' . get_category_feed_link( $category->cat_ID ) . '" title="Subscribe via Feedly" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://localhost:10003/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/feedly.png" width="32" height="32" alt="Subscribe" /></a>
    
    <a href="https://www.inoreader.com/?add_feed=' . get_category_feed_link( $category->cat_ID ) . '" title="Subscribe via Inoreader" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://localhost:10003/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/inoreader.png" width="32" height="32" alt="Subscribe" /></a>
    
    </p></div>';
}

This code snippet dynamically generates multiple ‘Subscribe’ options for the current category page, allowing users to subscribe to the category’s RSS feed through various feed readers. 

As before, you will need to replace each link with the image URL that you want to show on your WordPress website.

Bonus Tip: Add Email Subscription for Categories in WordPress

Many users are not familiar with RSS, so it’s a good idea to offer email subscriptions, too.

To add email subscription for categories, you will need to use an email marketing service. We recommend Constant Contact or Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) as they offer an RSS to Email feature.

After choosing an email marketing service, you will need to create an email list and set up an email campaign.

To collect subscribers, we recommend using OptinMonster. It is the best lead-generation software that helps you convert visitors into subscribers and customers.

You can use OptinMonster to create opt-in forms with category checkboxes without writing a single line of code.

After that, you can follow our step-by-step guide on how to notify subscribers of new posts.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to allow users to subscribe to categories in WordPress. You may also want to learn how to style individual categories differently in WordPress and our beginner’s guide to including categories and subcategories in WordPress URLs.

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