How to Disable RSS Feeds in WordPress (2 Easy Ways)

When managing your WordPress site, you might find that RSS feeds aren’t really necessary. These feeds help users subscribe to your blog updates, but they can make smaller sites look cluttered.

Many users prefer to disable RSS feeds to keep their sites streamlined and focused. At WPBeginner, we’ve also disabled several RSS feeds to help improve our SEO rankings.

Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t offer an easy way to turn off these feeds. This can be frustrating if you want a cleaner, more straightforward experience.

The good news is that there are plugins that can help you disable RSS feeds on your site. Based on our experience, we found AIOSEO to be a great, no-code solution. Meanwhile, for a custom approach, WPCode offers an option with snippets.

In this article, we’ll guide you through two simple methods to turn off RSS feeds in WordPress, ensuring your site remains tidy and tailored to your specific needs.

What are RSS Feeds and Why Disable Them?

RSS is a type of web feed that helps users get real-time updates and content from your website.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. It allows your readers to automatically receive new content in email newsletters, RSS feed readers, and other devices.

While RSS feeds are useful for your website, WordPress can add multiple feeds that might not be useful. For instance, there are taxonomy feeds, author feeds, individual post and page feeds, and more.

You can disable these RSS feeds and save search engines like Google from exhausting their website crawl quota. This way, search engine bots won’t crawl feeds that aren’t relevant to your site and instead index more important pages.

Plus, disabling RSS feeds makes sense if you’re not running a WordPress blog but are using WordPress more as a CMS (content management system) or simple website builder. It’s also perfect for eCommerce stores that don’t have a blog.

With that in mind, we’ll show you how to disable RSS feeds in WordPress. Here’s a quick look at all the methods we’ll cover in this article:

Let’s jump right in!

Method 1: Disable RSS Feeds Using a Plugin

The easiest way to disable RSS feeds is by using a WordPress plugin like All in One SEO (AIOSEO).

It’s the best SEO plugin for WordPress and lets you optimize your site for search engines without requiring technical knowledge or hiring an expert.

This method is easier and is recommended for beginners. We’ll use the AIOSEO Lite version for this tutorial because it allows you to disable RSS feeds in WordPress.

However, if you want to boost your search rankings, then you can use the AIOSEO Pro version to unlock more powerful features like XML sitemaps and redirection manager, broken link checker, and the link assistant.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the AIOSEO plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you’ll see the setup wizard. Simply click the ‘Let’s Get Started’ button and follow the onscreen instructions. For more details, please see our guide on how to set up All in One SEO in WordPress.

Next, you can go to All in One SEO » Search Appearance from your WordPress dashboard and head to the ‘Advanced’ tab.

After that, you can scroll to the ‘Crawl Cleanup’ option and click the toggle to enable it.

Once you’ve enabled the ‘Crawl Cleanup’ option, simply scroll down to the RSS feeds you want to disable.

We recommend keeping the ‘Global RSS Feed’ option enabled because it allows your subscribed users to get the latest updates. Disabling this would mean people won’t be able to subscribe to your website, which could hurt your WordPress SEO.

On the other hand, you can disable other types of RSS feeds.

For example, you can switch off RSS feeds for authors, search, attachments, taxonomy, and more.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button when you’re done.

Method 2: Manually Disable RSS Feeds in WordPress

Another way of disabling RSS feeds in WordPress is by adding code to your theme’s functions.php file.

We don’t suggest editing the functions.php file itself unless you’re an advanced user because even the slightest mistake can break your site.

That’s why we recommend using WPCode to paste any snippets into WordPress.

First, you’ll need to install the free WPCode plugin. For more info, check out our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, simply navigate to Code Snippets » Add Snippet from your WordPress dashboard. Then, type ‘rss’ into the search bar to find the pre-configured ‘Disable RSS Feeds’ snippet in the WPCode library.

Then, you can hover over the ‘Disable RSS Feeds’ entry that appears to the right and then click the ‘Use snippet’ button.

On the next page, you will see the following snippet. Notice that WPCode has already set all the options for you. With the preset snippets, you don’t have to customize a thing.

If you are an advanced user, you can still copy/paste this into your own functions.php file:

/**
 * Display a custom message instead of the RSS Feeds.
 *
 * @return void
 */
function wpcode_snippet_disable_feed() {
	wp_die(
		sprintf(
			// Translators: Placeholders for the homepage link.
			esc_html__( 'No feed available, please visit our %1$shomepage%2$s!' ),
			' <a href="' . esc_url( home_url( '/' ) ) . '">',
			'</a>'
		)
	);
}

// Replace all feeds with the message above.
add_action( 'do_feed_rdf', 'wpcode_snippet_disable_feed', 1 );
add_action( 'do_feed_rss', 'wpcode_snippet_disable_feed', 1 );
add_action( 'do_feed_rss2', 'wpcode_snippet_disable_feed', 1 );
add_action( 'do_feed_atom', 'wpcode_snippet_disable_feed', 1 );
add_action( 'do_feed_rss2_comments', 'wpcode_snippet_disable_feed', 1 );
add_action( 'do_feed_atom_comments', 'wpcode_snippet_disable_feed', 1 );
// Remove links to feed from the header.
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'feed_links_extra', 3 );
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'feed_links', 2 );

You can change the placeholder text to your custom message if you want to. However, that’s entirely optional.

All you have to do now is toggle the ‘Active’ switch and click ‘Update.’

From now on, your RSS feeds will be disabled.

Alternative: Manually Disable RSS Feed Links in WordPress Pages

If you want to make your RSS feeds less visible without disabling them entirely, you can simply remove the links WordPress includes in your site’s header.

This allows you to generate RSS feeds in the background and use them internally without promoting them to your website visitors.

Simply head over to Code Snippets » Library from your WordPress dashboard. Then, you’ll want to search for the ‘Disable RSS Feed Links’ snippet.

When you find the snippet in the library, hover over it and click the ‘Use snippet’ button.

WPCode will then automatically add the code for you and select the proper insertion method.

After that, just toggle the switch from ‘Inactive’ to ‘Active’ and click the ‘Update’ button.

And that’s all there is to it.

Now the RSS feed links won’t appear on your WordPress site, but your feed will still be generated in the background.

Bonus Tip: Exclude Specific Categories from WordPress RSS Feed

You may not want to completely disable RSS feeds on your WordPress website. Excluding certain categories can be a practical solution for keeping your RSS feed active while allowing more control over what content appears.

This approach lets you separate course-specific content from general blog posts or prioritize certain topics, like ‘Features’ over ‘News.’

It’s also especially helpful if your email list is connected to your RSS feed, which prevents you from overwhelming subscribers with too many updates.

WPCode can help with this. Using its pre-configured snippet called ‘Exclude Specific Categories from RSS Feed,’ you can keep certain content out of your feed.

So, whether you want to separate course-related posts or prioritize different types of articles, you can do that with no problem.

For more details, you can check out our guide on how to exclude specific categories from WordPress RSS feed.

We hope this article helped you learn how to disable RSS feeds in WordPress. You may also want to see our guides on how to completely customize your WordPress RSS feeds and how to fix WordPress RSS feed errors.

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