RSS Readers, Security, and You

Security often begins with determining both what to block as well as allow. Block malware, allow search engine robots, block AI scrapers, and more like it. Unfortunately, some classic ways of accessing your website might be caught up in the mix. We’ll cover one of those today: RSS Readers

RSS Readers in 2026

As many may remember, RSS or Really Simple Syndication has been in use since the early 2000s allowing readers to get fast updates from various blogs, podcasts, vlogs, and more. It is still popular today with native RSS readers on iOS, Android, and desktop. In addition to those, numerous web services support RSS feeds as well bringing your content to readers faster and more directly. Unfortunately, these feeds are often overlooked when considering security.

RSS feeds are a popular target for these content seeking robots in the age of AI scrapers. This can lead to a larger than expected amount of traffic to specific URLs like your XML RSS feeds. The higher traffic can trigger anti-robot rate limiting, web application firewalls, and other security measures like Cloudflare AI Labyrinth. Today, we will discuss ways of reducing resources used and allowing RSS feeds to be used by readers including friendly AI agents.

Static RSS Feeds in WordPress

Many popular WordPress caching plugins include a feature to cache RSS as a static file. We’ll be using WP Super Cache. Check your favorite plugins documentation for the similar feature that is likely built in

Log into WordPress, click Settings, and finally WP Super Cache. Click the Advanced Tab and look for Cache feeds (site, categories, tags, comments). After checking these, click Update Status to save the settings.

You have now cached the RSS feeds to effectively reduce the resource usage considerably.

CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing), RSS, and allowing access

Now that your feeds are more resource usage friendly, it is time to configure your local security measures to allow RSS. Start with direct security measures such as Cloudflare, .htaccess based restrictions, Web Application Firewalls, and similar that you may have implemented on your website. You may need to review these if your RSS feeds fail to load in your favorite test reader.

Next, you will need to configure Cross-Origin Resource Sharing domains for your site to allow more modern RSS readers to operate correctly. You can do this manually or via the Enable CORS WordPress plugin. The plugin allows you to manage supported CORS domains all from within WordPress instead of editing .htaccess or PHP code manually.

Once installed and configured for your WordPress domain, test the RSS feed reader of choice. https://www.blogsareback.com/ and RSS Subscription Extension (by Google) for Chrome are popular options.

Stay tuned next time for more on increasing traffic using WordPress.