Title here
Summary here
Disable Feeds
Completely disable RSS, Atom, and RDF feeds on your WordPress site—useful when you don’t have subscribers and want to prevent automated content scraping.
Use Cases
- Prevent content scrapers from using your RSS feed to republish your posts elsewhere
- Reduce server load by eliminating feed requests from bots and crawlers
- Hide your content publication timeline from competitors monitoring your feed
- Simplify your site when you have no newsletter or feed subscribers
How It Works
When you enable this module:
- All feed URLs return a 404 “Feeds are not available” response
- Feed links are removed from your site’s
<head>section - RSS, Atom, RDF, and comment feeds are all disabled
- Feed autodiscovery links are stripped out
Anyone (or any bot) trying to access your feeds gets a 404 error instead of your content.
Settings
This module has no configurable settings. Enable it to disable all feeds, or leave it disabled to keep feeds working.
Where to Find It
Location: Switchboard → Modules → Optimization → Disable Feeds
After enabling, try visiting yoursite.com/feed/ — you should see a 404 error page.
What Gets Disabled
| Feed Type | URL Pattern | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Main RSS Feed | /feed/ | 404 |
| RSS 2.0 | /feed/rss2/ | 404 |
| Atom | /feed/atom/ | 404 |
| RDF | /feed/rdf/ | 404 |
| Comment RSS | /comments/feed/ | 404 |
| Post Comment Feed | /post-name/feed/ | 404 |
| Category Feed | /category/name/feed/ | 404 |
| Author Feed | /author/name/feed/ | 404 |
Head Cleanup
The module also removes these link tags from your HTML:
<!-- These are removed -->
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Site Feed" href="/feed/" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Comments Feed" href="/comments/feed/" />This prevents feed readers and scrapers from discovering your feeds automatically.
Should You Disable Feeds?
Disable feeds if:
- You don’t have any RSS subscribers
- You’ve never promoted your RSS feed
- You’re concerned about content scraping
- Your site is a portfolio, landing page, or single-purpose site
- You use email newsletters instead of RSS for subscribers
Keep feeds enabled if:
- You have active RSS subscribers
- You use services like Mailchimp RSS-to-email
- You syndicate content to other platforms via RSS
- You use podcasting (podcast feeds need RSS)
- You want your content indexed by feed aggregators
FAQ
Will this affect my SEO?
No direct impact. Google doesn’t rely on RSS feeds for indexing—it uses your sitemap and direct page crawling. Disabling feeds won’t affect your search rankings.What about podcasts?
If you host a podcast on WordPress, do not enable this module. Podcast apps and directories (Apple Podcasts, Spotify) require RSS feeds to fetch your episodes.Can I disable just some feeds?
This module is all-or-nothing. It disables all feeds site-wide. If you need granular control (like keeping the main feed but disabling category feeds), you’d need custom code.Will content scrapers still find my content?
Scrapers can still crawl your actual pages, but they lose the convenient RSS feed that delivers all your content in a structured format. It raises the barrier to lazy scraping.What message do feed visitors see?
A simple 404 page with the message “Feeds are not available.” It’s a clean 404 response, not an error.If you’re not sure whether anyone uses your RSS feed, check your server logs for /feed/ requests before disabling. You might have subscribers you didn’t know about.
If content scraping is a major concern, consider also using security modules to block bot traffic and protect your content at the server level.
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