How to Add Verification Codes to Your WordPress RSS Feed

Often when WordPress bloggers signup for third party publisher accounts such as Digg and others, they are required to verify ownership. Most services offer multiple options of verification such as adding meta tags to the header, uploading a blank file, and adding content to the RSS feed. This article will use Digg.com as an example because Digg version 4 has this new feature called auto feed syndication for publishers. The only way of verification is by adding the verification codes to your RSS Feed. After we posted about our account on digg, many of our users joined. We got a request to do a tutorial on this subject because it was confusing for beginners.

When Digg asks you to add the content in your RSS feed, it means for you to add it in your next post. So you will need to create a new post (doesn’t have to be about that service). It can be any post, and you need to add the code at the bottom of the post. For example, if your key is:

6ca1386293854e5d835d3f430df34700

then you will add:

<!–6ca1386293854e5d835d3f430df34700–>

The reason why you add the extra elements before and after is so this code is not shown to your users, but it is still added in the RSS feed. Once you add this code, you will have to wait for about 20 – 30 minutes for your feed to update (specially if you are using Feedburner).

The code can go anywhere, preferably at the bottom. Once your account is verified, you can remove the code from your post. If you are adding it in Digg this week, be sure to try it multiple times and let the page load fully before you click anything. Digg is very buggy as it is new. While you are on digg, don’t forget to follow WPBeginner on Digg.