Image by magbag via Flickr
Why Do I Have An RSS Feed?
Yes! The content in every blog has a feed. Basically a feed or RSS is an easy way for your audience to access your content and get notified when you publish a new post. By subscribing to your feed, your readers don’t have to keep coming back to your blog only to discover you haven’t published any new posts yet!
I know what you’re thinking “but I want them to keep coming to my blog, that will give me more traffic”. Trust me, in the long run you’ll be happy you have a feed, it adds functionality to your blog and helps you stay connected with your readers. You’ll use the feed to promote your blog on social networks like Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed and with blog promotion tools like CommentLuv.
But Where is My Feed?
The virgin (or default) feed for every Blogger blog uses this format (replace “blogname” with your blog title) :
- Atom: http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
- RSS: http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
The raw (or default) feed for every WordPress.com blog uses this format (replace “blogname” with your blog title):
- Atom: http://blogname.worpress.com/feed/atom/
- RSS: http://blogname.wordpress.com/feed
- Atom: http://blogname.typepad.com/blog_folder_name/atom.xml
- RSS: http://blogname.typepad.com/blog_folder_name/rss.xml
Burn Your Feed To FeedBurner
You need a Google account to sign up for FeedBurner. This video gives step-by-step instructions for burning your feed with FeedBurner.
You can dress up your FeedBurner feed in many ways including:
- Add your logo or Gravatar
- Splice in Flickr photos or links from del.ici.ous or Digg accounts
- Customize Email Subscriptions
- Add FeedFlare for easy social sharing on Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg and others
- Tweet each new blog post to Twitter using Twitterfeed or HootSuite
- Publicize your RSS Feed subscriber count (get the HTML code from the FeedCount option in FeedBurner)
This list isn’t complete. Now you can share some of the ways you take advantage of FeedBurner feed?
UPDATE: When you create an account with CommentLuv it’s possible that FeedBurner Is Stealing Your CommentLuv Backlinks. To avoid this use this tip courtesy of Brian Rogel. Go to your FeedBurner settings and under “Configure Stats”, uncheck the box next to “Item link clicks”.
Related articles by Zemanta
- FeedBurner Delicious Links and CommentLuv (msileanesblog.blogspot.com)
- Post Your Podcast on Facebook with RSS Graffiti (basicblogtips.com)
- How To Install CommentLuv on Blogger (basicblogtips.com)
- Blazing Minds Toolbar – Keeping You Informed! (blazingminds.co.uk)
- Post Blog’s RSS Feeds to Facebook Wall with RSS Graffiti (shoutmeloud.com)
- How to Fix the FeedBurner Counter Problem (crenk.com)
{ 35 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Ileane and thanks for the post.
The problem I’m trying to solve now is to make my WP blog use another address for its feed, the one at FeedBurner. I have two feeds addresses in my blog: the one big RSS icon links to and I have this one set up correctly to point to FeedBurner. But there’s another address specified as
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”..” href=”http://evgeny-goldin.com/blog/feed/”/>
in the source and I couldn’t find how it can be changed yet. “Feed Locations” plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-feedlocations/) couldn’t be installed for some reason. Meanwhile, I used the following rewrite rule in my “.htaccess”
“RewriteRule feed http://feeds.feedburner.com/GoldinTheJunior [QSA]”
This way if anyone accesses “http://evgeny-goldin.com/blog/feed/” he gets redirected to “http://feeds.feedburner.com/GoldinTheJunior” which is half-solution I would say.
The problem with rewrite rule is that old address (“/blog/feed”) is still used if people use browser’s built-in feed subscription or, say, Google reader RSS Subscriber (http://goo.gl/0GFv) – I’m not sure rewrite really works for those cases.
So if anyone could tip me about how can I make
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”..” href=”http://evgeny-goldin.com/blog/feed/”/>
become
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”..” href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/GoldinTheJunior”/>
when page is sent to a browser I would be really glad.
Thanks everybody.
Twitter: Ileane
August 7, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Hi Evgeny,
Have you tried the FD Feedburner Plugin It sounds like this one might work. I hope it does, let me know.
In the meantime it sounds like the work-around you have in place should be fine.
I have it installed but it does nothing, I still see “blog/feed” link generated, deleted the cache to make sure it’s a new version.
I guess my next step will be looking in PHP code where this link is generated and changing it, that’s what I did with theme’s RSS icon. In fact, I already tried it but found no place where “blog/feed” string appears in the code, guess it’s generated dynamically. This only makes this problem more interesting, I’ll have something to blog about when it’s settled one day
And yes, if nothing else help, the rewrite should to the job.
Many thanks for your help, Ileane!
Twitter: Ileane
August 8, 2010 at 8:30 am
I haven’t given up yet. I’m checking around with some of my Twitter buddies.
Ileane, thanks a lot. I saw some solutions sent along my way and will try them this weekend. I apologize for not responding earlier, I had a crazy week in the office and could hardly deal with anything else. I’m touched with your willingness to help and I’m sorry again for not replying earlier.
Default feed link can be changed by modifying “wp-includes/general-template.php”, line 1601.
I changed it now so I have a proper FeedBurner link generated instead. I’ll post an entry about it next week.
Twitter: chattanoogaseo
August 7, 2010 at 7:20 pm
RSS feeds are a great way to move information around the Internet. Another cool thing that Feedburner does, it allows users to subscribe to your feed via email. I use this one a lot because I forget to use my RSS reader.
Another way I use feeds is to share information between my blogs. For example, listing recent posts from Blog B on the sidebar of Blog A. Great for sharing traffic and for SEO (if you use the 301 redirect option if Feedburner).
Donnie recently posted..SEO TIP- Goodbye PageRank- Hello Trust and Authority
Twitter: Ileane
August 8, 2010 at 8:32 am
Hi Donnie, Excellent tip! I have a few blogs and I’m going to add the RSS feed from this blog to the sidebars asap! Thanks for sharing such a helpful comment.
If you go to my blog and look to the right, you’ll see feeds from my other blogs listed on the side. That’s something that Feedburner allows you to do as well; pretty neat function I have to say.
Mitch recently posted..How Influential Are You Online
Twitter: Ileane
August 8, 2010 at 8:36 am
Mitch, I have a handful of blogs too.
How many blogs do you have? Please share a few of the url’s with us. Thanks!
I have 3 blogs. You already know about this one, so the other two are http://www.ttmitchellconsulting.com/Mitchblog , which is my business blog, and http://www.topfinanceblog.com , which is my finance blog. We both know this will probably end up in a spam filter. lol
Mitch recently posted..Formatting Your Images On Your WordPress Blog
Twitter: Ileane
August 8, 2010 at 9:24 am
Yes Akismet was standing guard! Thanks for sharing the links.
hey Ileane, this is cool. I didnt know about Feedflare, gonna add that one, thanks
I like to add to in case a feed comes up with some kind of parsing error and no posts show up, it means there are spaces in between the php code in any of the plugins. They can be fixed by manually editing the code in the plugin editor or just changing to a different theme.
Cindy recently posted..Stressful Blogging 101- Use Sleepmaker Apps
Twitter: Ileane
August 8, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Thanks for the tips Cindy. Do you think this might help Evgeny with the feed problem he is having?
Twitter: Anklebuster
August 9, 2010 at 8:54 am
Ileane, I’ve had Feedburner since the day it came out, LOL. I didn’t have a clue, I just loved the animated Headline Rotator.
I still think it’s a pretty widget.
The main thing I like is the concept behind Smartfeed. I activated it – though I have not subscribed to my own feed to verify it.
Cheers,
Mitch
Mitchell Allen recently posted..Could Not Find CAPTCHA Token
Twitter: Ileane
August 9, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Hey Mitch, I like the animated headline too, but I don’t think I set it up for this blog’s feed yet, thanks for reminding me!
Lots of good stuff in this post. I do wonder if a few links that might explore what a feed is and where it is showing up for those oblivious to these things might be useful. People are seeing feeds all the time in widgets that show updates from other blogs. Also, I’m curious about readers – it may sound advanced to discuss Google reader, but then again, anyone who customizes their Google homepage gets the option to add a feed or two automatically.
ashok recently posted..Re- “Lines on Plagiarism Blur for Students in the Digital Age-” by Trip Gabriel
Twitter: Ileane
August 10, 2010 at 3:05 am
Excellent point Ashok. Look for a follow-up post covering readers soon, thanks for the idea.
Another tool that your readers might be interested in is learning about RSS aggregators. There are websites out there that just collect a whole bunch of information from other websites and publish snippets of that info along with a link back to the original source. These are called RSS aggregators. You can submit your feed to them and they will republish it. Every time you write a new post on your blog, you get a backlink to that post from the aggregator.
Kathy recently posted..How to Find Blogs With Keywordluv
Twitter: Ileane
August 20, 2010 at 3:45 pm
Hi Kathy, that’s a great point to add. Which aggregators are you using?
Hi Ileane,
I love your blog a lot of great info here. Thanks for the post about FeedBurner I just went and set up an account with them thanks for your post and help.
Thanks
Michael
Michael Welch recently posted..MLM Lead Generation and Gearing Up for Attraction Marketing
Twitter: Ileane
August 31, 2010 at 5:17 pm
Hi Michael, I saw your other response to me over on the CommentLuv blog too. Thanks so much for the positive feedback, I really appreciate it.
Twitter: daclements
September 2, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Sending my clients’ WordPress feed over to FeedBurner is one of the very first things I do. All the tailoring, stats and subscription options that FB provides makes it a no-brainer to me
Dave recently posted..Search Domain Hacks On iPhone With Domainr
Twitter: Ileane
September 2, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Hi Dave, welcome to Basic Blog Tips. When I first started blogging it took we about 3 months to figure out not to use the default Wordpress feed. Hopefully I’ll save someone else the time and trouble that I went through of trying to get my subscribers to migrate to the Feedburner subscription. Thanks for your feedback.
Hi Ileane,
Feedburner has been a faithful companion of mine ever since I discovered Wordpress. Although there are alternatives on the market I prefer the features and functions of Feedburner simply because I know them like I know my way around WP.
Always a pleaure reading your posts Ileane.
Karl
Karl Foxley recently posted..Saying Thank You To Our Top Referrers
Twitter: Ileane
September 3, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Hi Karl, did you ever try FeedBlitz? I’m giving it a try with some of my other blogs but I’m a FeedBurner fan at heart. Thanks for your feedback, it’s always great to have your input.
Thanks for your post. We should use this tool for our understanding.
Jahid recently posted..HTML Color Codes
Wow the article is great. Do you also think rss feed submission is a good way to get traffic and backlinks.
Thanks for your post. We should use this tool for our understanding.
Ileane, you explain the rss feed for blogspot and wordpress.com, but how does it work for wordpress.org? Can I just download a feedburner plugin?
Great tip on changing the feedburner settings so it doesn’t take the commentluv links.
That would get some people to disable either feedburner or commentluv, if they don’t know how to stop it from taking the links.
Danny recently posted..Earthwise PS40008 8-inch Electric Pole Chain Saw
I am searching for, How to use Feed Burner for Blog, can anyone explain me in details. Thanks.
Security Surveillance Companies recently posted..Portable Surveillance Unit
Twitter: barry_wells
January 5, 2012 at 8:20 am
Hi Ileane,
I love having the RSS functions on blogs. It makes it so easy to subscribe and stay up to date. The only trouble I have is remembering to open FeedDemon so as to read them. I know silly thing but I get half way through the day and think, opps I’ve done it again. Just as i did when I started reading this post
Thanks for the nudge
Barry
Barry Wells recently posted..Kindle Publishing Made Easy by Val Waldeck: My review
Twitter: 4legcelebrity
January 20, 2012 at 2:15 pm
Great information Ms. Ileane. Feeds are great and I believe in the as well. thanks.
Michael Belk recently posted..Career as a Medical Assistant | An employee’s perspective.
Twitter: Ileane
August 14, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Yeah! I’m really glad you got that resolved. I don’t know much about PHP, but I think I understand that you had to manipulate a Wordpress file some how. Good for you.
Yeap, being a software developer I tend to seek for solutions in changing mine or someone’s else code. All PHP applications, like WordPress, contain their logic in PHP files which can be edited and changes take effect immediately, there’s no need to recompile and rebuild the application. Which makes it possible to tweak some portions of a WP markup.
Btw, from what I know PHP is a language that can be learned by non-programmers. So may be you would choose to learn it one day and then develop some powerful WP plugins
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