How to use FeedBurner with WordPress

Find out how to use FeedBurner with WordPress. If you have a blog, you’re probably familiar with the concept of feeds. If you’re not sure what a feed is, read my article about RSS feeds. Feeds are a great way to share content. However, there are some limitations. There’s really no way to know any stats on subscribers. How can it be done? FeedBurner, now owned by Google, is a popular syndication service that makes it easy to receive content updates in news readers. Though it is free, you get what you pay for in support.

Benefits of using FeedBurner

Okay, so you have a self-hosted WordPress site with a feed. Do you know how many subscribers your feed has? No. There’s no way to tell if anyone is subscribed or not. FeedBurner allows publishers who already have a feed to improve their understanding of and relationship with their audience by offering customization and feed management tools. These tools allow you to see exactly how many subscribers you have. Now you have another way to gauge which part of your site’s content is most relevant to your readers.

Aside from statistics, FeedBurner also provides many options for feed optimization, and feed publication.

FeedBurner with WordPress

One thing to keep in mind when using FeedBurner with WordPress is that you must make sure to unify your feed. In order for everyone to receive the same feed, your old feed must be redirected to the new. There are three ways to do this.

1. Edit .htaccess

You can add the redirects to the .htaccess file on your server if you’re comfortable editing important system files. Make sure to backup .htaccess in case anything goes wrong. Here is an example of code you can use to redirect your main feed as well as your comments feed.

# Redirect RSS feeds to FeedBurner

 RewriteEngine on
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}      ^/?(feed.*|comments.*)        [NC]
 RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^.*(FeedBurner|FeedValidator) [NC]
 RewriteRule ^feed/?.*$          http://feeds.feedburner.com/YourFeedName         [L,NC,R=302]
 RewriteRule ^comments/?.*$      http://feeds.feedburner.com/YourFeedName-Comments [L,NC,R=302]

Make sure to change “YourFeedName” to the actual name of your feed.

2. Edit functions.php

Or, you could customize your theme’s functions.php file. The following code redirects your main feed. It can be placed in functions.php anywhere after the initial php tag as long as it’s not inside another function.

// Redirect RSS feed to FeedBurner //
function rss_feed_redirect() {
    global $feed;
    $new_feed = 'http://feeds.feedburner.com/YourFeedName';
    if (!is_feed()) {
            return;
    }
    if (preg_match('/feedburner/i', $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])){
            return;
    }
    if ($feed != 'comments-rss2') {
            if (function_exists('status_header')) status_header( 302 );
            header("Location:" . $new_feed);
            header("HTTP/1.1 302 Temporary Redirect");
            exit();
    }
}
add_action('template_redirect', 'rss_feed_redirect');

Again, make sure to change “YourFeedName” to the actual name of your feed.

3. Use a Plugin

If you’d like a simpler solution, let a plugin do the heavy lifting for you. There are many WordPress Plugins to choose from, but here are a few of the most popular.

• FD Feedburner
• FeedBurner FeedSmith
• FeedBurner FeedSmith Extend

How to Notify Your Readers

As far as I can tell, when switching from a native WordPress feed to a FeedBurner feed, your current subscribers will have to re-subscribe to the new feed. So, it’s a great idea to make a post that informs them about the upcoming feed switch before you actually change them. That way, they will know why your feed isn’t updated anymore. Furthermore, they’ll have a link to the new feed.

This solution is far from perfect, but it should make it easier for them to subscribe to your new feed. If anyone knows how to avoid this problem, or if it’s even possible, please add a comment below. Thanks.

Subscribe to my Feeds:

Middle Ear Media Article Feed via RSS

Middle Ear Media Comment Feed via RSS

Middle Ear Media Article Feed via Email

Check out FeedBurner

Web Design Marquette, MI | Middle Ear Media - Creative design studio & web agency

RSS Feeds Explained

Have you ever noticed the sheer amount of information on the internet? It’s become overwhelming and guess what? It’s only going to grow! So content publishers need to find ways to make it easier for their audience to receive their content.

The concept behind RSS is really simple. So simple in fact that RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS is one of the most popular formats used to distribute content on the internet. Also known as a Web Feed, it is a great way to get your content out to the masses if you have a blog, news site, or really any website with content that is updated frequently.

You have probably seen RSS Feed icons before, even if you didn’t know what they were. There is a (sort of) standard RSS icon that looks like an orange square with some white curved lines inside it. However, many designers want their feed icon to match the look of their site so they customize it. There is no limit to how creative these icons can be, but at the end of the day they must fulfill their function of letting your readers know they can subscribe to your content.

So, how do you subscribe to a feed? First, you’ll need a news reader (also known as a feed reader or news aggregator). Some news readers are web-based such as Live Bookmarks, Yahoo, News Gator, Bloglines, Netvibes, Google, Pageflakes, FeedDemon, RSSOwl, NetNewsWire, NewsFire, Shrook, etc. Others are located on your own computer. Many Email clients such as Mozilla’s Thunderbird, and Microsoft’s Outlook or Outlook Express also function as news readers. I prefer Thunderbird, but that’s just me.

Once you have a feed reader, go to the website you want to subscribe to and simply click on the RSS or feed icon. Then copy the URL from the address bar at the top of your browser. It will probably look something like

http://www.middleearmedia.com/feed/

but not necessarily. Alternatively, you can right click the RSS or feed icon and select “Copy Shortcut” or “Copy Link Location” to copy the address of the feed. Go to your news reader and find the option that lets you add content or feeds. This should open up a window with a field to add the URL of the feed you want to subscribe to. Place your cursor in this field and right click your mouse then select Paste.

In Thunderbird for example, click News & Blogs, then click Manage subscriptions, click the Add button in the window that pops up, and paste the address into the Feed URL field.

RSS is not the only kid on the content-syndication block. There are other ways to deliver content such as Atom, Email, SMS Text, and most recently services such as Twitter have been getting in on the action.

Web Design Marquette, MI | Middle Ear Media - Creative design studio & web agency