Subscribe by Email
(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)
This is completely optional; however, in my opinion, it’s a great idea, with lots of advantages and no disadvantages, as far as I can see.
After part 8 – Configuring the RSS feed, you should have a feed which aggregators can read. However, instead of telling people to subscribe directly to that feed, which, among other things, can use a lot of bandwidth (assuming you have your own server – that’s not a problem if you use Blogger or something like that), you have an alternative.
That alternative is to use FeedBurner. It works this way: you tell it the address of your feed. Then FeedBurner gives you a new address, which you then tell people to use, instead of the one your blog supplies. That way, only FeedBurner accesses your real feed – everyone else in the world accesses FeedBurner’s version instead.
So far, that’s already reason enough to use it. But there’s more. (I’m trying not to make this sound like I’m doing marketing for them – I’m not, and there are no affiliate links here. I really find their services useful, though.)
- first, statistics. They give you great stats about who accesses your feed – including real people, and what software or services they use, or which sites syndicate your feed, how many subscribers are there, which bots access it, etc.
- second, they have some services that can improve your feed, such as validating it, or showing the version any software expects – be it RSS 0.92, RSS 2.0, Atom…
- another feature is making your feed include the necessary XHTML to also display in a normal browser – telling the user that it’s a feed, and what to do with it, but also allowing him/her to read the content.
- it also adds some features that I’m not using, such as Flickr integration, features for podcasters, etc..
- finally, if you subscribe to their paid service, it includes much more detailed stats, not just for each feed, but for every particular item on a feed – including clickthroughs from feed readers, which show you what links people click on.
After you’re using that service, remember to change every feed link in your blog to the FeedBurner version – it may even help if you specify separate links for the RSS feed, Atom feed, etc., but which all go to the same FeedBurner URL.
And remember to change the appropriate <link> tag, as shown in part 8 – this time, to the FeedBurner feed, instead of yours. Again, only FeedBurner itself should read your feed.
The FeedBurner site also has a “recipe” for configuring Apache to redirect accesses to your feed to the FB link, but that’s useful only if you’ve already publicized your old feed link, and have many people reading it – too many to tell to change the feed they’re subscribing to to the FB one. That way, you simply redirect them – and, in those cases, it may be useful to also change the real feed’s address to something more “hidden”, which you then tell FeedBurner about, but people can’t find.
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I also use feedburner and am pleased with production. Thanks for the post.
I’ve been tempted to use its service for a while,simply for one reason… the number of readers statistic. I’ve tried to implement this on my feed but found no reliable solution… Do you know how do they calculate the number of readers? Number of ips accessing the feed? (That’s the solution i’m currently using) But what about dynamic ips?
As for statistics… i know it’s needed, but i don’t like how they force you to go to feedburner’s site just to be redirected to the actual link. There are other ways of gathering statistics (number of reads) that don’t force this redirection. This is particularly annoying when it’s a quickposts/links/sidebar feed… i like to read the URL before clicking… and feedburner prevents this.
Don’t get me wrong, It’s a great service — the best of its kind –, and i also recommend it, but i don’t see any reasons for me to move at the moment… i even like my XSL better.
Good post.