078 – How to Use Feedburner for Your WordPress Site
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Follow Up from Patricio
Since the site I maintain is for a Spanish speaking audience (I am from Chile), but I still have some material in English (research, opinions, etc.), I am using a free plugin called qTranslate that modifies the writing interface to allow you create multilanguage content. I don’t know if you knew about this plugin but if you don’t I believe it will be great if you can mention it on your show. Your international audience will thank you.
Question from Eric Holstein about Feedburner
Summary: In the past you’ve talked about SEO. I viewed some websites (using builtwith.com) that use Feedburner.com. From Wikipedia it looks like Google acquired them awhile ago and basically it appears your RSS Feeds are somehow either re-directed, or simply monitored by Google Feedburner and then information is sent to other sites like Technorati or Ping-O-Matic. I noticed there is a FeedBurner Plug-in for WordPress as well.
What is FeedBurner? Should I install and use this Plug-In or does another setting in WordPress do that same thing already?
What are Feeds?
– Feeds are a way for websites large and small to distribute their content well beyond just visitors using browsers. Feeds permit subscription to regular updates, delivered automatically via a web portal, news reader, or in some cases good old email. Feeds also make it possible for site content to be packaged into “widgets,” “gadgets,” mobile devices, and other bite-sized technologies that make it possible to display blogs, podcasts, and major news/sports/weather/whatever headlines just about anywhere.
Why is this a Good Thing?
– Technology evolution in online publishing has made it really easy to not only publish regular updates to web-based content, but also keep track of a large number of your favorite websites or blogs, without having to remember to check each site manually or clutter your email inbox. You can now streamline your online experience by subscribing to specific content feeds and aggregating this information in one place to be read when you’re ready.
How do I Read Feeds?
– If you want to browse and subscribe to feeds, you have many choices. Today, there are more than 2,000 different feed reading applications, also known as “news aggregators” (for text, mostly) or “podcatchers” (for podcasts). There are even readers that work exclusively on mobile devices.
– Some require a small purchase price but are tops for ease-of-use and ship with dozens of feeds pre-loaded so you can explore the feed “universe” right away. Free readers are available as well; a search for “Feed reader” or “Feed aggregator” at popular search sites will yield many results. A handful of popular feed readers are listed at the bottom of this page.
– A typical interface for a feed reader will display your feeds and the number of new (unread) entries within each of those feeds. You can also organize your feeds into categories and even clip and save your favorite entries (with certain applications).
– It’s like another email inbox, that you read when you have time. The cool thing is that you never need to check your favorite websites for content any more, it’s automatically delivered to your feed.
– You can also star and tag feeds. I star things when I want to have look at them again and tag them if I want to save them for a specific reason.
– If you prefer, you can use an online, web-based service to track and manage feeds. Online services give you the advantage of being able to access your feed updates anywhere you can find a web browser. Also, upgrades and new features are added automatically.
What is Feed Burner?
– Feed Burner is a service that allows publishers to deliver their feed content to subscribers
– FeedBurner receives your blogs original feed data and then serves as a feed front for your readers by providing a new feed URL (uniform resource locater, or website address). FeedBurner adds in all this cool functionality for yourself and your readers via this replacement URL. The benefit of this for your readers is that its easier to subscribe and interact with your blog. The benefit for you is that you can view data about how many subscribers you have and how theyre interacting with your blog.
Why FeedBurner for WordPress?
– WordPress already comes with RSS feed capability built-in, so why do you need FeedBurner? Two words: options and tracking. FeedBurner has a ton of fantastic options to make your feed more useful to your readers (you know, those people youre blogging for). For you, it has tracking capabilities. You can just log in to your account and look at your stats and charts. If you manage multiple blogs, you can create and track feeds for all of them with FeedBurner.
Sign Up Today
– Go to http://feedburner.google.com
– Add the feed from your podcast or blog
Awesome! I’ve burned my feed thanks to @dhartler10
May 30, 2012There are many news readers as well as general applications out there that can read RSS feeds. Some to give a try are: Outlook (Email, Calender), Firefox (Browser), Thunderbird (RSS reader & Email), Google Reader app built into Google Apps, Xnews (RSS reader). Enjoy!
May 30, 2012@EricHolstein When I’m on my computer, I use google reader (http://google.com/reader) though about 95% of the time I use my iPad
May 30, 2012Although you can use Feedburner without a plugin, I use the <a href=”http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/feedburner-plugin/”>FD Feedburner Plugin</a> because it allows me to automatically redirect the feeds generated by WordPress to Feedburner. However, I do check the box for “Do not redirect category or tag feeds”, because I want subscribers to still be able to subscribe to feeds for specific categories and tags, without being redirected to the main Feedburner feed. Keep up the great show!
May 30, 2012Although you can use Feedburner without a plugin, I use the FD Feedburner Plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/feedburner-plugin) because it allows me to automatically redirect the feeds generated by WordPress to Feedburner. However, I do check the box for “Do not redirect category or tag feeds”, because I want subscribers to still be able to subscribe to feeds for specific categories and tags, without being redirected to the main Feedburner feed. Keep up the great show!
May 30, 2012@warnerchad Great to know. I’ll provide an update on a show. Thanks for the audio clip too 🙂
Jun 1, 2012Great podcast and great webinar. Just saw you are ranked number 92 in the Top WordPress Related Blogs on the Internet: http://wpmu.org/wpmu-100-2nd-edition/ Congrats! And it shows you as rising!
Jun 1, 2012@JohnFrankosky Wow thanks for pointing this out! I knew I made the original list, but didn’t know there was an updated version. One my way to the top! Thanks for hanging out on the webinar.
Jun 1, 2012Chad Warner do you know how to setup the fd feedburner plugin so that category feeds get redirected to Feedburner? Do we need to manually add the category feeds to Feedburner
Sep 29, 2013nilanjanb I believe you need to add each category feed to Feedburner as a separate feed. But, I may be wrong, since I never used Feedburner for my category feeds and haven’t used Feedburner at all for several months. You’ll probably want to do some googling about it.
Sep 30, 2013