Tutorials
The art and science of adding FeedBurner URL’s
So, do you have a Google FeedBurner account for your blog? Have you “burned” a feed for it yet? Are your post and email feeds setup correctly on your blog?
If these questions, and others like them, are keeping you awake at night, you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to help you get it all sorted and pretty and working!
Firstly, lets look at what this feed thing is.
Many people, your readers included, follow LOTS of blogs, and it becomes inconvenient, time-wise, for them to actually visit all those blogs, to find out if there is a new post to read. Wouldn’t it be nice if they had a Reader, sort of like a newspaper, where new articles (posts) from various authors (including you), automagically appeared, and they could just open the paper and read all of your new, unread, content? Well these things do exist, and, in a fit of blinding originality, they’re called feed-readers. There are many of them, for PC’s and mobile devices. One such example is the . What you do, is add a couple of feeds…
Wait, there’s that word feed again. Let’s clear that up, right now.
Think of it, as what you get at the drive-through window, of a fast-food store. Just the food, no table, no atmosphere, no waitresses.
See, you could park, go in the front door of Mickey D’s, queue up get your food, sit down, and eat there (like visiting the actual blog).
Or you could use the drive-through, get your food to go, and consume the delicious (!) meal at home, with your lovely wife, who’s having KFC (also from a drive-through), and your two lovely children, having brain-food from Fish-Aways (also from a drive-through). A happy family, eating at home, each fortified by the cuisine of their choice. Like a feed-reader. And it all works because of the feed.
Now, imagine there’s a drive-through window on your blog. Feed-readers know where it is (well, you told them), and go there to get? The feed. Just the content (just the food). They bring it to you and you enjoy it, at your leisure, in your feed-reader (home). The feed is really just a sort of formatted text file, with all your latest posts, as it’s contents. This whole idea is called RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, and was pioneered by Dave Winer in the late 90’s. Thanks Dave.
The important stuff here, is that the feed has a location where you can get it. An address, a URL. That’s what we need to tell the feed-reader. Where to go, to get the goodies (the feed).
All eFrog Digital Design themes come with the RSS option, as first-up, in the General settings panel:
Looks pretty simple, yes? Just two URL’s to enter, and we’ve even added some useful text: “You can find the links to use here, by logging into your FeedBurner account.”
Um, okay, so it’s not quite as simple, as that makes it sound. Let’s take a look.
Of course, firstly, you actually need a FeedBurner account. Getting one is pretty simple, since it’s run by Google. If you have a GMail account, and you’re logged in and you open the site, you’re logged in and good to go. If you’re not logged in, it’ll prompt you to do so, and once again, you’re good to go. If you don’t have a GMail address, you’ll need to sign up, but there’s a big blue button for that too…
So, what does FeedBurner do, that’s SO great, in no more than five words, please?
Right, now that we’re sure you have a FeedBurner account, and what it does, let’s get to those elusive URL’s. The first one we’re looking for can be found right at the top of the page. You can either right-click the little RSS icon (green square below) under your account name, and copy the link from there (it’ll look like this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/YourFeedBurnerAccountName), or you can expand the details panel, by clicking on the “edit feed details” link (red oval below).
The URL we want is the full address in the Feed Address field. That’ll go in the first box in the eFrog General Settings | RSS panel. The second URL ,for email feed, requires a little explanation. Email subscription is for folks who don’t use a feed-reader, but still want to be informed (via email) whenever you post new content. In order to do this, we’ll need to get an email address from the would-be subscriber. So, we’ll need a little form of some kind, right? Well, the folks at FeedBurner have thought of that, and kindly provided some code to do just that. Click on the Publicize tab (green rectangle below), then select Email Subscriptions (red rectangle below), and finally scroll down to Preview Subscription Link (purple rectangle below). Now the URL we want is buried in the piece of code there, so we’ll have to copy it out. I’ve highlighted the URL in yellow so that you can see what’s needed to be copied. (click the image to view full size).
Now, paste that URL into the Email box in the eFrog General Settings | RSS panel, save the options, with the big orange Save All button, and you’re done. Good job!
And, now that you have the RSS feeds sewn up, go create some awesome content, to feed!
