Are you funnelling all your subscribers through Feedburner?

January 26, 2006

So you’ve set up a Feedburner account, slapped a button on your blog which publicises your new feed and have been tracking your feed subscriber stats quite nicely. But are you getting the full story?

Not by default, no.

The problem: Even if you have a nice button linking people to your RSS feed, if they’re using an RSS feed reader which auto-discovers your feed (i.e. they just enter in your blog’s address and the software does the hunting for the RSS feed URL) then they’re not going to be using Feedburner, but your blog’s own feed. They won’t be a part of your Feedburner stats. Or, if people type in your blog’s feed URL or find it via Google, they’ll end up not being a part of your Feedburner stats too.

The solutions:

  • Wordpress: Install this handy Feedburner plugin (the plugin instructions are really nicely written and easy to follow). It will redirect everyone automatically to your Feedburner feed.
  • Other blogging software: There’s tips here for MovableType and other blog systems. Failing that, you could write a few lines for your .htaccess file (or ask someone who can) to redirect all RSS traffic to Feedburner.

Be flexible: If you’re worried about providing different feed formats, turn on SmartFeed in Feedburner. It will translate your feed on-the-fly into a format (RSS or Atom) compatible with your visitors’ feed reader application.

What about people who’ve already subscribed? Good news, new and old subscribers will all be redirected automatically to your Feedburner feed!

See also
Comments

  1. Does this mean they need to be Feedburner users to subscribe to your RSS though?

    — Pete..., January 26, 2006

  2. No - you don’t have to be have a Feedburner account to use the Feedburner feeds :)

    — Rachel, January 26, 2006

  3. Do you know if there are other similar things for other blogging systems?

    — Stephen, January 26, 2006

  4. Oh, thats cool, good way of keeping track of your readership :)

    — Pete..., January 26, 2006

  5. Stephen, here’s a tutorial for MovableType along with other blog system tips.

    — Rachel, January 26, 2006

  6. Thanks, Rachel.

    — Stephen, January 26, 2006

  7. Okay, I’ve always wanted to ask this, so what the heck is the Big Deal with Feed Burner feed… I mean the RSS feed that Wordpress provides is well & good and is supported by all..

    Surely Stats is not the reason why so many people move to Feedburner!

    ~ CC

    — Chrono Cr@cker, January 26, 2006

  8. Fair question Chrono :) Here’s some reasons why I choose Feedburner:

    • Stats
    • Only one feed is published… Feedburner automatically figures out which is the right one to show to different feed readers.
    • Saves my bandwidth
    • If people click on the feed in a browser, it’s displayed in a nice friendly format… not some scary XML stuff
    • All sorts of ways to customise your feed… including ads, if you’re so inclined

    — Rachel, January 26, 2006

  9. [...] Rachel just pinged me on IM to let me know of post she’s just writtten which I really wish she’d written a year ago. It’s about a WP Plugin called WordPress FeedBurner Plugin which makes your Feedburner RSS feed (if you have one) the one that is autodiscovered by feedreaders like Bloglines when people want to subscribe to your blog. [...]

    — WordPress Feedburner Plugin: Blog Tips at ProBlogger, January 27, 2006

  10. Will this solve a problem of transfering people who subscribe to the index.xml file to the FeedBurner file?

    — Justin, January 27, 2006

  11. Hi Justin, Wordpress doesn’t have an index.xml file but using the advice for the other systems, yes it will :)

    — Rachel, January 27, 2006

  12. [...] In other happenings, Rachel (Rocker Blog), recently posted about an awesome new Feedburner Plugin for Wordpress. I asked her as to why people preferred Feedburner RSS Feeds when Wordpress as well as many other Blogs, already provide decent feeds. Rachel gave me good answers: [...]

    — Chrono Tron - 100% » Blog Archive » Digg & Feedburner, January 28, 2006

  13. Thanks Rachel. I was having this problem and now it is solved!

    — Morton, January 28, 2006

  14. Rachel, did you choose not to include a “comments” RSS feed for a reason? I know that WordPress supports that ability. It certainly make monitoring your site a little easier when there is a lot of “comments”. It would make a wonderful addition to the site. Oh maybe OPML?

    — HullaBaloo, February 6, 2006

  15. Thanks for the reminder! There’s a tonne of tweaks I need to make here on this blog. Adding back in comments RSS feed is one of them which I’ve just done :)

    — Rachel, February 6, 2006

  16. [...] Inspiration for this article was found in many places. Here are some other articles you might want to read: [...]

    — mitch’s meanderings » Blog Archive » Redirecting WordPress Feeds to FeedBurner, March 23, 2006

  17. Rachel,

    What are you using to create your email subscruption form? I notice it channels you through Feedburner. Is this functionality of the Feedburner Plugin? I am wanted to provide email subscriptions to my WP site and am interested in your setup. I have seen many email subscriptions out there but have not given any of them a go yet.

    — Daniel, August 30, 2006

  18. I’m using Feedburner functionality for it - not a plugin :) Check out your feedburner account for more info on this.

    — Rachel, August 30, 2006