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.

What Does This Mean?

You may recognize the universal feed icon or these "chicklets" from your favorite websites, blogs, and podcasts. These icons represent content in any format - text, audio or video - to which you can subscribe and read/watch/listen using a feed reader. What's that?

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.

Consumer Bottom Line: Subscribing to feeds makes it possible to review a large amount of online content in a very short time. Publisher Bottom Line: Feeds permit instant distribution of content and the ability to make it "subscribable." Advertiser Bottom Line: Advertising in feeds overcomes many of the shortcomings that traditional marketing channels encounter including spam filters, delayed distribution, search engine rankings, and general inbox noise.

Who publishes feeds?

Most of the biggest names on the web offer content feeds including USATODAY.com, BBC News Headlines, ABCNews, CNET, Yahoo!, Amazon.com (including a podcast!), and many more. Google publishes feeds as part of many of our services; for example, you can get a feed of new items for any search you make in Google News. In addition, hundreds of thousands of bloggers, podcasters, and videobloggers publish feeds to keep themselves better connected to their readers, listeners, admirers, and critics. Apple, through its iTunes Music Store, offers tens of thousands of audio and video podcasts for download, each of which is powered by a feed.

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).

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.

Show me what a typical feed reader looks like.

How can I publish my own feeds?

If you have a website, blog, audio/video content, or even photos, you can offer a feed of your content as an option. If you are using a popular blogging platform or publishing tool like TypePad, Wordpress, or Blogger, you likely publish a feed automatically. Even other non-blogging sites like social photo-sharing service Flickr offer feeds of content you produce that others can retrieve. There are also tools on the market that can help transform traditional web content into the right format for distribution.

FeedBurner's services allow publishers who already have a feed to improve their understanding of and relationship with their audience. Once you have a working feed, run it through FeedBurner and realize a whole new set of benefits.

Learn more about FeedBurner's services for blogs, podcasts and commercial publications.

And finally, some technical backstory...

The new method for easily distributing online content is often called a web feed and the technical format that makes it possible is called RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary, and/or Rockdale, Sandow, and Southern (Railroad) if you trust the good folks at AcronymFinder.com. RSS is based on XML, a widely used standard for textual information exchange between applications on the Internet. RSS feeds can be viewed as plain text files, but they're really designed for computer-to-computer communication.

We should point out that RSS is just one standard for expressing feeds as XML. Another well-known choice is Atom. Both formats have their boosters, and it doesn't appear that consolidation toward a single standard is imminent. However, most feed subscribers simply want fresh content and don't care at all about the underlying protocol. (FeedBurner helps publishers avoid this quandary with our SmartFeed service, which makes any feed format readable on any subscriber device.)

Resources:

Feed-Related Backgrounders

CNN: Welcome to the 'new' Web, same as the 'old' Web Mark Pilgrim at XML.com Wired Magazine: Aggregators Attack Info Overload MediaThink: RSS: The Next Big Thing Online (an introduction to RSS implications for business) BBC News Wikipedia

The easiest way to redirect feed traffic: use an automatic option

If you use Blogger, TypePad, or self-hosted WordPress to publish your blog or site, you're in luck! Each of these platforms offers an automated option to greatly simplify how to activate redirection. Visit the QuickStart Guides section of this Help Center and follow the instructions for your platform to get started with FeedBurner and ultimately redirect 100% of your feed traffic to your FeedBurner feed.

However, if you are using a publishing system other than one of those listed above, you may not have an immediate, automated solution for redirecting feed traffic properly. The following discussion offers suggested approaches (and is meant for advanced publishers who are comfortable changing and controlling specific web server settings.)

Manual redirection tactic: the "conditional redirect"

Note your "burned" FeedBurner feed address. You'll find this address by signing in to feedburner.google.com and clicking the

icon next to your feed's listing on the main My Feeds page. Your browser will display the feed and you can then copy this address from the browser's location or address field. Work with your provider to set up a "conditional redirect" from your site's original feed to the burned feed address. With an Apache web server, this instruction would appear as follows for any feed address ending in "index.xml":

RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedBurner RewriteRule ^index\.xml$ http://feedproxy.google.com/YOURFEEDADDRESS [R,L]

A conditional redirect tells your web server not to mistakenly redirect FeedBurner's own request for the feed. (FeedBurner needs to request your original feed for new content, of course.) Multiple rewrite rules may be needed if your publishing service offers several different feed formats. These instructions are placed in a file named .htaccess. If you want to create a special graphical link to your new AdSense-enabled feed on your website, you can use FeedBurner to generate the necessary HTML code that you can insert onto the relevant web page. Sign in to feedburner.google.com, click the feed title for which you want to create a chicklet, and then visit Publicize > Chicklet Chooser.

This tip only works if you have control over the HTTP directives for your web server (for example, you can author and edit .htaccess file(s) if you use an Apache web server).

If you cannot set up a conditional redirect, the more basic redirection approach below is a good alternative.

Alternative traffic redirection tactic: the "hidden" feed

Here is a basic illustration of feed traffic. You start out with feed readers requesting your feed as usual:

The next step is to generate your feed to a different file name (shown as fb-index.xml in this example) and you point FeedBurner at that new file. Then, you use your web server to redirect any access for the original file (index.xml) to the feeds.feedburner.com URL.

You have now maintained control of your feed. If you decide that you don't want to use FeedBurner's services any more, you can either change the redirect to your private feed (index.xml goes to fb-index.xml) or you can just go back to generating your feed to the original file (index.xml) and get rid of the redirects.

One gotcha: please remember to point FeedBurner at the new, private feed URL! If you instead point FeedBurner at the original URL, everything will go around in a big circle as FeedBurner attempt to read your source feed, which points to the Feedburner feed, which points to the source feed, and on and on.

Now, we actually trap this condition so it does not cause trouble for your web server or FeedBurner itself: FeedBurner just serves up the most recent content we were able to retrieve. But if you do this redirect trick and it looks like your feed isn't being updated, check to make sure you haven't fallen prey to this infinite redirect gotcha.

Is there a feed file size limit?

Yes. FeedBurner will not accept feeds that are larger than 512K. It's rare for a feed to be larger than 512K, but some publishing tools generate their original source feeds with no limit to how far back in time they will reach to include items. Such feeds are vulnerable to steady size increases.

If you currently publish an existing FeedBurner feed, and the original source feed exceeds the 512K limit, FeedBurner will not update the 'burned' version of your feed until the original drops below the limit. For most feeds this will never be an issue -- but if you know that your content postings are regularly very large in size, you might want to keep any eye on the original feed's file size.

Note #1: FeedBurner should proactively notify you of a 'feed health' issue like this and help you avoid any service interruption. It's (still) on the list! If you use Blogger, you may follow these steps to reduce your feed file size below 512K if it currently too big.

Note #2: Publishers of podcast feeds that point to an MP3, torrent, or other binary file do not have anything new to worry about -- the size of the binary file that's merely linked from your feed has no impact on your feed's calculated size.

Can I use FeedBurner if I don't already publish a feed?

Unfortunately, FeedBurner cannot generate feeds for websites that do not currently produce them. Virtually all blogs created by systems like Blogger and TypePad create their own 'standard' feeds which FeedBurner can locate and then use to create a FeedBurner feed.

If you want to try to 'autogenerate' a feed from your existing website's content, you may need to use an application like FeedForAll. Alternatively, you may consider creating a blog using Blogger or another publishing service, and then use the automatically-created feed that is associated with your new blog with FeedBurner. Any content updates you publish in this new blog will automatically end up in your FeedBurner feed, and it may be easier to use this 'new' site to publish updates than to try to redesign an existing site to accommodate feeds.

Does FeedBurner put ads in my feed without my consent?

Nope.

FeedBurner only modifies your feed to the extent that the services you choose from our catalog require. We strongly believe publishers should retain creative and technical control over their work and that our services should only apply when chosen. FeedBurner does not sneak advertising into feed items or modify hyperlinks without your consent; if you see advertisements at the bottom of feed items, it means you (or the publisher whose FeedBurner feed you're viewing) has chosen to run them in their feed and is sharing the revenue. Also, our Item Stats service provides detailed clickthrough statistics by modifying links in your feed that point back to the original source. Again, these modifications only occur if you have chosen them and can be immediately reversed by deactivating the service.

What types of feeds does FeedBurner support?

FeedBurner can apply services to source feeds of the following formats:

RSS 0.90, 0.91, 0.92, 0.93, 0.94, 1.0, 2.0, and Atom.

How many services can I apply to my feed?

As many as you want. Our services are designed so that you can apply one or several to your feed.

You may also want to generate more than one FeedBurner feed from your original feed. For example, say you want both a mobile version of your feed, and another version of your feed that incorporates a style sheet. You simply create two FeedBurner feeds using your same original source feed. In the future, as we continue to add more services, you may want to create many FeedBurner processed versions of your original feed!

Getting Started : QuickStart Guides for Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, MySpace, Podcasting : Blogger

How do I create a Blogger Feed?

Enter your blog's web address in the "Ready to Burn?" form found on FeedBurner's homepage and at the bottom of the pages in the Blog and Podcast sections. If you plan to publish a podcast with your Blogger feed, check the "I am a podcaster" box. Click Next Â».

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The Identify Feed Source page should appear.

On "Welcome", make sure the title and FeedBurner address (URL) of your new feed are values you prefer.

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The Create or Sign In To Your FeedBurner Account page should appear.

Also on this page, create a FeedBurner account by picking a username and password and supplying your email address.

When you've supplied all the required information on this page, click Activate Feed Â». A "Congrats" page should appear.

Read all of the information on "Congrats", then click Next Â» to continue with the setup process.

If you selected "I am a podcaster" on the homepage, configuration options for our SmartCast service will appear. Here you can supply categories and other information for iTunes, append a copyright message, and submit your podcast to Yahoo! Search.

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When you are finished, click Next Â». Configuration options for FeedBurner stats services should appear.

On the stats configuration page, select the level of feed stats detail you want.

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Click Next Â» to finish the setup process and enter our feed management interface.

You're now ready to make your FeedBurner feed available on your Blogger site!

Tracking 100% of your feed traffic: Redirecting your Blogger feed to your FeedBurner feed

Blogger can make sure all feed traffic for your blog content goes to your FeedBurner feed. This helps make sure your FeedBurner stats are comprehensive and accurate; even subscribers to the 'Original Feed' are routed through FeedBurner. To redirect your feed:

In a new browser window, sign in to your Blogger account.

From the Blogger Dashboard, click the Settings link for the blog you want to promote.

The Settings page for your selected blog should appear.

Click the Site Feed link under the Settings tab.

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Type your complete FeedBurner feed address into the Post Feed Redirect URL text field. Make sure you type in your entire feed address including the "http://" portion.

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Click Save Settings.

You should see the message "Settings were Saved Successfully".

Blogger will now redirect all feed traffic for your blog to your FeedBurner feed.

Note: If you are using the redirection feature within Blogger to send all of your feed traffic to your FeedBurner feed, you may want to modify the code we provide in order to keep your subscribers with you, even if you leave FeedBurner.

How do I promote my FeedBurner feed on my Blogger site?

One of the ways to promote your FeedBurner feed on your Blogger site is by using FeedBurner's Publicity Tools to select a "chicklet" image to display a link to your FeedBurner feed from your blog's homepage.

Click the Publicize tab.

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A list of publicity-related services appears.

Locate and click the Chicklet Chooser service.

The form shown below loads into the right side of the screen:

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This form contains several options for buttons that promote (and link to) your FeedBurner feed.

Click the radio button next to the button you want to display on your site.

From the drop-down select "Blogger", then click Go! to add the chicklet as a widget.

Blogger will open in a new window. Follow the prompts there to continue to add the new widget.

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How do I verify the Blogger "Site Feed" settings for podcasting?

If your feed is used for a podcast, you will need to make sure you're publishing a "full content" feed in order for FeedBurner's SmartCast service to pick up links to your audio files and generate enclosures for them. To verify your original Blogger site feed format is correct, follow these steps:

In a new browser window, sign in to your Blogger account.

From the Blogger Dashboard, click the Settings link for the blog you want to promote.

The Settings page for your selected blog should appear.

Click the Site Feed link under the Settings tab.

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Set Allow Blog Feed to Full, if it isn't set to this value already.

Click Save Settings.

You should see the message "Settings Were Saved Successfully".

Getting Started : QuickStart Guides for Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, MySpace, Podcasting : WordPress

Creating your WordPress feed (self-hosted WordPress)

For the best results using FeedBurner with your self-hosted WordPress site, we recommend the FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin (originally authored by the legendary Steve Smith). The plugin will detect all ways to access your feed (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php, etc.), and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed and optionally, your main comments feed as well.

The plugin is currently compatible with downloadable WordPress versions 1.5 through 2.5. (Please note that “tag” feeds in later WordPress versions are not supported.)

Installation

Download the plugin, then follow the instructions below to begin forwarding all WordPress feed traffic to your FeedBurner feed.

Copy the plugin file, FeedBurner_FeedSmith_Plugin.php into your default WordPress plugin directory, wp-content/plugins/ .

Activate the plugin by logging into your WordPress administration area, clicking Plugins, then clicking Activate at the end of the "FeedBurner FeedSmith" row.

In the WordPress administration area, begin the configuration by clicking Options and then the FeedBurner FeedSmith sub-option.

Follow the links to create your FeedBurner feeds, or if they already exist, simply fill in their URLs in the boxes provided.

Note: If you currently use the old, 2005-vintage version of the Ordered List FeedBurner plugin that generates a FeedBurner-specific URL (an example: www.yoursite.com/feedburner_838196/), that URL is no longer available or necessary. You will have to reset your FeedBurner feed's Original Feed address to now use your standard blog feed address. Additionally, you should examine any .htaccess files that control access to your WordPress installation's content and remove any existing references that forward or redirect your feeds, as these references will no longer be necessary.

Verify your URLs in the text entry fields, and click Save.

Now all of your WordPress feed traffic should be redirected to FeedBurner.

Deactivation

To deactivate automatic forwarding of your feed traffic to FeedBurner, deactivate the plugin via the Plugins section of your WordPress Administration control panel.

Promoting your FeedBurner feed on your WordPress.com site

To promote your FeedBurner feed on your Wordpress site, just use FeedBurner's Publicity Tools to select a "chicklet" image to display a link to your feed from your blog's homepage.

Click the Publicize tab.

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A list of publicity-related services appears.

Locate and click the Chicklet Chooser service.

The form shown below loads into the right side of the screen:

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This form contains several options for buttons that promote (and link to) your FeedBurner feed.

Click the radio button next to the button you want to display on your site.

Copy the HTML shown in the bottom section of the Chicklet Chooser. You will paste this HTML into your WordPress site template.

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From the WordPress Dashboard, click the Presentation tab and then the Sidebar Widget option.

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Drag the text widget from the Available Widgets area to your Sidebar.

Click the right side of the widget to expand it

If you'd like to give this widget a title you can, but it is not required. This title will show up on your site.

Paste the code you copied from FeedBurner in an earlier step into the content field.

Click the "X" in the upper-right corner to close the widget box.

Click Save Changes.

After the code is saved, you should immediately be able to view your chicklet in your site's sidebar.

Offering Email Subscriptions to your WordPress blog (WordPress.com or self-hosted)

FeedBurner also offers our Email Subscription service, which uses your feed to send an update once each day that you make new post(s) to your blog. If you want to offer a link to subscribe to these email updates to your readers, visit and activate the Email Subscriptions service on the Publicize tab for your feed. Then, copy the "Subscription Link" code we offer into your blog as a "Text" widget under Presentation > Widgets in the WordPress Dashboard for your site.

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Creating your WordPress feed (WordPress.com)

Enter your blog's web address in the "Ready to Burn?" form found on FeedBurner's homepage and at the bottom of the pages in the Blog and Podcast sections. If you plan to publish a podcast with your WordPress feed, check the "I am a podcaster" box. Click Next Â».

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The Identify Feed Source page should appear.

On "Welcome", make sure the title and FeedBurner address (URI) of your new feed are values you prefer.

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The Create or Sign In To Your FeedBurner Account page should appear.

Also on this page, create a FeedBurner account by picking a username and password and supplying your email address.

When you've supplied all the required information on this page, click Activate Feed Â». A Congrats page should appear.

Read all of the information on this page, then click Next Â» to continue with the setup process.

If you selected "I am a podcaster" on the homepage, configuration options for our SmartCastâ„¢ service will appear. Here you can supply categories and other informataion for iTunes, append a copyright message and submit your podcast to Yahoo! Search.

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When you are finished, click Next Â». Configuration options for FeedBurner stats services should appear.

On the stats configuration page, select the level of feed stats detail you want. If you select TotalStats PRO, you will be asked for a credit card in the next step.

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Click Next Â» to finish the setup process and enter our feed management interface.

You're now ready to make your FeedBurner feed available on your WordPress site!

Verifying WordPress feed settings for podcasting (self-hosted WordPress)

Are you using WordPress for podcasting? If so, it's important to know that newer versions of WordPress will automatically convert linked MP3 files to RSS enclosures, but using our SmartCastâ„¢ service will guarantee maximum compatibility and reliability for your podcast. Either way, you will need to make sure you're publishing a "full text" feed so your links make it into the RSS feed. Here's how to verify your original WordPress site feed's format:

In a new browser window, sign in to your WordPress account.

Once logged in, click the Options tab in the upper right part of the screen.

Click the Reading sub-tab.

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You should see the Reading Options settings page for your site.

On the Publicity and Feeds settings page, locate the "Syndication Feeds" section and make sure the "Full text" option is selected.

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Click Update Options.

You should see the message "Options saved."

Getting Started : QuickStart Guides for Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, MySpace, Podcasting : TypePad

Creating Your TypePad feed

Enter your blog's web address in the "Ready to Burn?" form found on FeedBurner's homepage and at the bottom of the pages in the Blog and Podcast sections. If you plan to publish a podcast with your TypePad feed, check the "I am a podcaster" box. Click Next Â».

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The Identify Feed Source page should appear.

On this page, select the "Atom" option. Click Next Â».

The Welcome page should appear.

Make sure the title and FeedBurner address (URL) of your new feed are values you prefer.

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The "Create or Sign In To Your FeedBurner Account" page should appear.

Also on this page, create a FeedBurner account by picking a username and password and supplying your email address.

When you've supplied all the required information on this page, click Activate Feed Â». A Congrats page should appear.

Read all of the information on this page, then click Next Â» to continue with the setup process.

If you selected "I am a podcaster" on the homepage, configuration options for our SmartCastâ„¢ service will appear. Here you can supply categories and other information for iTunes, append a copyright message and submit your podcast to Yahoo! Search.

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When you are finished, click Next Â». Configuration options for FeedBurner stats services should appear.

On the stats configuration page, select the level of feed stats detail you want.

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Click Next Â» to finish the setup process and enter our feed management interface.

You're now ready to integrate your FeedBurner feed with your TypePad site!

Tracking 100% of your feed traffic: Redirecting your TypePad feed to your FeedBurner feed

The next step is to configure TypePad to use your enhanced FeedBurner feed instead of the default TypePad feed. TypePad will forward all requests for your original TypePad feeds to your FeedBurner feed. In so doing, FeedBurner will track 100% of your feed traffic, ensuring none of your subscriber or content item statistics are missed.

In a new browser window, sign in to your TypePad account.

Once signed in, click the weblog you want to integrate with FeedBurner. Navigate to the Configure tab and enter the Feeds section.

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On the Feeds page, scroll down to the "FeedBurner" section.

Click Connect this Feed to FeedBurner.

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Enter your FeedBurner username and password and click Sign In.

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Select the FeedBurner feed you just created and click Continue.

Click Save Changes. The pop-up window should close.

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You're done! Existing and new subscribers will be automatically be forwarded to your FeedBurner feed, which means:

Your FeedBurner stats will reflect 100% of subscribers and other feed use. All of your subscribers will receive the same optimized, up-to-date FeedBurner feed.

Adding FeedBurner's Publicize features to your TypePad site

There are two ways to use FeedBurner's Publicity Tools. You can add the FeedBurner Subscribe Now "chicklet" or the FeedBurner Email Subscriptions functionality from your TypePad Widget Gallery in your TypePad account. Alternatively, instructions for adding a "subscribe chicklet" links are provided below:

Click the Publicize tab.

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A list of publicity-related services appears.

Locate and click the Chicklet Chooser service.

The form shown below loads into the right side of the screen:

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This form contains several options for buttons that promote (and link to) your FeedBurner feed.

Click the radio button next to the button you want to display on your site.

From the drop-down, select "TypePad" to add the chicklet as a widget.

TypePad will open in a new window. Follow the prompts there to continue to add the new widget.

Getting Started : QuickStart Guides for Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, MySpace, Podcasting : MySpace

Promoting your FeedBurner feed on your MySpace site

You can now use FeedBurner's Publicity Tools to select a "chicklet" image to display a link to your FeedBurner feed from your MySpace page.

Click the Publicize tab.

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A list of publicity-related services appears.

Locate and click the Chicklet Chooser service. The form shown below loads into the right side of the screen:

[image]

This form contains several options for buttons that promote (and link to) your FeedBurner feed.

Click the radio button next to the button you want to display on your site.

Copy the HTML shown in the bottom section of the Chicklet Chooser. You will paste this HTML into your MySpace profile page.

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In a new browser window, sign into MySpace.

Click Edit Profile.

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The profile edit page should appear.

Locate an area in your "About me" section that represents a place where you would like to display your chicklet, and paste your chicklet code just below it as a starting point. You will need to experiment with the placement of this code to get the look you want. This is where you should also inform your readers to click on your chicklet to subscribe to your FeedBurner feed.

Creating your MySpace Feed

Find your MySpace Blog's feed, located in the upper right corner of the page:

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Right-click on "rss" and select "copy link location"

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Paste that link into the "Ready to burn your feed?" form found on FeedBurner's homepage and at the bottom of the pages in the Blog and Podcast sections. Then click Next

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On the following page, make sure the title and FeedBurner address (URL) of your new feed are values you prefer.

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The Create or Sign In To Your FeedBurner Account page should appear.

On this page, create a FeedBurner account by picking a username and password and supplying your email address. When you've supplied all the required information on this page, click Activate Feed Â». A Congrats page should appear.

Read all of the information on this page, then click Next Â» to continue with the setup process.

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When you are finished, click Next Â». Configuration options for FeedBurner stats services should appear.

On the stats configuration page, select the level of feed stats detail you want.

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Click Next Â» to finish the setup process and enter our feed management interface. You're now ready to make your FeedBurner feed available on your MySpace site! Here's how.

Getting Started : QuickStart Guides for Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, MySpace, Podcasting : Podcasting

Creating a FeedBurner feed for podcasting

So, you created an audio program. You uploaded the files to a web server. You also publish a blog with posts that contain links to your audio/video files. What's next? Enter FeedBurner.

An RSS feed is the final step in transforming your collection of audio/video files into a bona fide podcast! With FeedBurner's SmartCast service, you can use any blogging tool that creates a feed to publish your podcast. Here's how it works: If your blog post contains a link (<a href=""></a>) to an audio/video file, we'll convert it to an RSS enclosure — a special link found only in your feed — that programs like iPodder, iTunes and NetNewsWire recognize. Google Reader and several other online readers also recognize enclosures and offer a playback link or audio control when they encounter them.

Podcasting News has a complete tutorial on publishing a podcast with Blogger and FeedBurner.

Getting Started : Introductory Videos

FeedBurner demonstration: creating a podcast feed

[ http://blogs.feedburner.com/pub/mov/FeedBurner-Podcast-Demo.mov ]

If your browser does not support iframes, please visit http://blogs.feedburner.com/pub/mov/FeedBurner-Podcast-Demo.mov

FeedBurner demonstration: creating a blog feed

If your browser does not support iframes, please visit http://blogs.feedburner.com/pub/mov/FeedBurner-Blog-Demo.mov

Account : Account Administration

Transferring feeds between accounts

If you want to transfer a feed between one FeedBurner account and another, follow these steps:

Sign in to your account. Click the title of the feed you want to send to someone else in the My Feeds list, and then click "Transfer Feed..." You will then be prompted to enter the email address of the publisher to whom you wish to transfer this feed. Enter this email address and submit the form.

FeedBurner will contact this publisher by email and provide a link they must visit in order to sign into their own FeedBurner account and then accept the transfer. The transfer will occur immediately after they complete this process.

Feed transfer request emails are only valid for 72 hours. If the transferee doesn't accept the request within this window, you will have to issue a new request. Make sure the transferee checks their spam/junk folder for this message, as it may end up there by accident — it's a tough, unforgiving world out there, people.

Transferring feeds that participate in FeedBurner Ad Network

Unfortunately, you may not transfer a feed that participates in FeedBurner Ad Network (FAN); this constraint prevents the loss of important financial data associated with the original owner's account.

Not to fear! We recommend the following procedure to handle FAN feed transfers between publisher accounts:

The "original owner" should enter a new feed address (the part following feeds.feedburner.com/, known as a URI) for the FeedBurner feed they would like to transfer to another party. Then the "new owner" should set up a feed using the same source feed as the feed being transfered, enter the feed address that was being used previously by the "original owner."

In this way a new FeedBurner feed is created that effectively clones the original and allows any subscribers of the original one to transition smoothly to the new feed.

The time between completing step 1 and step 2 is a time during which the feed will be unavailable - so the the closer these two steps can be coordinated between the "original owner" and the "new owner" the better.

A Special Note about FeedBurner's own Email Subscription Service: In the FAN transfer scenario, since the new feed is a feed distinct from the original one, any email subscriptions from the original do not automatically transfer and any original 'Subscribe to my Feed via Email' forms on any blogs or sites will still point to the original feed unless they are changed to use the new feed's settings. FeedBurner can help you migrate the email subscribers from the old feed to the new one; post a note in our Forums and specify the feed address(es) involved. We will take it from there.

30-day redirection option

As a courtesy, FeedBurner offers publishers who delete a FeedBurner feed 30 days of complimentary traffic redirection. You can use this period to notify your subscribers of the change so they can update their feed readers with your original address.

During the first 15 days of this 30 day period, subscriber requests for your feed will be redirected to your original source feed. During days 16-30, this feed consists of a single content item that reads "This feed is no longer active. A new feed is located at" followed by the URL of your original feed.

After day 30, your feed will be permanently deleted and return an HTTP 404 (feed not found) message.

Closing your FeedBurner Account

If you wish to permanently close your FeedBurner account, you may do so by choosing the "Close My Account…" option located in My Account.

Please note that you must first delete all of your feeds before closing your FeedBurner account.

Account : FeedBulletin

Tips for keeping the FeedBulletin feed private

As a general rule, you should not add FeedBulletin to any web-based news aggregator, such as Bloglines, My Yahoo!, or NewsBurst. These services will index your feed and make its contents searchable by anyone. You can apply username/password authentication to your feed to prevent it from being easily indexed, but it's better to be safe than sorry by not listing it in a web-based reader in the first place. It's best to use a desktop news aggregator, such as FeedDemon, Safari in Mac OS X Tiger, or NetNewsWire to subscribe to FeedBulletin.

By default, FeedBulletin only notifies you about problems FeedBurner encounters when processing your feed through our automatic FeedMedic service. However, we may add more personalized features to this feed in the future that permit you to receive traffic statistics, account-related notices, and other slightly more personal communications via RSS. We will always give you the choice of whether to include these communications in FeedBulletin; they will not appear unless you approve them.

What is FeedBulletin?

Did you know that if you've created a user account on FeedBurner, you have your very own personal feed that we can use to communicate with you? You didn't? Go to the My Account page and click on FeedBulletin link on the left menu. You can just subscribe to this personal feed and we'll use that as our primary communication channel. FeedBulletin is used primarily to communicate any problems FeedBurner encounters during normal operation with your feed.

There are a few customization options FeedBulletin offers: you can choose whether you would like your feed to be password protected with your FeedBurner id and password. You can even get FeedBulletin updates via email in case you don't feel like subscribing to it as a feed.

Account : MyBrand

MyBrand Tech Support FAQ

Before we get into the technical details, let's be clear: this is not for the faint of heart. If you aren't sure whether you can modify DNS at your domain, or you don't have your own domain and instead maintain a blog at wordpress.com, livejournal.com, typepad.com or some other hosted provider, then MyBrand is NOT for you. Since we cannot provide DNS-specific support, we'd really appreciate you reading through this entire post, not just because it took us a long time to write it (it really did), but because it will ultimately save you time.

What MyBrand Really Does

MyBrand lets you create an alias at your domain so that you can "mask" your feed URL at FeedBurner. For purposes of this example, we're going to assume that your domain is "yourdomain.com" (yes, we're clever), and you have a feed that today is at feeds.feedburner.com/BestFeedEver. Once MyBrand is active, you can use feeds.yourdomain.com/BestFeedEver instead of feeds.feedburner.com/BestFeedEver. Cool, right?

Please note: This does not in fact change where your feed lives. The feeds.feedburner.com address is still valid, and feeds.yourdomain.com is just an alternate URL that users can use to access your feed. That's good news: all of your subscribers today will continue to get your feed content without having to resubscribe.

Several of you asked whether you could "redirect" your existing subscribers away from the feeds.feedburner.com address to the feeds.yourdomain.com address. Not really, no. Since they're both in fact the same feed (you've just created an alias that points at the FeedBurner URL), redirecting from one to the other would in fact create a loop. And nobody likes loops.

Can you help me modify my DNS records?

If you need a pointer on creating a CNAME at your domain, here are directions for GoDaddy users: http://help.godaddy.com/article.php?article_id=666&topic_id=163. Don't use GoDaddy? Contact your domain registrar and/or webhost for more guidance. Like we said up above, we can't help with DNS-specific issues on your domain because there are just too many domains out there.

What is a CNAME?

A CNAME is web-speak for an alias or shortcut from one Internet name to another. It allows you to say "Send all of the traffic for feeds.yourdomain.com to feeds.feedburner.com."

When will the changes I make become visible?

Sometimes, it can take as long as 24 hours for DNS change to propagate. We recommend you wait a full day before becoming alarmed.

How do I determine if I can even edit my CNAME?

Check with your domain registrar or web hosting provider to see if you have this capability.

Will my subscribers have to re-subscribe to my feed?

No.

What if I am unable to change my CNAME?

Some domain registrars may not allow you to edit your DNS records. Unfortunately, this is how MyBrand works! (Sorry.) If you really want to use MyBrand but can't edit your DNS records, consider switching to a different registrar.

Where do I go to activate MyBrand?

To get started:

What if I want to stop using MyBrand? What's the process for deactivating the service and what should I tell my domain registrar?

To stop using MyBrand:

Sign in to your FeedBurner account. Click My Account Click MyBrand, then click "Deactivate" With your registrar, remove the CNAME entries from your domain's DNS record.

A note about feed redirection

Those of you using the FeedSmith plugin for WordPress, or who use a custom server-side redirect to redirect feed subscribers from your site to ours, can update those redirects to use your new MyBrand-ed URL. Visit the control panel for your plugin (or edit the .htaccess file for your site if you're self-customizing the redirect), and change the FeedBurner URL from our domain to your own.

MyBrand Overview and FAQ

What is MyBrand?

mybrand ad - its a spotlight shining down - doesn't your brand deserve to be front and center? MyBrand is a premium FeedBurner service that allows publishers to showcase their feeds by serving them from their own domain.

Who needs this service and why?

Bloggers, podcasters, webmasters, personal and commercial publishers who want subscribers to have a cohesive and transparent branded experience when accessing their online content.

What will it help publishers do that they can't do today?

FeedBurner has and will always provide free services to its publishers. These services allow publishers to apply a variety of publicity, optimization, and analytical services to feeds that are accessible through a FeedBurner domain. With MyBrand, publishers can continue to take advantage of all of FeedBurner's services, but provide a transparent experience by running everything through their domain (e.g. feeds.yoursitenamehere.com) instead of ours.

What are the technical requirements to use the service?

Publishers must have access to change their CNAME entry in the DNS records for the domain they wish to change. To configure MyBrand, log in to your FeedBurner account, select the My Account link and look for MyBrand in the left-hand column. There are three steps to set up the service. (View a screenshot of this configuration process.) Make sure that nothing resides on your MyBrand subdomain as requests for that subdomain are routed through FeedBurner. Additional technical FAQs are available.

How much does it cost and what methods of payment are accepted?

MyBrand is free!

How do you get started?

Publishers need only sign in to their FeedBurner account, review the instructions and activate the service from within My Account.

Troubleshooting : Tips and frequently asked questions

If I redirect my Blogger feed to FeedBurner, should I change my blog's feed chicklet links, too?

If you are a Blogger publisher and you've decided to use its new redirection feature to tightly connect your Blogger blog and your FeedBurner feed, you may want to change the link to the FeedBurner feed you provide on your site when using features like Chicklet Chooser and FeedCount. Why? Portability. Let us explain:

Once you redirect 100% of your feed traffic to your FeedBurner feed, you get a very complete picture of your feed-consuming audience, including where it's coming from and what content it's finding most popular in your feed. That's great. But if this audience is almost entirely subscribing to feeds.feedburner.com/myexcellentcontent, they will be stranded if, for some reason, you should choose to leave FeedBurner and revert back to your original feed address or some other service.

Since we believe publishers always should be in control of their content and how it's promoted, we think you should know you have the option of promoting your own original feed address instead of the FeedBurner feed if you use redirection. For example, let's say you used the Google subscription chicklet:

Add to Google

The HTML our ChickletChooser service would provide you is the following example:

<p><a href="http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/MYFEEDADDRESS"><img src="http://buttons.googlesyndication.com/fusion/add.gif" width="104" height="17" alt="Add to Google Reader or Homepage"></a></p>

Assume your Blogger blog's address is http://myexcellentblog.blogspot.com. You would change the chicklet link code above to read as follows:

<p><a href="http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=http://myexcellentblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default"><img src="http://buttons.googlesyndication.com/fusion/add.gif" width="104" height="17" alt="Add to Google Reader or Homepage"></a></p>

But wait, you say. I thought this was the point - promote my feed so it gets used and I get all those lovely stats! (You said this with considerable urgency.) It still is the point, but since you're redirecting 100% of your traffic to FeedBurner, the FeedBurner feed will be used at all times. The thing is, if you ever decide to leave us, there will be no hard feelings, but more importantly none of your subscribers will be left high and dry, subscribed to a FeedBurner feed address you no longer use or possibly even deleted. By promoting your original feed link only, you make use of all of FeedBurner's features but make sure your subscribers stay with you, even if you leave FeedBurner.

To summarize: Redirect your feed, but retain your original address for the links you promote.

What is a Favicon? Why doesn't my site's favicon always show up when my feed is displayed in a feed reader?

A favicon, short for "favorites icon," is a small graphic you can associate with your website for display in browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, Safari, iCab, and AOL Explorer. This icon appears in several places: in the browser's Location field, next to the site's name in a bookmarks list, with the site's title in a tab (if the browser uses tabs), and next to the site's feed as shown in many feed readers.

What does it look like?

If you don't have a favicon already, a search for favicon.ico reveals a number of sites that explain how to create an ICO file and how to host it on your website so that browsers and feed readers can locate it.

The problem with favicons and FeedBurner feeds stems from how different feed readers locate the favicon. Many use the address of the site provided in the top-level <link> tag of the feed to locate it (in this case, they will find yours, which works well with NetNewsWire and My Yahoo! right now, for example). Others, especially some desktop feed readers like FeedDemon, use the address of the feed itself and don't look back to the website (which means FeedBurner's favicon ends up getting the nod).

There is currently no solution for this issue; FeedBurner may offer one in the future; this topic will be updated to reflect any new capabilities.

How can I reduce Blogger's feed size below FeedBurner's 512K limit?

FeedBurner will not process an original feed from your blog if it is greater than 512K in size. (This limitation only applies to the actual size of the feed file itself and does not include any images or media files you may have linked to or embedded in your posts.) To get a feed larger than 512K back down to size on Blogger, you need to add a parameter to the address for your original feed's URL — the one that FeedBurner checks for updates in order to keep your FeedBurner feed current — that tells Blogger to shorten it to a specific number of posts. To add this parameter:

Sign in to your FeedBurner account. Click the title of your FeedBurner feed on the My Feeds page. On the feed management page that appears, click the Edit Feed Details... link just below your feed's title. In the Original Feed Address field, change the address listed there from an example like the following:

Code:

http://myblogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml
OR
http://myblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

to the following format:

Code:

http://myblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?max-results=3

(Note that max-results sets the number of posts you want to have appear in your FeedBurner feed. Any integer value between 1 and 500 is permitted.)

Click Save Feed Details. Your changes are immediately applied and FeedBurner re-burns the newly shortened (or lengthened) feed.

podcasters: Don't ever want an episode to drop off of your feed? Set this value to 500. (What happens on episode 501? Pandemonium!)

Bloggers: Do you write lengthy posts and come up against FeedBurner's 512K limit to total feed size? You will want to set max-results to a small number in order to keep the feed file size under control. You may need to experiment with the max-results setting to get the ideal feed size. How to tell the filesize of your feed? Enter its address into www.web-sniffer.net and look at the report it returns; there should be a value in kilobytes for the size of your feed in an "uncompressed" format.

What does FeedBurner's "read time out" error mean?

Unfortunately, that message means that FeedBurner consistently encounters "time out" states when trying to retrieve your source feed content. This means your web server isn't responding quickly enough to regular requests from our own feed poller, which requires a response within 10-15 seconds of initial contact. You may want to contact your hosting provider to ask them whether there is anything about your account or site configuration that might lead to slow response times to requests from FeedBurner.

Why don't new items show up right away in my burned feed?

One of the nice features of FeedBurner is that we field all of the requests for your feed, which can save you a bunch of bandwidth. Instead of passing each request through to your site, we instead "cache" the feed on our servers. Every 30 minutes, FeedBurner will check back with your site to make sure that we have the latest version of your content.

"30 minutes!" you cry. "The world could change in 30 minutes. I need that burned feed updated immediately!". Fear not. You can also ping FeedBurner to say "Hey, my feed has been updated, so get the new copy right away". You can do this by pinging FeedBurner directly or by using the Ping-o-Matic service.<

FeedBurner Help Center

What can we help you with?

What are feeds? I see "RSS", "XML", and "Atom" out there, but I don't know how I might use these links when I find them.

What Does This Mean?

Why is This a Good Thing?

Who publishes feeds?

How do I read feeds?

How can I publish my own feeds?

And finally, some technical backstory...

Resources:

Feed-Related Backgrounders

Popular Feed Readers

Applications

Online Services

Podcast Readers

The easiest way to redirect feed traffic: use an automatic option

Manual redirection tactic: the "conditional redirect"

Alternative traffic redirection tactic: the "hidden" feed

Tracking 100% of your feed traffic: Redirecting your Blogger feed to your FeedBurner feed

Tracking 100% of your feed traffic: Redirecting your TypePad feed to your FeedBurner feed

Transferring feeds that participate in FeedBurner Ad Network

What MyBrand Really Does

Can you help me modify my DNS records?

What is a CNAME?

When will the changes I make become visible?

How do I determine if I can even edit my CNAME?

Will my subscribers have to re-subscribe to my feed?

What if I am unable to change my CNAME?

Where do I go to activate MyBrand?

What if I want to stop using MyBrand? What's the process for deactivating the service and what should I tell my domain registrar?

A note about feed redirection

What is MyBrand?

Who needs this service and why?

What will it help publishers do that they can't do today?

What are the technical requirements to use the service?

How much does it cost and what methods of payment are accepted?

How do you get started?

What does it look like?