Twitter has become one of the most popular ever syndication and networking tools for bloggers. A few readers have asked if it is possible to add a "Tweet This" link to our Blogger templates, and while this was possible, I had not discovered a method of automatically shortening the URL of our blog posts until now.
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>
'post-footer' instead. Alternatively, you can add your code immediately after the <p><data:post.body/></p> line.<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'><span style='float: left; background: url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3iLe2H1my2hR5Cujr1QZEusSoAjXbC8eQBGY2J_X89-0MhxYrFZX8_84J0rMABaZe04fbDOtCWLwl1DMPgePRT8KEUqvW65NLg-UuaXNUdmpdwgOnrX0wC7J8aRg30KBz_-98kG44F92T/s128/twitter-16x16.png) left no-repeat; padding-left: 20px;'><script charset='utf-8' src='http://bit.ly/javascript-api.js?version=latest&login=tweettrackjs&apiKey=R_7e9987b2fd13d7e4e881f9cbb168f523' type='text/javascript'/>
<script charset='utf-8' src='http://s.bit.ly/TweetAndTrack.js?v=1.01' type='text/javascript'/>
<a expr:onclick='"return TweetAndTrack.open(this, \"" + data:post.url + "\");"' href='#'>
<span style='display:none;'>I'm reading: <data:post.title/></span>Tweet this!</a></span></b:if>http://bit.ly/url I'm reading: [title-of-blog-post]
http://blogger.com/feeds/[blog-id-number]/comments/defaultWhere [blog-id-number] is the unique identifier for your blog. To find your unique blog ID number, simply log in to Blogger and access the dashboard for your FTP published blog. You can then locate your blog ID by looking in the address bar, where your blog ID will be the long numeric string at the end of the URL:
Copy this number, and replace [your-blog-id] with this number instead. The URL for your FTP blog's comment feed will then be structured like this instead:
http://blogger.com/feeds/8351217949706258294/comments/defaultYou can use the URL for your comment feed to enable a link for subscribers; to syndicate through Feedburner, or simply to provide a list of recent comments which is drawn from your comments feed.
<script style="text/javascript" src="http://bloggerbuster.com/scripts/comments.js"></script><script style="text/javascript">var a_rc=5;var m_rc=true;var n_rc=true;var o_rc=100;</script>
<script src="http://blogger.com/feeds/[your-blog-id]/comments/default?alt=json-in-script&callback=showrecentcomments"></script>
By default, this script will display the 5 most recent comments, with a 100 character excerpt from each comment.
If you prefer to display more (or less) than 5 recent comments, you should edit this phrase in the code, replacing "5" with the number of comments you prefer to show:
var a_rc=5;If you would prefer to show more (or less) of an excerpt for each comment, you should edit this phrase and replace "100" with the number of characters to display:
var o_rc=100;Note: to display no excerpt at all, you can simply replace "100" with "0". I hope this update has provided useful information for those publishing their Blogger blogs via FTP. Please accept my apologies for assuming FTP blogs didn't publish comment feeds! Many thanks go out to Pete for his helpful comment and information.
I have created a FeedFlare unit which can be added to your Feedburner feed. This generates a link to the permanent page for each feed item, using the post author's name and the title of your blog as the link text.
Using this FeedFlare will help Google (and other search engines) determine that your post is the original source of content, and prevent scraper sites from ranking more highly in search engine results.
This FeedFlare can be added to any blog feed (not only those hosted by Blogger) and will generate the author's name, blog title and permanent link from the actual blog feed. Once added as a FeedFlare, no additional set-up is required to present the correct attribution for your posts.
Scraper sites are blogs which are made for Adsense. Rather than create original content, such splogs prefer to source content from other high ranking sites and present is as their own.
Where duplicate content is found in search results, the one which appears to be from the original source will rank most highly, while any sites which appear to be duplicating this content will feature much lower down the page (if their result even appears at all!).
By using this FeedFlare, you can add a link to the original source (the 'permalink') for each of your blog posts. This helps Google understand that your article is the original content, as Matt Cutts explains:
So if the syndicated article has a link to the original source of that article, then it is pretty much guaranteed the original home of that article will always have the higher PageRank, compared to all the syndicated copies. And that just makes it that much easier for us to do duplicate content detection and say: "You know what, this is the original article; this is the good one, so go with that." (Source)
Blogger enables us to add content to the footer of our blog feeds in the Settings>Site Feed section of our dashboards. We could easily add a link to our home page here, but unfortunately we cannot use this to generate a link to each article published on our sites.
For better rankings in search engines, it's important to link to the original article. This can be achieved using Feedburner's FeedFlare API, along with attribution to the post author (great for group blogs) and the title of the publishing site.
Adding the Author and Permalink Feedflare to your syndicated content is simply a matter of copying and pasting one line of code!
Log in to your Feedburner account and access the dashboard for your chosen blog. Click on the "Optimize" tab, then on the "FeedFlare" link in the left sidebar.
On this page, you will notice a section where you can enter a new FeedFlare URL:
In this box, paste the following URL:
http://bloggerbuster.com/author-and-permalink-blogger.xml
This is the location where the FeedFlare XML file is hosted on my server.
Finally, click on the "Add new FeedFlare" button, then you will see this has been added as an additional FeedFlare option which you can add beneath your posts.
All you need to do now is tick the box left of the "Blog Permalink" title, move the position as required and save your preferences.
Then as soon as your Feedburner feed is updated, you will be able to see this link appear beneath each entry of your syndicated feeds!
You can see this FeedFlare in action now by taking a look at the Blogger Buster feed (opens in a new page).
I hope this FeedFlare will be useful for you. Please feel free to let me know what you think about this idea (including any suggestions for improvement) by leaving your comments below.
Until recently, it was not possible to display the number of comments for a post within our Blogger feeds.
However, via Google System I've learned that Feedburner have now added a new FeedFlare which you can use to display your post comment count in your Feedburner feed.
When readers click on the comment count link from your Feedburner feed, this will lead to the comments page for this post, enabling readers to read comments and add one of their own. To activate this in your Feedburner feed, simply log in to your Feedburner account and click the link for the blog you wish to display the comment count. Next, click on the Optimize tab, and then on the "FeedFlare" link in the sidebar. On this page, you should easily spot the checkbox which says "Comments Count (Blogger)". Check the box which will display this FeedFlare in your actual blog feed (as this count should already be displayed in your blog posts). Finally, save your FeedFlare settings for this new feature to take effect (or "activate" your Feedflare is you are not already using this particular feature of Feedburner yet!). For those who are using Intense Debate as their commenting system, you can also display your comment count using the Intense Debate comments Feedflare. Simply log in to Intense Debate and click on the "Add-Ons tab in your dashboard. On this page, look to the right-hand side of the screen where you will see the Feedburner Feedflare settings, like this: Choose the blog for which you would like to display the comment count using the drop-down menu. This will then generate a unique URL in the box beneath. Copy the URL from this box to your clipboard, and enter this in your Feedburner FeedFlare page in the box which says "Enter or Paste a FeedFlare Unit URL: Then click the "Add New Flare" button. Finally, save or activate your FeedFlare settings for this new feature to take effect. In either case, the settings may not take effect immediately! It may be a few hours (or perhaps a day) before your new FeedFlare settings will become visible in your blog feed, though by the next feed count update, you should notice your comment count is visible when viewing your blog feed. Also, you must ensure that you have activated the comment feeds for your posts in the Settings>Site Feed area of your Blogger dashboard. This is enabled by default, but do check to ensure you haven;t accidentally switched off this setting! I hope this will be useful for you in adding your own comment count to your blog feeds. It's also another good reason to redirect your Blogger feeds through Feedburner if you aren't already doing so! As always, please feel free to leave your comments and opinions below.
Using Intense Debate Comments?
Be patient!
Feedburner is the most popular and fully featured free service for syndication of your blog feeds. Once you have set up your free Feedburner account, you can choose to redirect your blog feeds through Feedburner, instead of simply offering the default Atom feeds which are automatically generated for your blog.
There are many reasons why redirecting your Blogger feeds through Feedburner will be beneficial for both you and your readers, but while researching for a forthcoming post, I've come to realize how few Blogger users actually do this.
So in this post, I'll offer four important reasons why you should redirect your feeds through your Feedburner account, and also explain how easy it is to do.
feeds.feeedburner.com/YOUR-FEED-NAMEThis also means that all of your subscribers will receive a feed with the same (possibly improved) formatting.
You may be surprised how easy it is to redirect your Blogger feeds through Feedburner. Assuming you have already created your free Feedburner account, here's how to redirect your Blogger feeds:
I hope this post has helped you realize the benefits of redirecting your Blogger feeds through Feedburner. Please feel free to leave your comments (or indeed, your own incentives!) below.
AideRSS analyzes RSS/blog feeds to determine the popularity of each item according to the number of comments, Diggs, Del.icio.us bookmarks, backlinks and clickthroughs.
One of the most useful features of AideRSS for bloggers is the ability to analyze the popularity of items in your own blog feed. Consequently, you can use this data to create a widget of your highest ranking feed items - your popular posts - which can be displayed in a widget in your sidebar, which is very easy to install!
To begin analyzing the rank of items in your own blog feed, simply visit the AideRSS homepage and type your blog's RSS feed URL into the box.
If you use Feedburner to burn your Blogger feed, enter the URL of your Feedburner feed (eg: http://feeds.feedburner.com/YOUR-FEED-NAME).
If you do not redirect your feeds through Feedburner, you will need to enter your feed URL like this instead:
http://yourblog.blogspot.com/rss.xmlOn the following page, AideRSS will analyze your blog feed, then refresh to offer results of each items Postrank:
Once you've taken a look at the popularity of your most recent posts, you can go ahead to create your popular posts widget by clicking the "Sharing and Widgets" link near the top right of the screen.
This page displays a preview of what your widget would appear like on the left, and the code you can use to display this widget to the right.
To add the widget in it's default format, simply copy the code in the box, and paste this into an HTML/JavaScript widget.
If you would prefer to customize the widget, there are prompts in the JavaScript code which explain how to change the following:
If you prefer, you can even add the JavaScript code to display the results with a post, like this:
To use the JavaScript in a blog post, you must ensure that you create your post in Edit HTML mode, otherwise the JavaScript will become malformed and not display once your post is published.
There is no need to register with AideRSS to analyze your blog feeds or use the popular posts widget.
Once you have first analyzed a feed URL using this free service, you will be able to access the data anytime you like.
This popular posts feature is not the only useful aspect of AideRSS. You can also use this free service to save time by filtering your feed subscriptions to display only those which you may be interested to read. Also, Jake Luciani used AideRSS functionality to research the best time of day to publish blog posts.
You can learn more about this popular internet startup on the AideRSS about page, and get a feel of what this system is capable of by looking through the API pages.
Please let me know what you think about this widget by leaving your comments and opinions below.
Today is RSS Awareness Day: a celebration of RSS (Real Simple Syndication) when we can spread awareness of the benefits of RSS and encourage others to use this too.
RSS is a format used to deliver content in an easily distributable form from websites which are updated regularly. Most blogging systems, for example provide an RSS or Atom feed to accompany the pages of the blog.
In this post, I'll explain the basics of blog feeds with particular reference to Blogger powered feeds; how they are useful for your blog readers and how blog authors can make their feeds more useful and accessible too.
RSS and Atom essentially perform the same function: they offer updates to a blog or website in a portable format. It's like the difference between Internet Explorer and Firefox: both allow you to access the internet, though the format and style of these browsers are different.
You can read the updates of a "feed" in an RSS reader, receive updates by email, or even access them on your mobile phone!
This video offers a simple explanation of RSS though the same principles apply to Atom based feeds too:
As I mentioned earlier, Blogger powered blogs provide an Atom based feed rather than an RSS feed. This feed contains your posts, either in full or summary format. Your readers can subscribe to your blog's feed and receive updates whenever you write a new post.
In order to ensure your blog does publish an accompanying feed, you should check that you have enabled this in your Blogger dashboard.
Simply go to Settings>Site Feed in your blog's dashboard, and you will see a screen which looks like this:
Ensure you have set the site feed to "Full" or "Summary". If you select "None", your blog's feed will not be published!
If you set your blog feeds to "Full":
Your entire posts will be published in the feed, enabling subscribers to read your full posts in their feed reader.
If you set your blog feeds to "Summary":
Only a short portion of your posts will be published, and subscribers will need to visit your site in order to read the rest of your post.
There has always been a debate about whether to publish full or summarised feeds. In my experience, people prefer to subscribe to "Full" feeds than a summary, although this may mean you will have less actual visits to your site as people read in their feed readers instead.
If you offer an accompanying feed to your blog, readers do not need to revisit your site every day to check if you have updated: instead, they can simply check their feed reader, or have updates delivered by email.
In simple terms, this is like offering a magazine subscription: rather than ask your readers to travel to the newsagent each time they want to read your content, you are offering a delivery service. Convenience offers an incentive for readers to stay faithful with what you have to offer!
Here are a few ideas you could try to make your feeds more accessible for your readers (and therefore more likely to subscribe!):
Feedburner is a free service which you can use to make your blog feeds more accessible and also maintain statistics of your subscribers.
Redirecting your feeds through Feedburner is really easy. This way you can keep accurate track of how many subscribers your blog has, and ensure the format is compatible for all feed readers.
You may like to read the full article I wrote about this to get a better understanding of the benefits and what you need to do.
Many internet users are unaware of how feeds work, nor the benefits of blog subscription. To make it easier for such readers to subscribe to your site, why not offer email subscriptions?
Most internet users are familiar with email, so offering your feed in this easily accessible format is an incentive for those unfamiliar with RSS to subscribe too. You can use Feedburner to offer email subscriptions, and easily add a subscription form to your blog sidebar for readers to subscribe directly on your site!
For Blogger Buster, I have added various links to the site feeds in the navigation section, the sidebar and on the front page.
The icons beside the link text offer a visual representation of RSS feeds which are easily recognizable, and offer easy access to subscription pages.
A dedicated subscription page can offer explanations of the methods users can use to subscribe to your blog. You could also use this page to explain what your feeds are for those who may be unfamiliar with RSS and Atom feeds.
RSS Awareness Day was created by Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips in order to raise awareness of the benefits of RSS and feed subscriptions.
RSSday.org is the dedicated website for this project which explains what RSS Day is all about, and how you may get involved too.
Here are links to some of the other posts I have written about blog feeds:
I hope this post has been useful in explaining a little about your blog feeds in celebration of RSS Awareness Day!
Why not subscribe to Blogger Buster to receive fresh updates of new Blogger-related posts? :)
As always, your comments and opinions are much appreciated. If you have also written a feed-related post for RSS Awareness Day, feel free to leave a link to your post in your comments too.
This morning, Feedburner seems to be suffering a major glitch in the system. All of my blog feeds have suddenly reduced to zero, and after reading the Feedburner forums, it seems that many others are also experiencing this same problem.
EDIT: Feedburner have just added this message to the Known Issues page:
25-MAR 2008: Seeing "0" for your subscriber count right now? Don't panic! One of our stats rollup processes got a bit behind so your subscriber totals may not be tallied yet; it should wrap up soon and your numbers should be back when it's complete.It's good to know the Feedburner team are working out this issue. Hopefully anyone affected will see their stats return to normal soon enough!
Edit 2: I just logged in to my Feedburner dashboard and have found my stats are back to normal now (though my feed count widget doesn't seem to have caught up yet!). Has anyone else noticed the change?
I'm keeping an eye on Feedburner's known issues page and will update this post if I hear any news about the sudden subscriber drop.
In the meantime, if anyone else has any news about this, please let us know by leaving a comment below.
ReadersLet's face it, while Feedburner's FeedCount widget is an easy way to display your blog's feed count, it does look a little boring! Luckily there is another way for Blogger users to display their feed count, which will enable you to have almost complete control of the way this is displayed! This is the method I use to display Blogger Buster's feed count which you can see in the bottom of the sidebar.
This method is a little more complicated to install than the Feedburner widget: you will need to edit and host your own PHP files and also style the widget to your liking. But through this tutorial, I will take you through the process step by step. You'll soon be on your way to creating a unique feed count display for your own Blogger powered blog!
I've been looking for a working method of styling the subscriber count in Blogger for a long time. Wordpress users have the advantage of installing a PHP based plugin to accomplish this with ease, but as many of you will realize, such support is not available for us to use in Blogger templates.
After endless searching, I finally came across the Conflagration plugin which was written by Garret Albright. While this was essentially written for Wordpress blogs, this script has one advantage which enables it to be used in Blogger powered blogs too: the ability to call the subscriber count using JavaScript!
By stripping the contents of this plugin to two essential files, I was able to parse and display my own subscriber count as a simple textual number, then style this nicely with CSS.
The most important thing to consider before installing this hack is whether you have an external hosting account where you can upload and access PHP files. I imagine that many of you will not already have such hosting available to you, though luckily I have been able to find a few decent free file hosts which do host (and allow access to) PHP files:
All of these free hosts offer support for PHP; you will be required to register your details in order to access this free webspace and may need to wait for verification of your account before you are able to upload the required files for this hack. These free hosts do state that this free hosting is ad-supported, though this is nothing you need to worry about as it won't affect how the script displays your feed count!
Once you have access to a file host which offers support for PHP, you're ready to customize your own Subscriber Count widget.
In this section, I'll explain what is necessary to display your feed count, and afterwards will offer some examples of how you can customize this.
There are 5 main steps to creating your own Feedburner Subscriber Count widget:
Download Feed-Count-Display Files
FeedID1:1268073Replace this number with your own Feedburner ID number and save the file.
Owner permissions: read, write, executeThis means that your subscriber count can be written to the folder each day, ensuring that this value is kept up to date.
Group permissions: read, execute
Public permissions: read, execute
Once you have completed all four steps, you can check that the scripts are working and display the true value of your subscriber count.
To do this, visit the "js.php" script where it is hosted on your server, by entering the URL of this file in your address bar, like this (change the section in red to match the location of your files):
http://www.yourhost.com/yourfiles/feed-count-display/js.php
This should result in a simple page featuring the current number of subscribers to your blog which will look something like this:
document.write("123");To make this number appear in your blog, you can use a simple JavaScript in the following format:
This blog currently hasIf you add this simple JavaScript to your sidebar, for example, the result will appear something like this:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.yourhost.com/yourfiles/feed-count-display/js.php"></script>
subscribers!
This blog currently has subscribers!
At this point, you know you can display an accurate count of your subscribers as simple text. And because we can display this as text, we can use CSS to make it stylish!
Using CSS offers endless possibilities for styling your subscriber count!
Here are a couple of examples you could use, along with their corresponding code (dont't forget to change the URL of the script to that of your own host!
Blogsolid showcased some great examples of subscriber count widgets which you could take a look at if you're seeking inspiration.
The scripts used to create this widget were originally written by Garrett Albright of RayGunRobot, while the YAML parser was written by (spyc.php) was created by Chris Wansthrath and is under the MIT License.
In keeping with the licensing of Garrett's original post, the files offered here are free and open source, so you may use and distribute these as you like.
As I mentioned earlier, this is probably the most complicated (and least "user-friendly") tutorial I have posted here at Blogger Buster. I honestly wish there were a simpler method for styling the subscriber count in Blogger powered blogs, but unfortunately this is the only working solution I have found.
So if anyone knows of a simpler method which would work in Blogger please do let me know about this!
In the future, I may post a showcase of Blogger powered subscriber count widgets, so if you have designed a great widget to display your subscriber count please email me your URL or leave a comment below.
Redirecting your Blogger feeds through Feedburner is the best way to get accurate results of your subscriber count. Once you've accumulated a few subscribers, you may feel inclined to show off how many people subscribe to your blog. You've probably seen widgets in other blogs which inform you how many people currently are currently subscribing via Feedburner. But how can you go about displaying such a widget in your own blog?
There are actually two methods available to display your subscriber count in your Blogger powered blog:
In this post, I'll explain the easy method: using Feedburner's default widget to display the number of subscribers to your blog.
The Feedburner FeedCount widget will display the daily average number of subscribers to your blog. This is available to anyone who publishes their feed through Feedburner. It's free and very easy to use, and you can even change the color scheme to match that of your Blogger template!
Here's how you can display your subscriber count using Feedburner's FeedCount widget:
There are two slightly different styles of chicklets (widgets) you can choose from here: the "static" widget is simply a textual display of your current subscribers, while the "animated" widget displays a little animation of the text beside the subscriber count.
The Feedburner FeedCount widget uses a GIF graphic which features the number of subscribers to your blog.
The graphic is generated using a PHP based script which is hosted and operated by Feedburner. This operates in a similar way to many "hit counters" which display the number of visitors to your blog.
Furthermore, this widget also acts as a link to your Feedburner feed page, where visitors can easily choose to subscribe using their favorite feed reader.
Many bloggers consider the number of subscribers to a blog to be a measure of the blog's success. The more subscribers you have, the more popular your blog may seem to be (though of course, this depends on your personal opinions!).
If you are happy about the number of subscribers you have, you could use this widget as an indication of reader confidence in your blog's content. It's like saying "x-number of people like my content enough to subscribe to this blog, so maybe you could subscribe too!"
Another reason you may like to display your subscriber count is to indicate your blog's growth over time. Regular readers will notice the steady increase in subscribers to your blog, and you won't need to log into Feedburner each time you would like to check your statistics!
If you have only a small number of subscribers, displaying your feed count won't necessarily install confidence for new readers to subscribe.
I preferred not to display a feed count for Blogger Buster until I had established a decent base of subscribers, though when I did finally decide to display this, I noticed more people felt inclined to subscribe!
You've probably noticed that I use a different method to display the subscriber count for Blogger Buster (you can see this in the bottom of the sidebar and also on the home page). This method uses a combination of JavaScript, externally hosted PHP and CSS styling to parse and display my subscriber count.
Although this method is a little more complicated, it is certainly more stylish and allows you to have complete control of how your feed count is displayed! So if you're not content using Feedburner's boring widget, be sure to check back tomorrow as I'll be publishing details of how you can style your own subscriber count and display this in your blog.
Would you like to keep up to date with the latest content at Blogger Buster? There are a number of ways you can subscribe to receive news of the latest updates to the site, and the main ones used by Blogger Buster readers are the Atom and RSS feeds.
Atom and RSS are both a similar technology which was developed to help people receive automatic updates of their favorite websites.
Although there are some differences between the technology of Atom and RSS, they both do essentially the same job: they fetch updated content from your favorite sites in a format you can easily read in a feed reader.
Before Atom and RSS were invented, web users had to bookmark their favorite sites instead, and return to the bookmarked sites manually to see if anything had been updated. This creates more work for you as the reader, and means you could easily miss new content if you forget to check your bookmarks. Also, it can be complicated trying to keep track of many bookmarked sites at the same time.
Atom and RSS can do all the hard work for you!
If you subscribe to a website's feed, you are asking the website to send you new content, instead of having to fetch this yourself. It's a bit like getting a magazine subscription, but rather than being sent your magazine once a month, you will be sent new website content each time the site is updated. This could be daily, or even more regularly!
You will need a Feed Reader to be able to read Atom and RSS feeds from websites. In their native forms, Atom and RSS feeds are difficult to read and look a little like raw html code. Feed readers translate this into something which you can easily read, which looks a little like a web page which focuses on written content.
Two of the most popular feed readers you could use are Google Reader and Bloglines. Both of these services are free and very easy to use, especially as they both feature detailed help sections.
There are of course many other feed readers available which you can easily using your favorite search engine.
The easiest way to learn how to use a feed reader is to sign up for one of these services, then subscribe to a few feeds. For both of these services, you'll notice that new items will stand out from those you have read, and also that the newest content will feature at the top of the page. This makes it easier for you to know which items you have read.
There are many places to look feed subscription links, including:
On Site Subscriptions
You may have noticed feed icons on your favorite websites; these are often orange icons (which seems to have become the standard color for feed icons), or may also be counters to let you know how many subscribers a site has. On the right are some more examples you may have noticed too.
Usually these feed icons will link directly to the Atom or RSS feed for the site. You can either copy the link location for use in your RSS reader, or may be able to subscribe from the link directly.
Your feed reader's website
Most feed readers will have a search utility to help you find feeds of interest which you can then subscribe to. Google Reader for example allows you to search through literally thousands of blog and news feeds simply by searching for keywords of interest to you!
Browser subscription
Some internet browsers (eg: Firefox) have a built in function to detect and subscribe to website feeds. If your browser detects that the website you are looking at has an Atom or RSS feed available, you will usually see an orange icon to the right of the address bar, like this:
If you were to click on this icon while reading this site, you would be locating the Atom feed for Blogger Buster.
For different browsers, the feed icon in the address bar may look different, or be another color though it should still be easily distinguishable as a feed icon.
If you use your browser to subscribe to a site feed, you may wish to change the default settings so that subscriptions are added to the feed reader of your choice (eg: Google Reader or Bloglines) rather than the default reader built into the browser itself. This is generally done in the settings section of your browser, and may also be chosen when you open the link to a website's feed.
Modern feed readers are able to read both Atom and RSS feeds. RSS is the most popular feed format, but by default Blogger published Atom feeds for our blogs. So I decided to publish both the Atom and RSS feeds for Blogger Buster to provide a choice in the subscription type.
Currently most subscribers to Blogger Buster choose the Atom format, but since there really is very little difference in how these feeds function, so the choice is up to you.
If you would like to know a little more about the difference between Atom and RSS feeds, you can read this post.
Many sites offer updates by email too. Here at Blogger Buster you can easily subscribe for email updates by using the form near the top of the sidebar. All you need to do is enter your email address and click "Subscribe". A confirmation email will be sent to you to ensure you do wish to receive updates.
If ever you decide you don't want to subscribe to a feed, either using your feed reader or by email, it is very easy to unsubscribe:
If you are new to the concepts of web feeds, I hope this explanation has been useful to you, and perhaps has persuaded you to experiment with Atom and RSS for yourself. Please feel free to leave your comments and opinions below.
Technorati Tags: what+is+rss | atom | xml | feeds | blog+feeds | feed+reader | bloglines | google+reader
I recently came across a new service from Widsets which enables you to syndicate your content for people to read as a widget on their mobile phone!
Using WidSets, you can create a widget using your blog's Atom/RSS feed which can be read on a mobile phone. Readers can subscribe to your WidSets widget and receive updates on their mobile device where a regular feed reader may be unavailable. You can see an example of the subscription button for WidSets in my right sidebar.
WidSets is a free service for both subscribers and publishers, and may be very useful in generating traffic from the new wave of readers using their mobile phone to surf the web. To create your own account and begin creating widgets to syndicate your blog content, head on over to WidSets and register your account details. You will be sent a confirmation message to your mobile phone and email account, and can begin creating your WidSets widgets straight away.
Do note that the text message sent by WidSets will contain a link for you to go online with your handset to download the WidSets software, which enables you to view your widgets from your phone. You do not need to use this software in order to be able to create widgets; you only really need to verify your email address.
Please let me know your opinions of this widget using the comment form below.
Technorati Tags: widsets | widgets | feeds | atom | rss | mobile
This is the fourth and final installment of a short series of posts written to help you achieve a better understanding of your blog feeds, and how you can use them. In this post, I will explain how you can use services like FeedBurner and AddThis to syndicate your blog feeds and attract more subscribers to your blog.
Services such as Feedburner and AddThis aim to help you publicize your blog feeds, and make them more readily available for readers to subscribe to. If you use Feedburner to syndicate your feeds, for example, you can offer your readers the option to subscribe to your blog feed as a daily email digest, which for those unacquainted with feed readers may well be a pleasant and accessible option!
FeedBurner is probably the most popular feed management system to date, and is completely free to use. Many services are offered to members to help publicize and optimize your blog feeds, and attract more readers to subscribe to them.
To create your own free Feedburner account, simply go to the Feedburner registration page and provide your details. Once you have set up your account, you can begin burning your blog feeds right away!
To "burn" (or "syndicate") a blog feed, all you need to do is enter the feed URL and click "Next". On the following screen, you will be provided with a Feedburner address which you can offer to readers for subscription to this feed. This URL can be changed to suit your needs if you prefer, so long as it hasn't already been used by another member. Click "Save" and your feed will now be managed by Feedburner! However, you may want to consider using a few of the publicizing and optimization options available to you in order to let your readers know that the feed is there for subscription.
Some of the most popular tools provided by Feedburner are:
You can now choose to redirect your default blog feeds through FeedBurner! This is a great solution for ensuring your subscription statistics are kept up to date, and can offer you a better understanding of your readers. To activate this, you should already have a Feedburner account. Then, go to your Blogger dashboard and click on Settings>Feeds. On this page you will be able to redirect your default blog feeds to your Feedburner feed URL (this is the URL you created when you first burned your blog's feed). Enter this URL and click "Save". From now on your default blog feeds will be redirected through Feedburner instead.
Note: only the default Atom feeds will be redirected through Feedburner; the alternative RSS formats cannot be redirected in this way. So if you also want to have statistics for feed subscribers to your RSS feeds, you would have to burn these manually through your Feedburner account as described earlier in this post.
AddThis offer a free, non subscription feed syndication service which generates a button link readers can use to subscribe to your feeds using their favorite feed reading system (eg: MyYahoo, Bloglines, Technorati). To create your own free widget, simply visit the feed widget creation page and enter the feed URL you would like to syndicate. AddThis will then create the widget code which you can easily add to your blog's sidebar and offer to your readers as a subscription link.
You can also choose to become a member of the AddThis site, and get statistics for those who subscribe using this widget, as well as statistics for your site.
Overall, this is a very simple and easy way to help publicize your blog feeds.
By "customized" I refer to the non-default feeds, such as label feeds, summarized feeds and alternative RSS feeds. If you would like to publicize any of these feeds using the methods I described above, just enter the appropriate URL including any variables as I described in the previous two installments. Foe example, if you want to syndicate your summarized posts feed using the AddThis widget, enter this as your URL:
http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/summarySimilarly, if you want to syndicate your full comments feeds using Feedburner, enter this instead:
http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/full
The one thing I would advise against is trying to syndicate per-post comments feeds using a third party service, because it is much more efficient to provide a link to per-post comments feeds on the post referred to by the link, as outlined in this post. Trying to add Feedburner or Addthis links for such a feed could really get messy and complicated!
Technorati Tags: feeds | feedburner | feedburner101 | addthis | syndication
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