Feedburner is very popular free service of Google that can take your RSS feeds to the next level. Besides handling basic RSS tasks, it can provide RSS subscriptions by email, statistics on your feeds, chiclets showing your feed numbers, and a number of other services.

Setting up a Feedburner account is not hard to do and takes only minutes. But it can be confusing since some of the things you need are buried in the control panel. It’s also easy to miss important bits of information you should save as you are setting up your account.

The only prerequisite to setting up a Feedburner account is that you have an account with Google.

In addition to an RSS feed using an RSS reader, I recommend offering RSS by email subscription. Many people do not know what an RSS reader is, and if they do, choose not to use one. A significant number of your visitors will prefer getting your site updates by email. Providing RSS subscription by email to these people expands the number of people subscribing to your site. The emails that subscribers receive are formatted very attractively and look quite professional.

This article shows you both how to set up a basic RSS account with Feedburner, as well as the optional RSS email subscription.

Setting up the basic Feedburner account

Setting up your Feedburner account is accomplished in 5 easy steps. Each one is very easy — the whole process should take less than 5 minutes!

Step 1: Go to the Feedburner site

Enter the Feedburner url in your browser:

http://www.feedburner.com/

Step 2: Enter your Google account information or create a Google account

If you already have a Google account, just enter your account name and password. If not, you must create a Google account before signing up with Feedburner. Figure 1 shows where you sign in and the button to click to create an account.

Step 3: Enter the URL of the site to have a new Feedburner account

After signing in, you will be taken to the “My Feeds” screen. At the bottom is a field identified with “Burn a feed right this instant,” shown in Figure 2. Enter the URL of the site to have the new feed.

Step 4: Review or change the name of the feed

The next screen is entitled “Welcome!” In the lower part of the screen, illustrated in Figure 3, you can change the title of the feed as it will be shown in your feed list. Also, you can change the feed’s URL if you wish.

Copy the feed’s URL and paste it somewhere. You will need this URL for entering into the Thesis feed address on the Thesis Options page.

If you forget to do this, you can get it later (see below). Note that you will have to copy it in two sections, the Feedburner part and your feed address part. When assembled, the feed URL will look something like the following.:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ThesisThemeToolsDemo

Step 5: Choose the statistics you want

The next screen is titled “Congrats” and it doesn’t do anything but give you some information. Click the “next” button to go to the “Get More Gusto…” screen, part of which is shown in Figure 4.

Here you can choose to have Feedburner provide statistics on your feed. Selecting or not selecting additional statistics will not effect your RSS feed at all. I usually choose the “Clickthrough” and “I want More” statistics. Choose the one in the center if you do podcasts. You can review your statistics on the Feedburner control panel, shown in the next section.

That’s it!

The Feedburner control panel will be the next thing you see — and it means you are finished! Your feed is set up.

The control panel has a number of tabs across the top as shown in Figure 5, and choices in the left sidebar. What each tab does is beyond the reach of this article. But it pays to poke around a little bit. From the control panel you can view your statistics, get Feedburner chiclets, and do a host of other things.

If you didn’t copy your site’s feed URL in step 4, select “Edit Feed Details” right under your feed’s title. The feed URL you need is at the bottom of the panel shown in Figure 6, labeled “Feed Address.” Be sure to copy both parts, the Feedburner part and your site’s part. Refer to Step 4 to see a complete feed URL.

Setting up a Feedburner email subscription (optional)

RSS email subscriptions are buried in the tabs in an unlikely place. It only takes 2 steps to set it up, but you have to know where to find it!

Step 1: Activate RSS subscription by email

Click on the “Publicize” tab to be taken to its panel, shown in Figure 7. Look in the left column and click on “Email Subscriptions.”

The next panel is entitled “Email Subscriptions.” Click on the “activate” button to start your RSS email subscriptions.

Step 2: Get the RSS email form or link code

The next panel you see has two sets of code for you to use on your site: form code and link code.

If you want to put a form into a sidebar widget or in another location, copy the code under the “Subscription Form Code” part of the panel, illustrated in Figure 8. To use the code in a widget, just set up a text widget and paste the form code into it — it’s that simple. The pulldown for a widget doesn’t have WordPress as a choice, so it’s useless to you.

The next group of code, as shown in Figure 9, is for text links. This is used when you want to put your RSS email URL in a post or page, or when you are linking it to a button in code. Copy the code in the box if you will be using it in this way. It will look like this:

<a href="http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=ThesisThemeToolsDemo&amp;loc=en_US">Subscribe to Thesis Theme Tools Demo by Email</a>

You’re done!

RSS subscription by email is a set-it-and-forget-it type of thing. Your email subscriptions will be counted in the total number of subscriptions your site has.

Conclusion

I hope this short article has been helpful to you, and that you consider using Feedburner for handling your feeds. As always, your comments are welcome. If you want to email me directly, just click on the “Contact” tab in the menu.

©2010 Michael L Nichols. All rights reserved.

Tags: