Using Feedburner to add statistics to your RSS feed

Author: Allan Burns

Out of many of the free RSS and blogging services that I have tried one of
the most useful has been Feedburner. Feedburner allows you to publish your
RSS feed and provides circulation statistics about your RSS feed. It also
allows you to make your feed more friendly by using Feedburners Smartfeed
system and can also make your feed browser friendly.

The most useful service provided by Feedburner are it's circulation
statistics. These statistics are not only useful for yourself to see how
popular your feed is but also to provide circulation statistics to potential
advertisers. Feedburner can tell you which RSS readers are being used to
read your feed, how many readers you have and which posts readers are
clicking through back to your website.

Feedburners Smartfeed system can supply the most valid feed by detecting
which
RSS reader the user is using. This irons out any potential compatibility
problems there may be between your feed and the readers feed reading
software. If your visitor click on your RSS feed subscription link
Feedburner will provide your visitor with a web friendly version of the feed
rather than an unformatted XML file. This is great for educating the reader
about RSS feeds.

To use Feedburners services first you need to go to Feedburner and enter
your feed link. Your feed link is the address you give your readers to add
your feed to their feed readers. Take a look at my RSS sign up page at
Newsniche to get a better idea of how this works.

Once you have your feed address enter it into text box on the Feedburner
page. Clicking on ok will bring up a page with all of the options for your
feed, you will need to decide for yourself which services you need. At the
bottom of the page will be your new feed address which you will now offer to
your readers instead of your original feed address. Follow the rest of the
instructions to complete the process and then you will have an improved feed
with statistics.

There is one final point before we finish and it is something optional you
may wish to choose. You may wish to keep your existing feed address if you
have existing subscribers and to future proof your feed. To do this you will
need to use an HTTP redirect in your htaccess file. If this means nothing to
you I would suggest further research before doing this.

You will need to add a new line to your htaccess file.

redirect temp /rssfeed.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/feedburnerFeed

You will need to change /rssfeed.xml to the name of your current feed and
the Feedburner path to the new feed address you will be given by Feedburner.
You will need to point Feedburner to a copy of your feed that only
Feedburner will see. You will then offer the /rssfeed.xml feed address you
created in your htaccess file to you visitors to subscribe to your feed.

This is how it should work. Feedburner will periodically check your address
you gave to Feedburner for new posts. Your visitors will subscribe using the
address you used in your htaccess file and get redirected to the feed that
Feedburner has created for you. This will mean that in the future if you
wish to stop using the Feedburner service all you need to do is remove the
line from your htaccess file and your readers will not notice any
difference.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Allan is the webmaster at Newsniche, an RSS resource for webmasters.

RSS Feed Display - The Input Side of RSS Feeds

Author: default@goarticles.com (Richard Keir)

Copyright 2006 Richard Keir

The ongoing buzz about RSS feeds seems to still be almost matched by ongoing
confusion. After a couple years of working with both sides of the RSS
equation, site feeds and RSS feed display, I've come to think of the
differences in a fairly simple way that may get rid of some of the
confusion.

Try thinking about RSS in terms of Input and Output. Visualize your site as
the center point. On the one hand you have what comes to your site and does
something there. This is the Input to your site. On the other hand, you have
what leaves your site, and that's your site Output.

Here's two quick examples. Your incoming links from other sites are Input
for your site. The links you have on your site that go to other sites are
Output. Your visitors are Input. Hopefully the visitor Output involves
something good for you like going to an order processor.

RSS Feeds Display is the input side of RSS from the point of view of your
site. Essentially you are bringing in RSS feeds and displaying items from
those as content on your site. That's the RSS feed as content Input.

An on-site RSS feed, containing items from your site intended to be used
off-site would be the RSS Output side. That, however, will have to wait for
a later article.

Since everybody has their pet interpretation of what RSS means, I'm going to
ignore that. But to see more clearly what a feed is and how it works, let's
take a brief look at just what's in one.

Just so you know, a variety of feed formats and coding structures exist, but
let's skip that too. Just like a web page has the underlying html (or an
equivalent code type) that tells the browser what to do and how to display
the page, the code used in RSS feeds defines the different pieces of content
and tells a feed reader or another program what each thing is and therefore
how or where it can be used in an output display (or ignored).

Every RSS feed has a header section that provides information about the
feed. Some have a lot, others fairly little, but normally at least the name
of the feed (the feed title), a link to the site providing the feed, a
description of the overall feed content, the language used, a copyright
statement, and a date time stamp of the last time the feed was built are
included.

Then the individual feed items begin. The minimal content is the item title,
the link to the item, a description and the date published. Other items such
as a guid (an identifier which can allow feed readers to ignore previously
read items), category entries (which are similar to and used like technorati
tags to categorize the feed item) and a variety of other elements depending
on the feed source and purpose can be included. In almost all cases, for
display, all we'd be interested in are the title, link and description.

The descriptions in the items can be short segments of text or the full
content of a page, article, news item, blog entry, etc. Pictures can be
included and some descriptions are even loaded with html code to control how
the item is displayed (this seems to be more common with descriptions
containing images). And, of course, some feeds contain ads of various kinds.
However, ads are not usually embedded in the item description so this is not
normally a concern for displaying on your site (but, remember to always
check the items displaying on your page to make sure you want to keep
displaying items from any particular feed).

Each item in the feed has the same structure. The uniformity is what allows
feed readers and scripts to consistently handle RSS feed displays.

There are several ways to display feeds, usually php or other server side
scripts or javascripts. RSS feed items displayed via javascript are
generally not a good choice if you want the search engine bots to be able to
read the content. Other scripts will output the content as part of the page
(usually updating each time the page is reloaded) or create static html
pages. These latter kinds of feed item displays can be as easily read by
bots as any html content.

You can find a variety of free and paid options for displaying RSS feeds. If
you are a tech type and enjoy working with scripts some of the free options
may be a great choice. While they can do an excellent job, they tend to be
slightly to seriously complex and, in my view, somewhat feature deficient.
Of course, the more complex they are, the more features they tend to have.
Paid options also vary significantly and I'd encourage you to check out them
thoroughly. Be clear about what you want to do and make sure any paid script
solution will do what you want in a way that works for you.

Using RSS for content (the Input side of RSS feeds) can be a valuable
addition to your site from an SEO perspective and provide your visitors with
useful information - particularly if you choose feeds tightly related to
your site theme and mix the feed content to provide your own unique
combination of related news. However, note that word "addition". These days
using a feed or feeds for a significant part (or all) of your site content
is unlikely to gain you much favor with the search engines and may get you
dropped from the index faster than you got added.

The point is that smart, moderate use of feeds still gives you the twin
advantages of regularly updating content for bots on otherwise static pages
and more themed information for your visitors. And that's what the RSS Feeds
display deal is all about.

About the Author
Richard is a writer and a programmer/developer with several products in the
field of RSS feeds. On the input side for displaying RSS Feeds on your site
see http://RSS-Wrapper.com and for additional articles and content on RSS
feeds visit http://GeekWerkz.org

RSS Feeds: Useing RSS Feeds For Search Engine Spider Food Part 2

Author: default@goarticles.com (Terry Brazil)

This is part two of a two part series. In this part you will learn how to
put RSS feeds on your site with rss2html so that they will get spidered by
the search engines. Using this method can turn other people RSS feeds into
constantly changing content for your site. If you would like to see this
article in it's entirety please visit the link in the authors bio.

Adding RSS Feeds To Your Web Page Using RSS2HTML

RSS2HTML is a script that easily runs from your web host. It is a single php
file that will show the RSS feed in html. This allows search engine spiders
to gobble up your RSS feed content. This makes the spider think that your
web page is updated every time that the RSS feed changes. In the long run
this will help your page ranking as well as your search engine ranking.
There are many people that have used just RSS feeds to achieve a position
above the fold on all the major search engines.

The first thing we need to do is get your hands on RSS2HTML. To do this
simply go to RSS2HTML dot com and you will be given a few options. RSS2HTML
also offers a service that will show your RSS feed information on a xml page
hosted by them. We don't really want to bother with this since it is not
very flexible. Instead go with option 2 which is download free RSS2HTML
script. Simply go ahead and save the .rar file to your computer and extract
it with winrar.

You should now have three files (rss2html.php, rss2html-docs, and
sample-template). The first one is the actual php file that we will be
referencing on our web page. The second is the documentation for rss2html.
Read this for a further description on rss2html and how to make your own
templates. The third file is the template. This file controls how your feeds
are shown on your page. There are more templates available for RSS2HTML that
will allow you to put pictures, audio, or videos next to your RSS feed
information.

There are two ways to use RSS2HTML. To use RSS2HTML in it's simplest form we
will simply add a link on our page that will load up the code as a stand
alone page. First you will have to upload rss2html.php and the
sample-template.html file onto your sites root directory. This should be the
same place your homepages index file is.

Once this is done go ahead and make a link using relevant keywords that
directs to the following page after you alter it.

http:///rss2html.php?XMLFILE=&TEMPLATE=&MAXITEMS=

We will now have to go ahead and edit a few parts of this link. First off
make the part that says into your actual domain name including the www. and
the .com. Second edit the part that says and make it the url to the RSS feed
you want to publish. Last go ahead and change to sample-template.html or
whatever template you want to use. If you want you can also change the
max-items to the number of RSS feed entries you want to display. When
editing make sure you replace the whole section including the < and >.

Now go ahead and make that link we where talking about and make it point to
the url we just made. Go ahead and upload your page again and it should now
have a link that directs you to a new page that contains your RSS feeds
entries. Now when you click on the link we made it will bring up a page that
contains said RSS feed as its contents. This page is able to get spidered by
the search engines but you would probably want something that you can imbed
into an existing page.

Now lets talk about using rss2html so that it will make just a php file that
can be included on any of your web pages. Like the last method we want to
upload both of the files we did before. But before you do we have to edit
the .php file.

The first thing we want to do is rename rss2html.php to a more suitable
name. In this example we will say that we are putting this on a billiards
site. So I would rename it to something like billiardsrss.php or something
else easy to remember. Now go and open the file in notepad or word pad. You
should now see a bunch of code that probably means nothing to you. No
problem there are only a few places you need to find.

Now with the file opened go ahead and look for a spot near the beginning
that says this $XMLfilename = "sample.xml"; . Go ahead and change the
sample.xml to the url of your RSS feed. Next go and find the section that
looks like this $TEMPLATEfilename = "BasicWebpage.htm"; or $TEMPLATEfilename
= ""; . In these quotes we want to put our template file. So change
BasicWebpage.htm to our sample-template.html that was included in the
download. Finally we can edit the maximum entries we want shown by finding
$FeedMaxItems = 10000; and changing the 10000 to whatever amount you want to
show. The first two changes will be right at the top of the file and the
last is about one quarter the way down.

Note: Some RSS feed url's will use special characters. This may throw off
rss2html so you will need to use some special characters in their place.
Please refer to the rss2html documentation if you need more help with this.

Now next we will want to add include the php file on your web page. To do
this your web page must end in .php. You should be able to change your .html
or .htm page to a .php with absolutely no problems. Now go and find the spot
you want your feed to show. All we will have to do here is put the following
code where we want the RSS feed to show.

This piece of code is no different than the rest that we have used so far.
First off change the your domain to your domains actual name. Then go and
change yourphpfile.php to what you have named your php file to. Now go ahead
and upload your file once you have pasted in your personalized code in it.

Now when you go to the page we just uploaded you should see your RSS feed
information in the section you posted your php include in. You may want to
go and put your php include code in a cell to make it look a little cleaner
and separate it make it stand out from the rest of the page.

Now that you are armed with all the information you should need to start
publishing RSS feeds on your web page. So go out there and start filling
your web page with RSS feeds that will keep them search engine spiders
feeding everyday.

About the Author
This complete RSS Feed article is posted on Guru Of Info.

What are RSS Feeds and Why You Need an RSS Reader

What are RSS Feeds and Why You Need an RSS Reader
Author: An Article by Herman Drost

An RSS feed is created in a non-HTML format called XML. RSS readers or
aggregators can interpret and display that coding, but Web browsers can't.
Soon, RSS/XML readers will be part of every browser and e-mail software. But
for now, you need a separate reader.

You use an RSS reader to bring new, constantly updated material to you, from
all your favorite sites. There is no need to check whether a site has
updated.

RSS feeds bring automatically updated information straight to your desktop.
You can monitor news, job listings, personals, and classifieds. Thousands of
sites now offer feeds, which you can identify by a small orange button that
says either RSS or XML. However, if you click one of these links, you will
most likely get a page full of code in your browser. To properly read the
feed, you need an RSS reader.

Content published in an RSS feed is typically set up to send out
notifications whenever new material is available. This makes the new content
immediately available to feed readers and RSS search engines. Contrast this
with ordinary web pages, which are essentially passive and generally aren't
accessible to most of us until search engine crawlers find and index them.
Once indexed, these pages stand relatively little chance of being read by
web searchers on a frequent basis.

Instead of opening your Web browser when you sit down at the computer, you
open your news feed reader, usually a 2- or 3 paned window that allows you
to see at a glance which sites have added content, and to scan clickable
headlines and summaries of that content. Imagine looking at update info on
10-20 sites at a single glance, and never waiting for a single page to load!

RSS Tools You Need

Here is a collection of some of the most popular newsreaders for reading
article feeds, news etc

Newsreaders | Aggregators

Win users

1. RssReader (http://www.rssreader.com). It's free!
2. BlogExpress
(http://www.usablelabs.com/productBlogExpress.html)
3. If you want to try several before deciding
(http://www.2rss.com/readers.php)

The most important point about RSS newsreaders is that they should be fast
and simple to download, install, and start adding feeds. If it's not, find
one that does.

Mac users

4.NetNewsWire has a free trial and is the best of
a smaller selection.(http://ranchero.com/netnewswire)

5. My Yahoo (http://my.yahoo.com)

6. MSN (http://my.msn.com)

How to Get Started With RSS

Simply right-click on the orange RSS button (control-click for Mac users)
for each feed that interests you. Select Copy Shortcut ("Copy Link to
Clipboard" for Mac; "Copy Link Location" if you use Firefox browser) then
paste that URL into your RSS Reader.

And that's it! You're subscribed.

(If you prefer, click on the My Yahoo! or My MSN buttons to add each feed to
"Your" Yahoo! or MSN.)

Now you have the ability to quickly scan the sites that interest you without
being bombarded by unwanted email messages.

Read Part 3 of this article:

How to Create an RSS Feed for Your Web Site

About the Author
Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner and author of
Maryland Web Design, Hosting, Marketing Subscribe to his "Marketing Tips"
newsletter for more original in-depth articles at:
http://www.isitebuild.com/articles