I’ve switched this blogs’s feed over to FeedBurner to get a better idea of what they’re all about. If you’re viewing this in an RSS reader, can you do me a favor and update it to use http://feeds.feedburner.com/NickBradbury as the URL for this feed? In FeedDemon, this is done by right-clicking on the feed in the channel bar, then selecting “Properties” and entering the new address.
Update: Several people have asked me whether FeedDemon automatically handles redirects – it does. However, my blog is hosted by TypePad, which like other hosted blog services doesn’t provide a way to redirect your feed to a new location.
You know, you could probably do a redirect of http://nick.typepad.com/blog/.rss to the your FeedBurner page. Then users would never know or have to change. :)
Yes, I know about redirects, but unless I overlooked something, TypePad doesn’t support them – which is why I had to publicize the fact that I’m testing with a new feed URL.
Ah, ok. I forgot you were using typepad and not your own web hosting.
Novice question: what’s the benefit of feedburner over the self-served feed, if any? I seem to see a number of sites using that service instead of their own, but to the end user (or at least to me) it doesn’t seem to make a difference.
To the end user, there really isn’t a difference other than the fact that clicking on a feed displays something informative rather than showing XML gibberish. The real benefit is to the feed author, in that FeedBurner provides stats on which RSS readers are using the service, what the click-through rate of each item is, etc.
But before I sound like I’m singing their praises, please understand that’s simply what they claim to provide – until I’ve used the service for a while, I can’t vouch for them.
Nick Gets Locked In
Nick Bradbury experiments with getting “locked-in” with FeedBurner. Be careful, Nick.
Even if TypePad doesn’t support redirects, Apache should. Even if you do that, though, there’s a chance that certain feed readers won’t follow the redirect. You pr…
Is this something I need to change manually in FD?
I thought at one time you said FD follows and updates feed URLs if they change.