Many thanks to Tim, at cofebuz.com for emailing to let us know our RSS feed didn’t work. This prompted me to delve further into Feedburner and take care of some details I’d been pushing off, as well as update my Feedburner account for the Google switch, which will take place in Feb 2009.  An RSS feed is an important part of your blog, as it allows people to stay connected when you publish new information.

I’m new to Feedburner, and so I wanted to write an easy-to-follow ‘how to’ for those out there who are also new to using FB.

Setting up a Feedburner account is simple and free, and now FB has teamed up with Google, so if you already have an existing Google account (for AdSense, AdWords, Analytics, etc), then you’ll use the same login.

1. Go to Feedburner and click “Get Started” in the middle of the page. This will redirect you to Google where you can either log in with an existing Google account, or create a new account.

2. After logging in you’ll be sent back to the Feedburner site where you’ll find a page with an empty text field box that says, “Burn a feed right this instant”.   Enter your website’s or blog’s feed address. This will be http://www.yourdomain.com/feed or if your blog is in a subfolder (like ours is), then http://www.yourdomain.com/subfolder/feed.  For example, because CCBbuzz is hosted on our server for Cape Cod Branding and our blog is in a folder called ‘blog’, the url for our blog is capecodbranding.com/blog. Therefore, our feed is located at http://capecodbranding.com/blog/feed.   Notice, our url doesn’t contain ‘www’. I have it set this way for a reason (a topic for a future article, 301 Redirect). Just check your url to see if you use the w’s or not. Once you’ve entered your url into the box and submitted it, a Feedburner link will be generated for you. You’ll be given the option to customize the last portion of the url. I recommend using your blog title. I chose “ccbbuzz”, therefor my new feed link is http://feeds2.feedburner.com/ccbbuzz.

3. If you are using blogging software (like WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, etc), you may be able to find a plugin, or application that will be as easy as copy-and-pasting your new Feedburner feed link in, and you’ll be done. I use WordPress.org (as of this writing, version 2.7) and I know there are more than a few plugins and widgets that will display your RSS feed link on your blog for you just by plugging in your new link.

Another option is to go to the “Publicize” tab on the Feedburner website, and choose “Chicklet Chooser” on the left-side navigation bar. This page will let you choose from many preset images to display next to your RSS link. All you do is select which image you want, then copy the code that is generated at the bottom of the screen. Then paste this code into an empty ‘text’ widget for the sidebar of your blog.

Many of you will be done at this point, however I took it one step further and created a custom image for mine, and entered the code into an empty ‘text’ widget in my side bar.  If you have hosting, and know how to upload via FTP then keep reading.

4. Find, or create the RSS icon image you want to use next to your link. This may be a simple, recognizable orange RSS image, or it may be something totally unique to your blog.  Once you’ve got it just right, upload it to your site. Example, I’m using an image I called rssicon.png. I saved it in “capecodbranding > blog > images”, then I went into Dreamweaver (my FTP of choice) and uploaded it to the internet. Now if you go to http://capecodbranding.com/blog/images/rssicon.png you’ll see just the icon I use for my Feedburner link on my blog.

5. Next you’ll need to enter the code for your new image, and your Feedburner feed link into a blank ‘text’ widget on your blog’s sidebar.
Here is the code I used…

<center><a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/ccbbuzz” title=”Subscribe to my feed” rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml”><img src=”http://capecodbranding.com/blog/images/rssicon.png” alt=”" style=”border:0″/></a> <a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/ccbbuzz” title=”Subscribe via RSS” rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml”>SUBSCRIBE VIA RSS</a></center>

Okay, let’s break it down,

<center><a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/yourname” title=”Subscribe to my feed” rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml”><img src=”http://yourdomain.com/yourimage.jpg” alt=”" style=”border:0″/></a> <a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/yourname” title=”Subscribe via RSS” rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml”>SUBSCRIBE VIA RSS</a></center>

-Replace the Feedburner links, in bold, with your own (this is the link generated for you by Feedburner).
-Replace the image link, in green, with your own (this is the link to the image you just created and uploaded)
-Add your own wording. The section that says “Subscribe to my feed” in red, is what shows when someone hovers over your image with their mouse.   The section that says “SUBSCRIBE VIA RSS” in yellow, are the words that your reader can see.  The section that says “Subscribe via RSS” in blue, is what shows when someone hovers over the words for your feed with their mouse.

I entered the <center> tags so the link shows up centered on my sidebar. If you don’t want this, then delete both the <center> at the start of the code, and the </center> at the end of the code.

Here is the end result.

That’s it! Now go back to Feedburner and play around with all the cool options they offer for your feed. Enjoy!

-Amy Stevens Adams of Cape Cod Branding