Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

FeedBurner





Pro version of FeedBurner offers a variety of stats related to your RSS feed.



Click to Enlarge

You begin by visiting the FeedBurner Web site, entering your blog URL, and selecting the services you want. You can go with a basic (free) statistical package or upgrade to the Pro package with enhanced tools, which costs $4.95 per month for up to three blogs. It's easy to get started — if you run into trouble along the way, each service choice in the configuration process includes help text, which you access by clicking a Show Details link. To select an item, you simply click a check box. You can go back later and add or remove services in the same way.

After you complete the initial configuration, FeedBurner redirects your blog's URL through a FeedBurner URL, a process that is automatic unless you are TypePad user, in which case you must manually change all references to the FeedBurner URL — no small matter for many users.

FeedBurner also provides publicizing features such as an RSS subscription button for your blog, which routes subscribers through the FeedBurner address. To include this button, you need to manually alter your blog template by pasting a code snippet provided by FeedBurner in the correct spot in the template, a tricky procedure that non-technical users will likely find intimidating. I was able place it satisfactorily after a couple of tries, but I was not as successful when adding the FeedBurner hit counter button to the template. No matter where I placed the code, the button always ended up floating in an awkward spot.

Once the service is set up, you can review your traffic statistics in easy-to-read charts, graphs, and tables. The free service supplies stats on feed circulation, subscribers to the Pro service adds tracking details for each published item, and information on where your feed is being resyndicated (featured on another site).

  • 1