John Lamansky

Sure, I had set up basic feed redirection. I had set it so that the feed/ and feed/atom/ WordPress feed URLs would redirect to my FeedBurner feed.

But when I saw that the Best of the Web blog directory had listed my RSS feed as being http://www.johnlamansky.com/?feed=rss2, I knew I had to implement more extensive redirection.

I had heard of this “WordPress Feedburner Plugin” before, and decided to give it a try. After a little bit of trouble at first, I got it to work and - lo and behold! - the next day my Feedburner subscriber count had almost - not quite, but almost - doubled.

It just goes to show how important it is to make sure all of your feed traffic is directed to the right place.

I would highly recommend the aforementioned plugin to WordPress bloggers who are using Feedburner; and if you haven’t already, be sure to check out Feedburner’s feed redirection tips.

I recently added a new comments feed in addition to the regular blog posts feed. Now you can easily track all comments on this blog from within your feedreader. Check it out!

Looks like Microsoft will be considering Atom an “RSS format” in Windows Vista.

From the Windows Vista Developer Center RSS homepage:

Windows Vista will support all common RSS formats, including: RSS 1.0, 2.0 and Atom 0.3. We will support Atom 1.0 when it’s released.

And from the RSS Support in Longhorn article:

RSS, as we use it in this document, refers not to a single format (such as RSS 2.0), but to the general concept of feeds of syndicated content. It should be considered to cover all feed formats that meet the basic criteria of updateable [sic] collections of items.

I do see why Microsoft has chosen to define RSS this way, and at the same time I don’t.

There really isn’t a term that exclusively encapsulates both “RSS” and “Atom.” You could say the word “feed,” though that can include other formats such as OPML.

But don’t you think “feed” is more technically accurate and user-friendly than “RSS” when describing both RSS and Atom?

If you have a FeedBurner feed, you’ve got to check this out: FeedBurner has released a feed-to-email subscription service.

For bloggers and podcasters, a feed-to-email subscription service means you can expand your “push-delivery audience” to readers and listeners who aren’t familiar with RSS feeds.

For readers and listeners, an email subscription service such as FeedBurner Email means that you can sign up to receive emails every day that let you know about new blog posts or podcast episodes. (Of course, if there’s nothing new for a given day, you won’t get an email.) For many people, email subscription services remove the need to remember to visit a blog or podcast site for updates.

My take on FeedBurner Email? In short: it’s awesome.

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