Update: We no longer recommend using FeedBurner because it’s a dying product full of bugs. Please read this article to see why you shouldn’t use FeedBurner and find out about the alternatives.
Every major blog is using FeedBurner to burn their RSS feeds because it is a free feature rich system that you cannot turn down. FeedBurner provides statistics, feed optimization option, feed publication option and much more. Integrating FeedBurner and Google Analytics is a must for every WordPress blog. In this article, we will show you how you can setup your WordPress blog feeds with FeedBurner and use it to help take your blog to the next level.
Why FeedBurner is Important for Bloggers?
FeedBurner is a free service that is loaded with options that you do not get with the default WordPress feed. Some of the features include:
- Statistics about your RSS Subscribers so you can analyze and optimize your blog posts.
- Give your users multiple options to subscribe such as Email, and other feed-readers (Netvibes, Google etc).
- Social Proof (Subscriber count)
- Option to customize your feeds such as modify post headings, branding and more.
- Option to ping various feed-reading services once you publish your posts.
- Integrate Google Adsense to monetize your RSS feeds.
- And more…
Just with the short list of features, you can see that it is a must have for all blogs. Now we can move onto setting up the FeedBurner Account.
Setting up Your FeedBurner for WordPress feeds
First you will need to have a Google account (any gmail account will work). Visit the feedburner service page to begin this process.
In the first step, you will type the link to your WordPress Blog Feed. If you have SEO Friendly WordPress URL Structure, then your feed link should be like yourdomain.com/feed/
In step 2, you will choose the title of your Feed and the address of your feed. It is advised to keep the title of your feed the same as your blog. It is best to keep your feed address short and memorable.
Technically your feeds are created, so you don’t need to follow the steps any more. Click on the Skip directly to Feed Management.
You will see a page with a link to tons of blogging platforms. Ignore all that as we will revisit them later in this article. Just cilck on the optimize tab that you see in the image below.
In step 5, we will work on optimizing your WordPress Blog Feed. You need to make sure that you haev Browser Friendly option activated, Smart Feed activated, and FeedFlare activated. You can activate other services if you want, but these 3 services are a must have. BrowserFriendly makes subscribing much simpler. SmartFeed ensures maximum compatibility with all feed reader applications. FeedFlare builds interactivity into posts by adding email this and other sharing options.
In step 6, we will take a look at all the publicize options for the feed. You need to allow Email Subscriptions on your site because there are users who prefer to get email updates rather than using Google reader. Pingshot must be activated because it notifies services when you post. Feedcount widget lets you show off your subscriber count. It is one of the best social proof methods. Awareness API comes handy if you are trying to list yourself on sites like BuySellAds because they can extract your subscriber count easily. There other snazzy options like Headline Animator, BuzzBoost that you can activate if you like.
Monetizing your feed is another good features of FeedBurner except it only allows you to use Google Adsense. So sign up with Google Adsense and follow their direction.
Once you have done all the above steps, you can click on the Analyze tab. Most likely you will see a screen like the one below because the stats are not recorded. Give it up to 24 hours and you will start seeing numbers there. Use the subscriber count, clicks and other useful data to improve your blog. See what your users like and don’t like with this stas, and then focus on the type of posts that your users like and enjoy.
Integrate FeedBurner into WordPress
Even though you have setup your feed with FeedBurner in the steps above, but you have not yet really integrated it with WordPress yet. First thing you want to do is stop diluting your feed and make it one. You need to create a redirect, so when users try to visit yourdomain.com/feed/ they are redirected to your feedburner feed page. This way you can keep track of the subscribers on your blog.
There is a plugin called FD FeedBurner which lets you create this redirect easily. You can also redirect your feeds using .htaccess file, but we will not be sharing that method because it is not something we recommend for beginners.
Most WordPress Themes are now coming with FeedBurner integration such as Headway Theme, Standard Theme, and others. If your theme is not compatible, then use the plugin above.
Add the Email Subscribe Box on your site
First visit Publicize » Email Subscriptions then copy and paste the code they give you in the template file that you like (mostly sidebar.php). Remember to customize the look of your email form, you would need to have prior knowledge of HTML and CSS.
If your blog does not have FeedBurner feeds, then get it right now.
InfoDari
Hi… thanks for this nice tutor. How long it takes feedburner send a new post url on twitter?
yourwebchick
Loved this post.. went through the whole thing super fast with your fantastic instructions.. then went to my blog to set it up in the side bar.. it asks for my code which was tricky to find but finally did BUT it says it’s not set up to do email subscriptions …. and I clicked that button in the setup? Any ideas what might be going wrong? it’s http://DenverBucketList.com
wpbeginner
@yourwebchick You need to make sure that you actually activate the email subscription.
yourwebchick
It suddenly seems to be working so either I was putting the wrong code in or it just needed a little more time.. I have a tendency to rush things! Have you played with the Beta interface yet?
yourwebchick
I had no idea by the way that I could have my feed tweet out with #Hashtags… That ROCKS my world… Thank you again for this fantastic Tutorial!! @JustAskChrissy recommended!
jakechec
hello, just curious i want to burn this feed into FB,
http://jakechec.com/?cat=1
when i do, only the last 7 episodes show up, why??
http://feeds.feedburner.com/jakechec/test4
BrandenWilliams
Looks like a strange Feedburner mess has started for those of us that use a permanent SSL redirect. Do you know a way to create a file that just dumps the feed content without a rewrite redirect such that I can keep that part non-SSL?
rajkanuri
How to remove captcha from email subscription box in feedburner…??
wpbeginner
@yashmistrey We are seeing it just fine.. It is listed under circulation.. FeedBurner has glitches sometimes.
yashmistrey
hi i activate the Awareness API but count not showing !
300 subscriber not display
<entry date=”2011-09-12″ circulation=”0″ hits=”0″ reach=”0″/>
see : http://goo.gl/iKDui
wpbeginner
@RafaelTrabasso Because this post was written under Beginners Guide, we tried to avoid any code snippets. We have covered what you are looking for in this article:https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/25-extremely-useful-tricks-for-the-wordpress-functions-file/ Tip #21 lets you redirect your normal feeds to Feedburner feed.
RafaelTrabasso
@wpbeginner you missed my point – as a theme designer i was looking for a way to redirect the feeds to feedburner WITHOUT a plugin so this would not be a potential problem with future customers.
so the long title for this article would be “learn how to set up a feedburner account then learn how to install a plugin to redirect your feeds to feedburner”.
wpbeginner
@RafaelTrabasso Actually that is pretty great. WordPress makes everything SIMPLE… We showed you exactly how to setup your feed with feedburner. Then all you have to do is redirect your main WordPress feed to feedburner just in case if someone types in: yourblog.com/feed/ they go to the feedburner feed, so you get full stats.
RafaelTrabasso
well so the tutorial for integrating Feedburner with Wordpress, excluding the part of setting up the Feed, is: use a plugin.
(not) great.
prsbest27
I just want to say thanks.. This has help me setup my feedburner feed. I really appreciate your great knowledge in Wordpress and many other things. If I have a question, now I know where I have to come to find the answer. Super Excellent guidance!!!
sherwinraavi
Another excellent tutorial! Worked perfectly. I’m actually building a business from stuff I’m learning here. Please don’t make me become a premium member =)
wpbeginner
@impukax You would need to edit your functions.php file. Please search our site and you will find the article on that.
impukax
@wpbeginner @impukax Thank you, i got it worked now! Is there a solution to display thumbnail with this method?
SmarMendem
it’s really power full tutorian and really helped me!!
i’m newbie and nice to met you!!
wpbeginner
@impukax Go to Settings > Reading in your WordPress blog and select Summary instead of Full post to show in feeds.
DTL8791
I want my full posts to show in the feed reader, and just modified the Settings > Reading to do that. Will that change affect previous posts or just new posts?
wpbeginner
@DTL8791 it will change all posts
impukax
Is there anyway to customize the feed for just post the title and exceprt only? currently in my feedburner it’s showing full post and there was no excerpt.
coolcash4live
This is awesome youngprepro coolcash4live
tla
Can’t get feedburner to work. Able to subscribe for email notice, but when send out new post, I don’t get any notice. I find this message in site admin. of my blog: RSS Error: A feed could not be found at http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?hl=en&scoring=d&ie=utf-8&num=10&output=rss&partner=wordpress&q=link:http://jadesauce.com/blog/
What’s wrong?
Should I install FeedburnerFeedSmith or John Watson FD Feedburner for a Wordpress blog 3.1 version hosted by ipower? Not sure which one I should use.
Nick
Perhaps I am looking for something that does not exist, and I’m trying to either confirm or access what I am trying to do through here…so any help would be really beneficial. I have a self supported wordpress on my own FTP server where my website is. I also have a twitter feed, facebook fan page, and a linkin account. I want to streamline my feeds completely through Hootsuite (and my clients SMO), but Hootsuite doesn’t interact with self supported Wordpress blogs……only wordpress hosted blogs. Although, Hootsuite will allow me to submit a RSS feed that can check for new blog posts every so often, and I can set up which social media platforms I want the feed to go once it finds the feed or blog I’ve posted. Basically, I want to to post updates, advertisements, my portfolio, and share marketing advice through my wordpress blog. Then I want that blog to be broadcasted over every other social media platform I have….automatically streamlined. I would use twitter feed but I have clients of mine that I will need to manage their SMO the exact same way. Just makes it easier for me to keep up with everything. When I supply the feed link as:
http://www.nickfrontieroproductions.com/blog/
OR
feed://www.nickfrontieroproductions.com/blog/feed/
Hootsuite will not accept the feed. Will feedburner allow me to create a feed in which Hootsuite will accept?
Is what I am doing even possible?
I really appreciate any and all help or understanding with this. Been racking my brain for like a week on this one!
Editorial Staff
Automating social media is probably the worse thing you can do for your business. However, if you do choose to go that route, it is possible. There are several plugins for WordPress that lets you publish your recent posts to Twitter as soon as they are published.
Admin
jkissa
how can you get feed burner to show the author of the post. It is assigned in wordpress but the rss doesnt display author name in the feed just title, then content.
Any ideas?
Editorial Staff
Insert it in custom fields to manipulate RSS
https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-add-content-and-completely-manipulate-your-wordpress-rss-feeds/
Admin
Chloe
Hi I have feedburner attached to my new wordpress ecommerce website. I had it from ages ago when the site was under construction. It’s feed address is set at this URL http://www.cheekysuds.co.uk Should it really be set at http://www.cheekysuds.co.uk/blog?
Please don’t laugh at me if it is a silly question but I am not sure. I subscribed to the site myself and posted a blog earlier but didn’t get an email from it. I have now taken the post off. I would be grateful of any help.
Editorial Staff
Well, if your main installation is xxx.com << then the feed will be xxx.com/feed/ … if you are running two separate installs, then you can have the feed on xxx.com/blog/feed/
It depends on where you need the feed to be.
Admin
Chloe
Hi, what do you mean by separate install? I bought a web theme and the blog is attached. I guess this means it isn’t separate and the feed should be kept where it is? I know my site has feeds on it as the blue rss feed box comes up in the URL when you go to my website. Thanks for
your help so far. I appreciate it and Happy Easter!!
Azhar Kamar
Thanks! This has helped me in using FeedBurner for WordPress.
Jo Rae
Loved this article! One question. After setting this up and connecting the feed to Wordpress is it supposed to send out the email every time I post a new post by itself or do I have to burn a feed myself each time and insert the address into Wordpress? I can’t seem to get feeds to go out consistently.
Thanks for any advice you can give!
Jo Rae
Editorial Staff
FeedBurner would send out an email everytime you publish an article. However we have heard recent complains about them not doing it consistently.
Admin
Pieter Hartsook
I’m finding that Feedburner is unreliable getting the latest post and especially delivering via email for one of my sites. It will work fine for several weeks (average 2 posts/week) then fail.
A really strange issue is feedburner adding the latest post to the feed, visible on the Your Feed view and looking at the feed in an rss reader, but just not bothering to send out the email to subscribers, even a day later.
I ping, resync, change the feed source from rss to atom and back, change the delivery time and eventually the Feedburner will trigger and send out the email. But there doesn’t seem to be any consistent way to fix the no delivery problem.
It’s so frustrating I’m looking for a reliable alternative. What kills me is there is zero, nada, absolutely NO SUPPORT from Google for this service. Google really doesn’t seem to care about Feedburner. They bought it and seem to be hell-bent on destroying it.
Too bad, it had great potential.
Editorial Staff
We use it on our site, and it seems to be working fine. Unfortunately, we cannot provide any support in your case.
Admin
Julie
Having problems burning my feed. I get the error message;
“Your feed filesize is larger than 576K. You need to reduce its size in order for FeedBurner to process it.”
I have reduced the number of posts in the ‘Reading’ section on Wordpress to 5 and also validated the blog through Feedburner but I still can’t get past this stage.
This is a new blog and has not got much content on it so surely it can’t be that big!
Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Julie
kashifmin
if any of you having problems with your feed just replace the wp-rss2.php with new one
Keith Davis
I’ve just set up a Feedburner account.
Nice to have a super clear guide for getting the best out of the settings.
Hyder Mohammed
Thanks for this useful post
Ron
I had a problem getting Fedburner to burn a feed. After spending several hours trying to get it to work I finally figured out what the problem was.
The problem—-
We have a self hosted WordPress blog that is a duplicate theme of another blog we have. The original blog has a feedburner feed that works without a problem (whenever we post an entry appears in the
feed).
I created a second feed for the second site and things seemed to work without a problem. We were getting close to cutting the second site over and we needed to clear the test items out of the feed. We could not clear the these items out of the feed even after we deleted all blog entries and did a resync with feedburner (under troubleshooting).
So I decided to delete the feed and tried to burn a new one. The burn failed because the validator indicated that it can not find the feed (error 404).
Prior to the deletion of the feed we upgraded to the latest version of wordpress (3.0.3) but the feed continued to work after that. The only problem was that we could not remove the test items from the feed.
The solution—
It appears that feedburner will not burn a feed for wordpress unless there are published items in the blog. Sort of a catch 22. Once I published one entry in the blog Feedburner was able to burn the feed.
I don’t know if this is a new issue or was always like this but I thought I would post this here in case someone else runs into this problem.
Ximena de la Serna
Excellent post, thanks! I need to spend this weekend optimising my blog so will be using your advice to improve it. Cheers!
David Radovanovic
Thanks for sharing. Your article clarified some issues I was having with feedburner.
Jo
Thank you, thank you soooo much for this step-by-step guide!
I have successfully completed all of the above steps, including activating the Feedsmith plugin, do I still need to add a “Feedburner ID” in the widgets, on my primary sidebar; on the enews section and copy and paste it into the box that says “Feedburner ID”
Im using the Genesis Framework Lifestyles theme.
Oh, and thanks again!
Editorial Staff
If you have the widget active, then yes you should enter your feedburner ID in the widget.
Admin
Deirdre
I’m on step 5. When I go to Publicize, it asks me about a Widget and Wordpress in not an option.
Paul
I appreciate the article, but I missed something. Can the RSS feed be like http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/feed/ or how is the directory setup? Or does it matter? Thanks.
Editorial Staff
The feed is determined by where your blog is installed. So if your blog is installed in yourdomain.com/username/blog/ then your URL would be yourdomain.com/username/blog/feed/ … if your blog is installed in the root directory then it will be yourdomain.com/feed/
It all depends on where you want the blog installed.
Admin
Gretchen
The FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin worked for me when I initially installed it, and continues to work on that install even as I upgrade WP. However, it has not worked for me on new installs, so I use John Watson’s FD Feedburner Plugin when I do a new WP setup with FeedBurner.
Evgeni Yordanov
Do I like this article? I love it! This is exactly what I needed to get my RSS out there
Technonesia
Nice!
An explanation how to setup FeedBurner. That’s what I need.
Twolane
When I enter viking.twolaneroads.com/feed/ into the “Burn a feed this instant”, when I hit the “Next” button and it tells me that a valid feed isn’t available.
When I click “Confirm validity” I go to a page with this line highlighted in yellow:
That’s it. No feed. Nada. It won’t accept the feed.
katherine
i’m trying to do this tutorial but when i type my feed into feedburner it comes up with this message:
“an error occurred connecting to the URL: Error getting URL: 404 – null”
and when i try to check if my feed is valid it tells me it is not. i’m using the custom permalink i found on this tutorial:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/seo-friendly-url-structure-for-wordpress/
anyone might know what the issue could be?!?!
thanks!!
Editorial Staff
Your feed should be http://www.yourdomain.com/feed/ if you are using our post structure. If you email us, we can take a look and assist you.
Admin
Mason Parker
i always use feedburner to syndicate my blog posts to other subscribers.,;~
Mehmet
Sweet article, you made my feedburner setup a breeze.
Gretchen
The email subscription to feeds is popular on the multi-author blog I’m part of, but subscribers complain that they can’t see who wrote the post in the email: only in a feed reader or on the site. I can’t seem to figure out how to include the author field in the email subscription. Is this possible? Thank you!
Editorial Staff
You can modify the RSS Feed and add who wrote it and author bio using a custom field. Use our site’s search feature to find the article.
Admin
Wasim Ismail
Thanks for the tips, just finished setting up my feedburner account and installed it on my blog.
Cheers
Adam
Thanks for sharing this info. Plugin referenced in this guide did not work for me either. I could upload it but when I went to activate it I got an error. I did a Google search for a Feedburner Wordpress Plugin and found another. The other activated fine. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/feedburner-plugin/
sriganesh
if i change my feed name will it affect my rss subscribers or still it can send my new post to their emails ??, i like to change it to short and effective
Costa
Great tips for beginners.
Just a small note though. Feedburner Feedsmith does not work with WordPress 2.6 and above.
Editorial Staff
Thats funny because we have it running on this site and its 2.9.2
Admin
wparena
It would be more helpful if you write about how to increase feed subscriber…help us and give us some tips ..:)
Editorial Staff
To keep the content related and targetted, we avoid talking about topics like: blogging, blog marketing, blog monetization, how to make your blog successful etc. WPBeginner focuses on the technical aspects of WordPress and how it relates with blogging rather than non-technical aspects such as social media, affiliate marketing, blog promotion etc.
We do try to add that blend of content in our Newsletter tips, so if you want those then signup for our newsletter.
Admin
Yael K. Miller
Thanks for writing this — you have stuff that I didn’t know about. I had no clue about FeedFlare.
I’m curious about why you recommend FeedBurner FeedSmith as the WordPress plugin to use. It hasn’t been upgraded for a long time. I use the FD Feedburner Plugin.
Editorial Staff
It doesn’t need upgrading… It is also the official plugin for Google FeedBurner.
Admin
faheemday mktg
I’m having an issue with the email subscription…when the feed emails out, it only emails portion of the post without having any “read” more or anything…I’d like for it to send the entire post not just the portion…what do I need to do for it to send out the entire post?