Most bloggers know about the free FeedBurner service, a one-stop-shop for hosting, optimizing, publicizing and analyzing RSS/Atom feeds. However, did you know that you can access your FeedBurner hosted feed using your own domain instead of the tacky “feeds.feedburner.com?” For example, you can find my feed at http://feeds.tummblr.com/tummblr. I think that looks much more professional, and maybe it helps with search engine optimization (SEO) too?
FeedBurner provides a “PRO” feature called MyBrand which allows you to use your own domain to access FeedBurner-hosted feeds. It used to cost money but is now free thanks to Google’s acquisition of FeedBurner. The MyBrand page is tugged away in the “My Accounts” area after you login, rather than the “My Feeds” area. The instructions for how to use MyBrand are self-explanatory.
To use MyBrands, you must be able to edit (or tell someone to edit) your domain’s DNS records. If you own your domain name, there is no reason your DNS provider (most likely your webhost or domain registrar) should not allow you to edit or help you to edit your DNS records. If you are unable to edit your domain’s DNS records, you should raise hell and/or switch to a different DNS provider. I might make a post about free DNS providers in the future. But I digress…
Now, if only my FeedBurner account could give me a subdomain like tummblr.feedburner.com instead of a subdirectory feeds.feedburner.com/tummblr. That way, MyBrands would make make my FeedBurner feed accessible at feeds.tummblr.com instead of feeds.tummblr.com/tummblr; the latter still looks a bit silly.
Apologies if this post is stating the obvious. I see a lot of FeedBurner users who have their own domains but still link to their feed using “feeds.feedburner.com,” so I thought this feature must be a bit obscure. Or perhaps people aren’t bothered by using a third-party domain for their feed. Anyway, I will probably write another post about why exactly FeedBurner is so useful. Everyone recommends FeedBurner but as a newbie blogger myself, it took some digging around before I came to the conclusion that FeedBurner is better than WordPress’s built-in feed.
P.S. Am I the only one confused by the “PRO” labels on some FeedBurner featurers? I understand that “PRO” features used to cost money, so the label made perfect sense. But now that Google has made all FeedBurner features free, the label just confuses users who don’t bother reading carefully. Lots of people might assume “PRO” features cost money and not give them a second thought. Now that all features are free, there’s no reason to differentiate them. The “PRO” features aren’t necessarily more advanced or difficult for users to implement or understand.
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I did this already! Great idea.