Just a quick heads up to anyone who cares (probably only a few of you), as mentioned last night, I've implemented FeedBurner for my blog's main RSS feed on a trial basis.

For most of you, that means virtually nothing changes. At worst, you may see the last 10-20 entries appear as "new" or "changed" in whatever RSS reader you use. And for most of you that's either Google Reader or Bloglines (based on the stats I have already).

If you're interested in the details, the relevant section of my Apache's httpd.conf file now looks like this:

## Blog stuff
Redirect permanent /backend.php    http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/rss2.xml
## Added on 06-19-2006
Redirect permanent /blog/atom.xml  http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/rss2.xml
## Added on 06-21-2006
Redirect permanent /blog/index.xml http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/rss2.xml
## Added on 03-17-2008
Redirect temp      /blog/rss2.xml  http://feeds.zawodny.com/jzawodn/rss2

That means anyone fetching my rss2.xml file will now receive a temporary (HTTP 302) redirect to feeds.zawodny.com which is, in turn, a CNAME to feeds.feedburner.com.

I implemented it this way so that i can turn if off at some point (by removing the redirect) and not "lose" subscribers. Unless, of course, some folks subscribe directly to the FeedBurner hosted copy.

In any case, I'm curious to see what the FeedBurner stats look like. I'm sure there are a few settings I need to tweak. I've probably missed a few. So don't get all paranoid about click tracking and whatnot. My goal is to do little of that.

Posted by jzawodn at March 17, 2008 01:44 PM

Reader Comments
# Mike said:

There is a setting within FeedBurner so that it automatically uses the redirect URL for your "official feed". On the Optimize tab, choose "Browser Friendly". You'll see a link a the asking "Are you redirecting your feed traffic?" There is a setting to put in the redirect URL. I do this to mask the feedburner feed and keep the one main URL.

on March 17, 2008 02:21 PM
# Jeremy Zawodny said:

Mike:

Thanks! I've just activated that option. It'd have take me a while to notice that, I suspect.

on March 17, 2008 02:27 PM
# Zac Garrett said:

I am actually quite surprised that more people do not use feedburner. It is about one of the neatest stats tools I have seen. My only problem with it (and google analytics, awstats, or anything else of that nature) is that I often spend WAY too much time analyzing stats. I've blown several afternoons just looking over the various stats of my sites. Other than the time sink the stats are amazing.

on March 17, 2008 02:33 PM
# don loeb said:

jeremy - welcome to feedburner!!! ping me if you have any questions, etc...and, let's grab lunch one of these days...

on March 17, 2008 05:41 PM
# Life Tester said:

hihihi, your captcha rules :-)

yep, yep... lets see some burned stats/numbers :-)

on March 17, 2008 09:59 PM
# Dave said:

Jeremy - thanks for your dial-up lines tel. no. page -
JUST what I was looking for! Thanks!

Dave

on March 18, 2008 03:35 PM
# Drew said:

How does Feedburner grab your feed without it being redirected to itself? Are you excluding the redirect for their IP/useragent?

on March 22, 2008 10:22 PM
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