As we’ve talked about on ReadyMadeWeb previously, FeedBurner is must-have tool for any blog or website. It future-proofs your feed so it can move with you to a new CMS, it ensures that your feed is compatible every sort of feed reader, it tracks your subscriber numbers, allows you to monetize your feed, and pushes your posts out to update services around the web.
However, just because you’ve changed your WordPress site’s link from the built-in feed address to your FeedBurner feed, doesn’t mean your users are necessarily accessing your FeedBurner feed. The built-in RSS feed your site can also be accessed through the RSS auto-discovery feature which is now standard on all the major browsers. In order to ensure that this feature detects your feedburner feed, you’re going to need the FD Feedburner plugin. The plugin will redirect these auto-discover tools to your FeedBurner feed, ensuring that subscribers are accessing your feed the way you want them to be.
FD FeedBurner also gives you the option the redirect comment, category, and search feeds to ensure that every single one of those built-in WordPress feeds is overridden by FeedBurner.
Cord is the director of new media at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He has been a web developer for over a decade, working with non-profits to rein in their web development costs and grow their online audiences through simple best practices.
