Feed Burner

What is a feed you might ask? It’s simply a blog. If someone has a website that allows them to make posts every day or updates and it stacks on top of the previous day’s post, then it’s more than likely a blog. The most common blog content management software out there is WordPress followed by Blogger.com. If you have not made a free WordPress site please read the chapter in this book carefully and create your own. For learning purposes I’m going to use my site as a quick example and take my blog info and use it to make a cell phone app. So please make sure you follow along and create one of your own.

(Screenshot of Feedburner.com)

Go to your web browser and go to Feedburner.com. It should be just like all the other Google based sites, Google’s signature with clean white webpage look. Log in using your Gmail account. Once you’re in, you’re going to pick a site that you know for a fact is a blog and type in the URL box labeled “Burn a feed right this instant”.

(Screenshot of the first page you see when you log into FeedBurner.com)

(Screenshot of me typing in RashadGlover.com )

(Select the first radio button then click next.)

If everything worked well you should see a congratulations page. Your feed is now ready to be utilized on you’re, website, blog and any software that will except the XML code. We are going to be using our Feedburner accounts to help us create an easy web app that displays basic info.

(Screenshot of the Feedburner congratulation page.)

(Screenshot of all the options you have to post your RSS into)

Once your feed has been out in the wild for a while you might want to analyze where the traffic is coming from and where they are going once they leave your website and blog. The analyze tab at the top of the page allows you read that data then determine what you want to do with it.

(Screen shot of the analyze Page.)

The “Publicize” page allows you to create a button that will utilize RSS feed reading software through various website services like Yahoo, myAOL, and of course Google. By selecting one of the service providers you will take a paragraph of code they have given you at the bottom of the screen and pass it on any web site. You can also take the feed address and use it in my apps. But this is a good way to get your feeds and info out there on the web.

(Screenshot of the Publicize page.)

(Screenshot of multiple RSS feed reading companies.)