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Transitioning Subscribers from WordPress.com Feeds to Feedburner

  1. edlee
    Member

    Now that wordpress has retired Feed stats (much to most people's consternation), has anyone been able to work out a work around that will enable us to transition our existing subscribers to a feedburner feed?

    I know it's possible to move subscribers from one feed to another with self-hosted WP based blogs, but I can't find anything for the WP hosted blogs...

    In my mind, this is a no brainer for wordpress to offer; if only for a few weeks. WP can "prune" its service offering while providing the minimum of pain to its existing, and extremely loyal, users.

    Ed

  2. drmike
    Member

    Only real way to just to tell folks that they need to switch. There's really no way to not made your wp.com feed available so some folks are probably going to keep using it.

  3. secondchancetolive
    Member

    I reluctantly signed up with Feedburner. I have placed all the appropriate codes in my text widgets, also one that is questionable that has " type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"> on my left side bar. I am not getting my feeds from the loyal following I was creating through wordpress that was eliminated by the decision to "re-tire" feed stats. I am not tech savy and I am now presented with a new learning curve (which is part of life), however I am having a difficult time configuring feed burner to get my feeds back. Can someone please walk me though the process??? Please be as detailed as possible, as I am concrete literal.

  4. timethief
    Member

    Hi loyal readers. Earlier this week, WordPress.com decided to retire their “feed stats” program /option. Consequently, you may have been attempting to access Second Chance to Live through those feeds, without success. I have not gone anywhere. I am learning to use Feed Burner myself. Please use the button below.

    What you have written in your blog is not true at all. You are confused. The rss feeds to your blog were not retired; the rss feeds are working just fine. And none of your readers were unable to receive your posts and/or comments. They continued to receive them through whichever feedreader service they are registered with.

    It was just the wp program that was designed to count the number of individual readers using the different feedreader services that was retired.

    P.S. I'll leave it to another blogger to walk you through the feedburner set-up.

  5. raincoaster
    Member

    TT is right: you haven't lost any readers at all. You just aren't getting the report of how many of them there are, that's all.

    Readers of your blog feed who use Feedburner can be counted and you get stats for them generated by Feedburner. That's why people want to transition their readers to Feedburner, so they can count them. The problem with this is that when you force people to switch from something that is working for them (like your regular wordpress feed) they don't like it and they might quit reading you.

    If I were you I'd take down the RSS button for my WordPress feed and replace it with one from Feedburner, once I'd registered there. That way people who come to your blog for the first time will sign up for the Feedburner feed and you can count them; the ones using your old WordPress feed, we can't count anymore.

    Does that clarify things a bit?

  6. judyb12
    Member

    @Craig,

    i have sent you an email, and i would follow Raincoaster's advice. :)

  7. secondchancetolive
    Member

    Thank you for your time and kindness ladies. You are a blessing to me. Can you please look at my blog and tell me if I also need to remove the other RSS Feed and the Social Bookmark tabs? Should I just have the feed burner chicklet in the left sidebar to remove all doubt where the feeds are to be registered? I do not like having to force anyone to do anything. I have been placed, like many others in an awkward position. Please give me your experience, strength and hope. Thank you ladies. God bless you all.

  8. raincoaster
    Member

    I'd suggest you remove the Rss Feed button (the one with Yahoo etc on it) and correct your most recent post; your readers are still able to access the feed at wordpress.com, but you're asking them to move so you can better understand what they're reading on your blog. Other than that it looks good. Leave the Social Bookmark tab; that's for putting your blog in their Bookmarks, and it is totally separate from RSS feeds.

  9. secondchancetolive
    Member

    Thank you so much. Are you suggesting that I stay with feed burner and ask my readers to sign up with them so that I can better understand what they are reading on my blog? I do not want to alienate any of my readers, ect. Thank you for your help in this matter Raincoaster. Craig

  10. growthmadness
    Member

    My approach to this is to do nothing. I note Matt's comment that the feed stats will likely be back in a few months. And I expect they will. Would you really want to do the Feedburner thing and then go back *again* when the WP feed stats return?

  11. raincoaster
    Member

    That's a good point. I suggest that you remove non-Feedburner feed buttons from your site but not ask the existing subscribers to switch over. That way the new people will sign up through Feedburner, but you won't annoy your regular readers.

  12. iandsmith
    Member

    And let's hope Google don't buy WordPress as well as Feedburner.

  13. secondchancetolive
    Member

    Thahk you for your kindness and time. In the interest of keeping it simple, I have decided to draft a revision and it is as follows. Please give feedback per adding or deleting what I will place on my site. I have yet to publish this entry, as I will wait to hear back from my tech savy friends here at Word Press. Thank you so very much. Craig

    Hi Loyal visitors and friends of Second Chance to Live. As I have shared before, with everything there is a learning curve. In the interest of keeping both your and my life simple, I have decided to deactivate my feed burner feeds. Therefore, there is no need to sign up with Feed Burner to receive my material through their feeds (disclaimer : againI am not tech savy so my terminology to describe feed reader material may be inaccurate so don't shoot me :). From what I understand you can still access my material through the present RSS button that I have in my left side bar under my most popular posts. I look forward to seeing you back real soon. Have a great day. Craig

  14. judyb12
    Member

    How about:

    Oops! I misunderstood the feed situation, and it turns out that you guys can access my feed via the regular WordPress feed and my new Feedburner feed. It's up to you which one you choose. Sorry for any confusion :D

    That way you don't jerk around the readers who honored your request and switched to Feedburner, and you can leave all your buttons as is.

  15. timethief
    Member

    I'm taking the same position a growthmadness. I'm doing nothing at all. The idea of coercing my readers into using feedburner, rather than a rss reader of their choice, just so I can count them, does not sit well with me.

  16. wank
    Member

    And let's hope Google don't buy WordPress as well as Feedburner.

    Google already have Blogger, it's Yahoo and Microsoft we need to worry about ;)

  17. drmike
    Member

    Good point actually....

    Although Microsoft has MSN pages. Yahoo had a blogging platform but I don't remember it ever coming out of alpha testing.

  18. secondchancetolive
    Member

    Thank you Judy and everyone for having taken the time to help me through this process. I have one follow-up question. I thought by signing up with Feed Burner, all my readers would have to go through the process of using feed burner to access my material. Am I mistaken? With my understanding on this matter, I do not want to make my readers go through Feed Burner. I deactivated my feed with Feed Burner. Should I re-activate my feed with Feed Burner and let whoever wantst to access me through that service too?

    I am confused as you can tell.

  19. timethief
    Member

    I thought by signing up with Feed Burner, all my readers would have to go through the process of using feed burner to access my material. Am I mistaken?

    Yes.
    You can offer feedburner as a choice to your readers. And you can even request that your readers use feedburner so you can count the statistics. But, you cannot compel your readers to use feedburner. They can still use whichever rss feed reader they want to use.

  20. secondchancetolive
    Member

    Thank you for your time and help. So is it in my best interest to leave my feed burner account de-activated and let whoever use the feed reader of their choice? I want to keep this simple in a big way, for me and for those individuals who want to read Second Chance to Live.

  21. raincoaster
    Member

    No.

    Activate your feedburner account and display the button on your blog. If you don't activate your Feedburner account, you won't get stats for your feeds at all. But do allow people to use whichever feed they prefer (really, you can't prevent them from doing that anyway).

  22. secondchancetolive
    Member

    Thank you raincoaster. I activated my feedburner account. Thank you for you help in this matter. Have a pleasant evening.

  23. raincoaster
    Member

    Glad to help, I hope it does well for you.

  24. andrew
    Member

    I'm with growthmadness (and timethief) on this one. For now, I'm doing nothing about feed stats.
    I'm hoping that Feedburner gets integrated into WordPress.com. For wild speculation (not checked with any official source) about this see:
    http://changingway.org/2007/07/12/when-you-wish-about-a-feed/

  25. offleyfencing
    Member

    Hi,

    I actually found this as I was looking for a way to change the autodiscovery feed on my site from WP to FB - does anyone actually know if there is a way to do this on wp.cm bogs?

    Cheers

  26. timethief
    Member

    @ offleyfencing
    This cannot be done on wordpress.com blogs at this time. I think that was made clear in the other thread you posted to on this. http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=6816

  27. timethief
    Member

    How to offer your readers email updates: http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/10/11/how-can-i-offer-email-updates/

  28. buzzpal
    Member

    I wish that WordPress.com would either:

    A) Bring back good feed stats,

    or

    B) Enable us to specify which feed we want to use, for example the feedburner feed. We might not want to have multiple feeds available, especially ones that don't offer good statistics.

    Cheers,
    chrisco

    PS: I know I shouldn't hold my breath on this one... I remember some kind of of saying about "wishing for" things: "Wish in one hand and sh*t in the other... What did you get?"

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