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Apr 01 2008

Setting up Drupal RSS Feeds


Filed under: Content Management Systems » Drupal, Web Programming » RSS,
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Looking to publish RSS feeds quickly and easily?

Check out RSS Content Builder. You can improve your search engine exposure by providing fresh, regularly updated content for all of your websites from one easy control panel. The RSS Content Builder features:

  • One Time Installation! Build RSS feeds for all of your websites effortlessly from one easy to use control panel.
  • Randomize the number of results for each feed on all of your web pages. Specify two different results values and the program will choose a random number of results each time.
  • Open RSS links in a new pop up window. Also completely customize the look and behavior of your feed without HTML or CSS.
  • Add as many RSS feeds as you want to one single page.
  • Works with all RSS formats: 0.9x, 1.x, 2.x and Atom
  • Both PHP and Javascript formats are supported.
  • Keep the search engines coming back - RSS feeds help your pages get indexed more frequently.

A Simple Drupal RSS Setup

Drupal comes prebuilt with RSS feed support.  Unfortunately the same can't be said for its user friendliness.  Here at CWD we've got RSS support setup with Feedburner.  Our installation was simple and painless and lets subscribers get notified whenever new content is posted on your website.  Follow these steps to get rockin':

  • Your front page Drupal RSS feed is located by default at: example.com/rss.xml
  • You'll want to create an alias pointing this path to example.com/fbfeed (or something similar)
  • Log into and create an account at Feedburner.com
  • Under "feed details" you'll want to enter your "original URL" as: example.com/fbfeed (the alias you created above) - this is a feed address you only want to share with feedburner - don't publish this alias on your site (use /node/feed or rss.xml instead)
  • Your "feed address" should be: feeds.feedburner.com/example (replace "example" with anything - for example, the name of your website). This is where your feed is stored on Feedburner. You'll be using this feed address in the .htaccess file below.
  • Create redirects to your feedburner feed in your .htaccess file:
    • RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$
      RewriteRule rss.xml http://feeds\.feedburner\.com/example [R,L]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$
      RewriteRule node/feed http://feeds\.feedburner\.com/example [R,L]
  • Update: Now that Google has taken over Feedburner, once you've migrated your Feedburner feeds over to Google, you need to update your code to the feed address listed in your Feedburner account. To find out what it is, browse to My Feeds -> Click on your feed name -> click the "Edit Feed Details" link (at top). For this example, the feed address is http://feeds2.feedburner.com/example:
    • RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$
      RewriteRule rss.xml http://feeds2\.feedburner\.com/example [R,L]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$
      RewriteRule node/feed http://feeds2\.feedburner\.com/example [R,L]

Voila :)  You've created a temporary redirect to Feedburner.  If ever you decide to stop using Feedburner, simply erase these .htaccess lines and the feed will be re-hosted on your site without loss of subscribers.   

Cleaning up your feeds using Drupal's Clean Feeds module

The only drawback to this setup is the placement of your read more links. If your site uses the Read More Tweak module, like ours does (which places the "read more" links on your teaser page in a more intuitive position - ie. right after the content), you will end up with duplicate read more links. Furthermore, your feed images may not load in the feed, because of the relative URL setup Drupal uses. To alleviate both these issues, we recommend you install and enable Drupal's Clean Feeds module to clean up your feeds.

Adding subscribers to your feed

Now you're probably thinking, great, but how do I add subscribers?  To add subscribers to your feed, you can simply place a link to example.com/node/feed or example.com/rss.xml on your website, preferably via an RSS logo such as this one: Orange RSS Feed Icon (feel free to download and use this).  If you look in the top left sidebar you'll see that we've linked our feed using just this logo.

Signing up feed subscribers via email

You can also place an email signup box by the feed icon.  To do so, browse to the "publicize" tab in Feedburner, click on "email subscriptions" and follow the instructions.

Feed categories (taxonomies in your Drupal feed)

You'll notice that if you have your content linked to taxonomies (Drupal's version of categories/ terms), they will show up on your feed page.  Users can click on the terms to show only content within a respective category.

Average: 3.6 (25 votes)
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I did notice the Feedburner

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Fri, 2010-06-25 00:45.

I did notice the Feedburner module. Any news about Drupal version 6? That should rock.

Feedburner for Drupal 6

Submitted by cwd on Fri, 2010-06-25 08:40.

The Feedburner module has a beta release, as of this writing, for Drupal 6. However, it accomplishes almost the same thing as you can accomplish by following the steps above. It's a very simple module, and the feed implementation is a very simple process.

What is an RSS Feed ?

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Tue, 2009-06-09 04:57.

RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication.' Just like your morning paper relies on syndicated news from AP, Reuters, etc., so your blog reader will rely on the fact that most blogs 'syndicate' their news - they can 'feed' it to your blog.

The look of your website is very important. RSS has made it very easy to understand, see and feel your message for the visitors by mixing video and audio channels to your content.

How important is RSS really?

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Fri, 2009-06-05 12:58.

How important is RSS really? It seems like everyone is talking about RSS and syndication, but how many people actually make use of it?

Hi! This article helped me

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Fri, 2009-05-29 04:29.

Hi! This article helped me get started with RSS. Thanks a lot.

RSS Content Builder

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Thu, 2009-05-28 10:42.

RSS Content Builder is great, I've tried it, and it works really great, high quality feeds.

Peter - the consumer electronics expert.

Good blog

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Wed, 2009-04-29 02:33.

I've been following your blog for quite some time and should tell you that your articles are always valuable to readers. It's a value added service for me as well.

Thanks for your feedback!

Thank you very much for this

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Sat, 2009-04-18 02:20.

Thank you very much for this useful article on setting up Drupal feeds.

Drupal RSS per category?

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Sat, 2009-04-11 13:27.

Okay, I've got RSS up and running with Drupal via Feedburner, thanks for the help. But is there an easy way to allow direct subscriptions to categories (taxonomies) instead of only content linked from the front page?

Great info and nice topic!

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Fri, 2009-04-10 19:49.

I like your simple instructions, very easy to follow, thanks for sharing!

RSS content builder

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Tue, 2009-03-24 04:15.

Great app - thanks for the RSS tutorial and the content builder reco Smiling

Feedburner is key

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Tue, 2009-03-17 23:45.

I think Feedburner is the best tool to handle RSS feed management and subscriptions. In this day and age, RSS is very important.

Good RSS tutorial

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Mon, 2009-03-16 04:13.

Thanks for the RSS tutorial, it is very helpful.

RSS Support Setup with Feedburner

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Sun, 2009-03-15 09:21.

The instructions are clear and simple. Thanks for sharing this with your readers. It's literally "painless".

Feedburner email subscriptions

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Thu, 2009-03-05 15:27.

Okay, I've got this all up and running with the exception of the email subscriptions. I keep getting an error - "FeedBurner encountered an error adding your feed to Feedburner", when trying to activate email subscriptions (under the "Publicize" menu within Feedburner). Any ideas how to resolve this?

RSS for categories and comments

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Tue, 2009-03-03 09:38.

Great article - this helped me get up and running with an intuitive RSS setup, easy to use email subscription system (within Feedburner), and stats, all in one package.

Next up I'm trying to provide the option for users to subscribe to RSS based on categories (taxonomy) and also to subscribe simply to comments RSS. Is this possible with Drupal?

New Feedburner setup

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Thu, 2009-02-26 02:58.

Anyone else noticed the Feedburner set up? When I went to Eric's blog I noticed something really funny. His Feedburner count was 0! Haha, it turned out he changed over to the new Google account system and suddenly, viola, he lost all his RSS subscribers (to the new account).

Transferring Feedburner feeds

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Sun, 2009-02-22 11:03.

Great - thanks for this tutorial. I've now got all my Feedburner feeds up and running smoothly. Only problem is that I tried to transfer my feed to another account (by clicking "transfer feed" inside the feed settings within my Feedburner account), and I think I simply ended up transferring it back to my original account.

I clicked the confirmation link from Google (Feedburner) when I was logged in to my original account, and it said something to the effect of "transfer successful," but the feed is still in my original account and I don't see it in my new Feedburner account. I've tried redoing the transfer, but no luck - the confirmation emails aren't arriving anymore. Does anyone have an idea of how to get the transfer to work again?

Google Feedburner

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Mon, 2009-02-09 12:38.

That was really helpful information you shared regarding the setup of Drupal RSS feeds. I didn't realize that Google had taken over Feedburner! The migration process went relatively painlessly.

Cool Info

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Mon, 2009-02-09 11:58.

Thnk you for the great information that I will probably use with my email marketing software type work that I do.

Drupal RSS by category?

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Sat, 2009-01-10 15:14.

I would consider myself an RSS expert, but as far as Drupal goes I dont' know much. I'm hoping that with time I'll learn how to integrate RSS with Drupal. Right now the default aggregator method Drupal applies appears strong, but sorting RSS feeds by category (taxonomy) is taxing! Is there a good module for this out there?

Thank you very much for this

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Sat, 2008-11-15 19:07.

Thank you very much for this useful article on setting up Drupal feeds and on the comments. I love this site as it contains good materials.

Feedburner module is easier

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Sun, 2008-11-02 01:20.

No htaccess hacks required!

And you can burn multiple feeds! So you can avoid multiple .htaccess hacks.

And use a pre-configured publicity block!

See the first comment for the link.

Drupal RSS - live and learn

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Wed, 2008-09-10 11:05.

RSS feeds, from everything I can tell, have a steep learning curve. This article helped get me started with Drupal and RSS - thanks Smiling

FeedBurner module

Submitted by a visitor from afar on Sat, 2008-08-02 17:25.

There is also a FeedBurner module available for easy feed redirection. If anyone is waiting for the Drupal 6 version, it should be out soon.

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