How to…use FeedBurner

I have been asked to do a tutorial post for my online journalism classmates on how to use FeedBurner, so here it goes!

Step 1 – Register
Go to FeedBurner.com and click “Register” in the upper righthand corner to create an account:


Step 2 – Add
Enter your blog address or an existing feed. With Blogger (the platform we’re using for class), find your feed by clicking this link at the bottom your blog posts that says: “Subscribe to: Posts (Atom).”


Step 3 – Burn
Enter a title for your feed and complete the feed address, such as with your name or blog title:


Step 4 – Integrate
Integrate your new feed with your blog. For those in class, look at the Blogger section and select “Redirect your Blogger feed to your FeedBurner feed.”


Step 5 – Publicize
To publish a chicklet, click the “Publicize” tab in your FeedBurner account. Select the one you would like to add. For class, I would recommend including the default RSS feed icon and then adding Google and Yahoo later.


Once you select the chicklet you want, scroll to the bottom where it says “Use as a widget in” and click the drop-down menu to select the type of blog you use. For class, select Blogger and confirm it as a new page element. Another option is to copy the provided code into your blog.

Other information

  • “Analyze” is the most useful tab in your FeedBurner account. Explore the contents to see essentially any bit of information you could possibly imagine regarding your feed, such as how many subscribers you have and how many hits your feed has.
  • FeedBurner Help Center’s explanation. (added Jan. 31, 11:39 a.m.)

Questions: Please feel free to ask questions by commenting.

Weigh in: What did you think of this tutorial? It’s my first, so be brutal.

Dave Barry for president! (Yes, of the United States)

Dave is back and running again! He had been on the sidelines for a little while, covering the New Hampshire primaries and doing a presidential Q&A online, but now he’s in the thick of it for real.

Check out the campaign video and be sure stop over at Dave’s blog.

Dave Barry ’08
“It’s Time We Demanded Less”

UPDATE: Another video related to Dave’s run:

Converting to Drupalism

Drupal is looking more and more attractive as a replacement content management system for The Miami Hurricane‘s Web site. Our webmaster, Brian Schlansky, recently downloaded it and set it up on a virtual server on his laptop.

Here are some Drupal-related links:

College newspapers with Druapal (Media sites using Drupal):

I’m going discuss Drupal’s settings and modules in greater depth with Brian and post my thoughts. Stay tuned.

Background: Drupal is a free, open-source CMS and used by other newspaper for their site management, so it definitely seems like a viable option. We currently use College Publisher, which doesn’t give us the freedom we would like and has been very frustrating recently.

Other CMS options I looked at:

Weigh in: What CMS does your newspaper site use? Why is it good or bad?