Skip to main content

Syndicating Topic-Specific RSS Feeds to Your Readers

By VJ
If you have a publication like mine, you may be addressing a number of topics/categories. And some of your readers may be interested in only one of these topics. They may wish that they got only posts on 'creative writing' or 'blogging tips'. In professional publications like news sites and blogs like the Huffington Post, you have the option to subscribe to posts related to specific topics. Here, we will show you how you can enable this on your Blogger blog, with label syndication.

Make sure that your blog has enabled feed syndication and supports labels (which we call categories/topics).

For feed syndication settings, go to Site Feed under your blog's settings; labels are enabled whenever you put in keywords at the label text field while publishing new posts. The tweak involves syndicating content published under specific labels.

The following is the feed for a specific label:

http://blog_name.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/label_name

In this URL, replace both blog_name and label_name with the appropriate values to get your topic feed. The hyphen is not a mistake.

Remember the label_name is case-sensitive, so 'Creative Writing' is not the same as 'creative writing'. If your label name involves space as in 'creative writing', replace all of them with %20, which is the space escape character.

For instance, the feed for my topic, 'creative writing' in CW will be: http://cutewriting.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Creative%20Writing

Grammar and Style: http://cutewriting.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/grammar%20and%20style

If you want advanced feed features, go ahead and burn this feed using FeedBurner. All the features you may be getting for your normal FeedBurner feed will be available to this feed as well.
Click the screenshot to enlarge:
starting a feed on FeedBurner

Adding Feeds to Your Blog

You can now add the feeds to the blog's home page as well. Enabling this will show a list of latest entries from your main topics to your users. Also, enable the option for them to subscribe to these feeds.

From your layout window, go to Add Page Element and choose 'Feed' as the element. Now just input your feed URL and choose number of posts to show. Look at the screenshots. Make sure you also place a subscription icon for the specific topic feed.

Choose feed as the gadget type
Choose feed as the gadget type in Blogger
Choose the feed URL
Choosing feed URL in the feed gadget

Now the feed will be fetched and the last five posts will be displayed. If you need more than five articles (say, 10), then please check out this post on enabling more than 5 post titles on recent posts widget.
The gadget fetches latest five posts and displays

Conclusion

Syndicating topic-specific feeds has only advantages. Users can subscribe either your main feed with all posts or individual feeds if they wish to follow only specific posts. This way, you can grow readership for specific topics on your blog. Also, it will be easy for you to branch out to other topics without distracting current users. Of course, when you post an article relevant to both blogging and SEO, your readers for either these topics will be able to track it; just specify both labels when publishing the post.

Voice your comments and doubts, and subscribe to my blog for more such tutorials.

Copyright © Lenin Nair 2008
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated very strictly

Popular posts from this blog

Power of Short Sentences

By VJ
Post dedicated to Thomas Hardy (see History Today below). There are monster sentences like the one you encounter as the first paragraph of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens . One of my friends, whom I am getting equipped for his IELTS ( what is this? ), told me that the examination recommends long sentences. In writing classes also, I guess it’s longer sentences most tutors promote. But indubitably shorter sentences are more powerful . We will see why. Take a long sentence for instance: Tom Cruise, one of the finest actors in the whole world, is perhaps the most powerful celebrity to exist ever according to Time Magazine, but many people still dispute this fact and point out that there are more powerful and popular actors than Cruise, though they were unsuccessful in providing the total number of fans, who liked the films of those actors. This is a long sentence and it is very confusing . Though it has a logical construction and conveys a meaning, it falters in many occasions and seems ...
1 comment
Read more

Creative Writing: Crafting Characters With Emotional Appeal in Mind

By VJ
When you read the greatest fiction works ever, have you ever asked what was so compelling about them that you not only kept reading it, but you ended up reading all other major works of the writer? It may well be because the writer touched your emotional quotient quite a bit. Every reader has a unique taste . Some like to read suspense thrillers , some tender love stories, and some others dark horror and bloodshed stories . That’s why there are all sorts of genres out there. When a writer gives you what exactly you want, you will keep reading. Here we come to the emotional appeal. Character Imperfection Perfect characters may not always be the upshot of a writer’s deliberation. It may well be due to ignorance . Usually the upcoming writers take it for granted that if they create perfect characters, they will be able to garner a bigger audience . It is not true. You have to ask yourself what a character would do in a particular situation. Perfect characters—perfect gunmen, perfect...
1 comment
Read more

En Dash, Em Dash, and Hyphen

By VJ
We have three types of dashes in use: The hyphen, En Dash, and the Em Dash. In this post, we will see how to use them all correctly. Hyphen (-) The hyphen is the minus key in Windows-based keyboards. This is a widely used punctuation mark. Hyphen should not be mistaken for a dash . Dash is different and has different function than a hyphen. A hyphen is used to separate the words in a compound adjective, verb, or adverb. For instance: The T-rex has a movement-based vision. My blog is blogger-powered. John’s idea was pooh-poohed. The hyphen can be used generally for all kinds of wordbreaks . En Dash (–) En Dash gets its name from its length. It is one ‘N’ long (En is a typographical unit that is almost as wide as 'N'). En Dash is used to express a range of values or a distance: People of age 55–80 are more prone to hypertension. Delhi–Sidney flight was late by three hours. In MS Word, you can put an En Dash either from the menu, clicking Insert->Symbol or by the key-combinatio...
11 comments
Read more