FeedSnap: The FeedBurner Replacement

FeedSnap logo Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you’ve certainly seen all the hullaballoo that took place when Google shut down Google Reader for good. Aside from being a damn good RSS web-based reader, it was very importantly, so popular that and backed by a company so huge that it basically killed off all its competitors without even trying. If you care about your blog, you’re probably looking for a FeedBurner replacement or a FeedBurner alternative just about now.

People have been panicking about the so-called “death of RSS” ever since. RSS has a special place in our hearts, we think the idea behind a simple, standardized, freely-accessible stream of updates for just any website is a confluence of awesomeness that only comes around once in a blue moon. In other words: if RSS dies today, it’s not because something equally awesome has replaced it. Anyone equating RSS with Twitter streams (where stuff is virtually designed to be lost in the madness) and Facebook “feeds” (accessible only to friends, at the mercy of Facebook Inc) has no clue what they are talking about.

The writing has been on the wall for months, and pretty much everyone has come to suspect the next shoe will soon drop and Google will kill FeedBurner (the equivalent of Google Reader for website publishers) in the next round of “spring cleaning.” Google purchased Chicago-based startup (yay Windy City!) FeedBurner from its founders back in 2007, and ever since has been disabling and dismembering it, one feature at a time. Today, FeedBurner is only a sorry reminder of it once was.

To that end, we are happy to introduce today FeedSnap.

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CompleteRSS 1.0 Released

CompleteRSS 1.0 was released yesterday, it’s been upped to a full-release, no longer alpha. Nothing major has changed as far as functionality or purpose is concerned, but it’s a highly recommended upgrade because it addresses a couple of high-profile (really annoying) bugs that can occur if you have a post with the word “feed” in the permalink.

Moreover, there have been several fixes to enhance compatibility with non-standard permalink structures, older versions of PHP, and feeds via proxies. It’s a fully-stable release, and now it’s more important than ever, since WordPress 2.1 has gone public.

WordPress 2.1 never displays content past the <!–more–> marker in an RSS/Atom feed, unlike WordPress 2.0.x & co. If you’re a dedicated blogger and you love your readers, do them a favor and serve full-content RSS feeds: they’ll appreciate it, and you’ll get more feed subscribers :)

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Atom isn’t RSS!!

For the last time: Atom isn’t some new version of RSS! It’s not a different kind of RSS and it’s not some alternative-form of RSS either! Atom is one RDF-compliant standard, RSS is another. They have absoloutely nothing to do with one another, and they’re not compatible! You can’t mix and match the two, and pretending they’re one and the same only makes things worse for you and your readers. Nor is it a “sub-format” of RSS. Just because the both serve the same basic purpose at-heart, it doesn’t mean you can say they’re one and the same – that’s like saying OS X is another format of Windows!

What makes it extra-embarassing is when a blogging engine, attempting to sell itself to the more “technically advanced” bloggers out there, has this as a “selling point:”

RSS Syndication

With RSS, your content can be made available for syndication.  ExpressionEngine supports all major RSS formats, including the new Atom format.

Umm.. Hello? So much for “redefining the standard for publishing systems.” Somehow we don’t think that’s what pMachine had in mind when they made that tagline up for ExpressionEngine, their new up-and-coming blogging platform.

WordPress 2.0.6 and FeedBurner Disconnects

This article provides a workaroud for WordPress 2.0.6 and chronic FeedBurner disconnects. It’s essential that you upgrade to WordPress 2.0.6 immediately in order to prevent your blog from being taken over by hackers! Upgrade, then follow these instructions to get it to play nicely with FeedBurner afterwards.

The Problem

After upgrading to WordPress 2.0.6 or WordPress 2.1 Beta, your FeedBurner feed will, at times, give you an “invalid xml” error, and “FeedMedic” will show you something like this:

Your server disconnected us before sending the full source feed content. If your blogging platform is TextPattern, this is a known bug, and a fix can be found here: http://forum.textpattern.com/viewtopic.php?id=11247

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Revamped ‘All Comments’ Feed

We may be out of touch, but we’re still hard at work.. We have a new feed for your perusal, for the comments that is.

While NeoSmart Technologies prides itself in our wonderful team and their excellent articles, it’s our commenters that set us aside and make every article at NST something special. Just like our other feed, it’s FeedBurner Powered and provides refreshing content and live access to comments as they happen.

Well, what are you waiting for? We have to go, lots of work to do, but here’s the feed, all you need to do is subscribe!