Why are feeds "burnt"?

Posted Tue, 25/09/2007 - 12:56

Having just read Pete's Ashton's post on Feedburner, I have just finished converting this site over to use Feedburner to generate its RSS feed, rather than using the built-in Drupal one.

The main reason for this, it has to be said, is so that I can have a look at lots of juicy stats about how many people subscribe to my feed, where they are, and how they read my posts. I've been going on a bit of a stat frenzy lately, with the addition of the little map thingy on the bottom of the left panel of the main page, pin-pointing out my readers' locations. It's all just fun really, and this is a totally pointless post, other than to say that thanks to Dave Reid's module and a bit of php hacking myself, if you subscribe to my site's feed, you should notice no difference at all. If you do have any problems, then please drop a comment to this post and let me know the problem!

Why are feeds "burnt" anyway?

Comments

Was wondering why your previous posts had just reappeared in my reader. Didn't realise that you could swap over without changing feed URL but, thinking about it, there's no reason why you should need to.

by Si - 25 Sep 2007 - 16:14

Aw come on, I don't have time to do it for my site, too. (I have avoided feedburner but I get reminded too often that I should try it) Oh well...

But before I waste time I don't have, let's hear the fresh expert on two questions (if he does have time on his hands):

  1. I figure you get a new feed address from feedburner and when it gets accessed, feedburner will do the stats and then check your real feed, right? Then how does it work that people do not need to switch their feed address? If you just redirected your old feed address to the new feedburner address, you'd have a loop. What happens behind the curtains? (I find the feedburner page is no good in explaining that to me quickly)
  2. Could I claim an arbitrary feedburner address for your feed and consequently read your statistics? Or do you need to prove you own the site by putting a file on your file system?

Thanks

by Nic - 25 Sep 2007 - 23:48

Yeah, I'm still waiting to see how interesting the stats will be, so I'm not sure if it's worth it so far... But, in answer to your questions...

1. That's exactly right, yes. It would. The way to do it is to use some HTTP redirects, as you say. So, you redirect the feed's address to point to feedburner, but make it conditional on the user agent of the person reading the feed. If the user is identified as feedburner itself, then give it the original feed, otherwise perform the redirect. There are some tutorials around on the web of how to do this using .htaccess files and things, but also pre-made modules for Drupal, Wordpress et al. I've used a bit of a combination of both on here to get what I want.

2. You're welcome to burn my feed, yes, but it won't provide you with any statistics about anything other than how often you've read it. I only get the statistics because other people read it through my feedburner account now (hence why the redirect is necessary).

Good luck in implementing it for your little CMS!
by Pete Lewis - 26 Sep 2007 - 11:25

Why are feeds "burnt"? Branding schmanding. It's also a better name than "clever RSS service" and the free software fanatics have used all the best recursive acronyms (e.g. LAME)

by Alex - 26 Sep 2007 - 10:19

Ha ha, I love those recursive acronyms... have you come across the HURD one?

From their website:

`Hurd' stands for `Hird of Unix-Replacing Daemons'. And, then, `Hird' stands for `Hurd of Interfaces Representing Depth'. We have here, to my knowledge, the first software to be named by a pair of mutually recursive acronyms.
by Pete Lewis - 26 Sep 2007 - 11:30

Impressive! If they've put even half as much effort into the software as coming up with the name(s), HURD will kick ass!

by Alex - 26 Sep 2007 - 17:30

Well, unfortunately (and at the risk of upsetting quite a few people) HURD has not really become what it was supposed to be. It was the kernel designed for the GNU system, but then Linux came along and stole its thunder. The two systems are very different and represent two different technical approaches, hotly disputed by academics and geeks alike. Quite interesting, really... take a look at this wikipedia page.

by Pete Lewis - 26 Sep 2007 - 18:03

I am just coming home from the "Distributed Systems" Lecture by Van Steen who wrote the book (with the same title) together with Tanenbaum (he is an emeritus here in Amsterdam).

by Nic - 26 Sep 2007 - 19:40

Cool!

by Pete Lewis - 26 Sep 2007 - 22:43

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