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Question for RSS readers: replacement for Feedburner?

Hey, guys, I need some help!

Feedburner will be removed from the internet in 20 days time, which means I will no longer have an RSS feed.

Because of the way Google works (they do not allow multiple Google accounts to be simultaneously signed-in on the same computer), it will be physically impossible for me to use the “replacement” service from Google (I believe google thought this out very carefully indeed, and is very well aware of the consequences, but I won’t hit you with the conspiracy theory today :) ).

(and, in case you hadn’t noticed, Google has forcibly removed some of the features from Feedburner in the process, including the single most valuable one – the count of how many people are accessing your site through RSS)

Worst case scenario, I’ll go back to wordpress-managed feed, but someone with a misconfigured feed reader killed wordpress the last time I had that on, so I’m not sure how long it will stay up. I could install a cache server purely to cover the RSS feed, but that’s going to be a bunch of hassle I could do without (and I might well get it wrong, it’s been a while since I’ve configured Squid). I’ve looked at the WordPress Cache plugins, but they all have major incompatibilities / conflicts with other common plugins.

So … if I can’t find a replacement before 28 February 2009, the RSS feed may well magically disappear. Suggestions greatly appreciated!

11 replies on “Question for RSS readers: replacement for Feedburner?”

uhm… one account in IE/FF/Chrome, another in Opera. That’s how I do it… that’s how CG rolls ;-)

@CaesarsGhost

Sadly, I am already doing that. I have run out of web browsers (that work on my laptop – IE and Chrome are not available for OS X in working versions last time I checked).

Login to feedburner.

*most* people by now (it’s a rolling upgrade. HA!) get a forced “would you like me to move all your account details over to Google? You have 30 seconds to comply” message.

Sulka got it in the first wave – and it trashed his feedburner, broke his feeds, etc. If you noticed a few people’s feeds double-posting recently … that was them switching over (“a few bugs” when it went live :)).

If you don’t get the message yet, try this:

https://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?answer=126303

especially read the answer to this:

https://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?answer=126303#q12

“I do not want to use a Google Account. What should I do?

Unfortunately, Google Accounts will be required for all users to maintain feed management and monetization services at Google. We are currently planning to have all accounts transferred by February 28, 2009. At that time if your account has not been updated, you will no longer be able to access your account at http://www.feedburner.com, and your feeds will either begin returning a “404 Not Found””

Also read: https://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?answer=126303#q8

“Are there any features that are not available at feedburner.google.com?

There are two features that we are retiring from all versions of feedburner: Site Stats (visitors) and FeedBurner Networks.

We have decided to retire FeedBurner website visitor tracking, as we feel Google already has a comparable publisher site analytics tool in Google Analytics. If you do not currently use Google Analytics, we recommend signing up for an account. We want to stress that all feed analytics will remain the same or be improved, and they are not going away. ”

The war on humanity has started. SkyGoogleNet is almost operational…

“The war on humanity has started. SkyGoogleNet is almost operational…”

Join the resistance, join Microsoft.

LOL.

“Just mind the revolving door doesn’t hit your ass on the way in, spun by 3,600 people being kicked out” ? :)

I stopped reading T=Machine through RSS because I use LiveJournal as my feedreader, and it was choking on the size of it. Last time I checked, nobody else was using LJ syndication to read your blog, so I adjusted rather than badger you about it. I’m also planning on moving away from LJ myself, so I’m mulling a replacement feed reader anyhow.

It seems like everyone else is using WP’s RSS feeds OK, is your site REALLY that high traffic? :-)

Oh, you should totally badger me about such things, I don’t mind. I might not do anything about it, of course :). (I still haven’t paid for an SSL cert, for instance. Although I will. Eventually)

I’m sure it’ll work out OK, and if I sit down and write some custom config files I can get the RSS traffic removed from the main web log and approximate my own equivalent of feedburner’s stats. It won’t be as good though.

(I use google analytics already, but it comes with its own set of bad UI, quirks, and bugs that take sufficiently much effort to workaround that I also use a private analytics and another 3rd party one on top to get the stuff I want)

FWIW, I just switched over, and feedburner.google.com is *not the same* as analytics.google.com. It actually looks quite a lot like feedburner did, and does include the subscriber count.

Also, Google Analytics does let you share stats among multiple usernames. Is there a reason you don’t want to give permission to view all of your statistics to one master username?

Hell yeah – separate identities.

No way I want my primary google account having ANY association with the RSS feed for this blog.

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